Hornets are generally considered pests because of how aggressive they are. Their stings are more dangerous than those of bees, and as a genus they are generally considered some of the most vicious insects out there. Their stings can kill (and about 62 deaths a year are attributed to hornets in the US alone). Makes sense that you’d use one for a video game protagonist then.
I played a small demo of Silksong at gamescom – the first time the game has been playable to the public, and where the press had chance to play the same demo as the huddled masses – and one thing struck me harder than anything else: this is harder than Hollow Knight.
Now, I’m quite pleased about that. Hollow Knight had a peculiar difficulty curve; it always felt quite simple and straight-laced as an action platformer for the majority of the base game, escalating rapidly in challenge as you got towards the end, and then going completely off the rails in the DLC and post-game. It feels, at first swipe, that Silksong is carrying on the same trajectory. And that’s kind of fascinating.
So, context. There are two levels in the Gamescom demo: an easy one from near the start of the game, and a harder one from near the end. Because I’m a Metroidvania sicko, I autopiloted to the hard one. Straight away, you can feel the difference: Hornet controls differently to the Knight from the first game. She’s floatier, and her attacks seem to have a little more range. Her up attack seems to come out a bit quicker (meaning you can dispatch flying enemies quite quickly if you can position yourself right) and her side attacks seem a little bit slower.
It’s in the dash and the jump, though, that I found the most distance from the original game. Instead of the (in)famous pogo you could do in Hollow Knight, where attacking down from a jump would pop you up in a straight line, Hornet has a dive kick. That’s a downward, diagonal attack. You can no longer bop enemies on the head repeatedly (a very useful and overpowered tactic in the original game) without some good positioning and understanding of physics. This caught me off guard in a boss battle against an arrogant little bug with a needle of its own called Lace, as I tried to do my usual Hollow Knight pogo spam before getting countered and parried by Lace herself. Oops.
Next, there’s the dash. Instead of simply cutting about side to side and using the i-frames to step through damage as in the previous game, there is more of a momentum build-up to Hornet – per her fights in the 2017 game. This means that dashing to one side and another has some funky spacing, and because you automatically animate into a run after a dash, you leave yourself more vulnerable than in Hollow Knight. Dashing also leads to a different jump animation, too, boosting you up at a diagonal with good momentum. For exploration, this gives you ‘slide dash’ utility, but in battle it throws off your spacing and speed considerably.
Now, I played the Knight as a quick but rookish attacker: moving in straight lines, dishing out punishing damage, and pre-empting and countering enemy attacks with aplomb. Hornet is more of a bishop, to continue the chess analogy, all awkward and diagonal and seemingly far better when kept mobile rather than stoic. I have over 200 hours in Hollow Knight across various platforms: Silksong, in 10 minutes, began rewiring my brain.
Good. Good! I want it to be different. In the first game, an NPC you meet before your first fight with Hornet remarks: “I have seen this nimble little creature. I thought her prey and pounced at her, but with a flash she stabbed me with her flying stinger and darted away. Could she be… a Hunter?” That could well be the selling line for her as a player character in Silksong: like a hornet proper, aerial stings and aggressive pursuit seem to be the most effective tools in her arsenal, and I cannot wait to see the synergies, abilities and trickeries that become available to her as she continues to protect her home from whatever creepy, crawly threats persist in the bigger world of Silksong.
I’ve waited years – years! – to play this game, and I left my demo impressed, but curious. Silksong is the game of the moment. And Team Cherry has opted to make this more difficult and a bit more awkward. For platforming fans like me, that’s catnip – but will the average player curious in the franchise be so intrigued?
We don’t have to wait much longer to find out. Silksong launches sometime later this year.
