Team Cherry Addresses Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Steep Difficulty in Rare Developer Commentary

Since its release earlier this year, Hollow Knight: Silksong has been simultaneously hailed as a masterpiece and condemned for its merciless challenge. While the original Hollow Knight was no walk in the park, its sequel has proven to be a punishing gauntlet that has left many players torn between exhilaration and outright frustration. Now, Team Cherry has broken a long-held silence to discuss the game’s controversial difficulty spikes, offering rare insight into the design philosophy behind the Kingdom of Pharloom.

The comments, recently made public via a book available at the ACMI Game Worlds exhibition in Melbourne, see co-director Ari Gibson acknowledging the criticism head-on. Gibson admitted that “Silksong has some moments of steep difficulty,” yet was quick to underline that the game’s expansive, non-linear structure is intended to be the player’s most powerful tool. He stressed that this freedom can prevent players from “getting stonewalled,” suggesting that retreating from a brutal encounter and exploring elsewhere is not only viable but encouraged.

Central to this design is the protagonist herself. Hornet is no mere echo of the Knight; she is faster, more agile, and inherently more skillful. Gibson explained that this forced the team to escalate enemy complexity across the board. “Hornet is inherently faster and more skillful — so even the base level enemy had to be more complicated, more intelligent,” he noted. Co-director William Pellen added a startling revelation: “The basic ant warrior is built from the same move-set as the original Hornet boss.” Imagine that — an enemy you can encounter within minutes of stepping into Pharloom wields the moveset of the first game’s formidable final guardian.

The idea, it seems, was to
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