We are over half way through 2019 and I still don’t have the ability to play Hollow Knight: Silksong. The game was originally planned as an expansion to Hollow Knight starring Hornet, but switched gears during development to a full-blown sequel. Since I can’t spend my time playing the game I’ve spent it scouring the few promotional videos of the game that we do have.

The game was first revealed on February 14th, 2019 with a gameplay trailer. This is where Team Cherry would announce the game as a full sequel. Team Cherry also published a vlog on the same day where they talk about other Silksong details. Things would be quiet on the Silksong front until E3 2019 where the game received a floor demo and a showcase on Nintendo’s Treehouse. The game was also featured for a brief moment in Nintendo’s E3 Direct. A word of warning, anything I talk about here could be changed before the game’s release.

Both gameplay videos begin with Hornet locked in a cage and taken to a new kingdom. This kingdom is known as Pharloom. How and why Hornet is being taken to Pharloom is a mystery. She breaks out of her cage when a glowing white bug touches her cage which unleashes her silk powers. This causes her to fall into a deep pit. This is where I assume the game begins.

The area that Hornet lands is called Moss Grotto. The kingdom will have several different areas to explore like the first game. This one is lush and green similar to Greenpath. If Moss Grotto isn’t the beginning of the game, it definitely is very early into it. The move list available here is very limited. Eventually Hornet will gain a whole new set of abilities to play with. This isn’t the case here though. There are directional slashes, a jump, and a heal, but not much else. Swimming is also shown early on. Swimming is an intrinsic skill of the Knight, and probably the same for Hornet. It isn’t shown whether or not acid and the required skill to swim in it returns for Silksong.

The heal mechanic works a little differently than in Hollow Knight. Hornet’s heal consumes all of her starting amount of silk, this game analog for soul. While healing is more costly in Silksong, it also has some benefits. The move is much faster and restores three masks in one cast. In a hectic fight, healing to full won’t take several seconds. It will instead take about one. However, increasing Hornet’s health is exactly the same. Collecting four mask shards will grant her another point of health.

Since we’re already talking about silk as a mechanic, there are a few bits of information in the videos. Silk is regenerated by hitting enemies. There will also be statues that act as large refreshes of silk found throughout the levels. Benches do not replenish your silk stores, but they will save and top off Hornet’s health. Special moves also use silk. The only special move shown in the videos is a large thrust in front of Hornet. It wasn’t shown or mentioned how special moves will be unlocked.

There is also a major change to the down directional slash in Silksong. The upward and horizontal slashes are the same, but the downward slash is a new move entirely. Silksong won’t feature the sword pogo. Before, the Knight could bounce on enemies if their downward slash was timed well. Hornet, however, has a diving slash that moves her at a downward angle. She won’t be able to hover in one spot while timing her downward strikes. The move will still be used for movement. The E3 Direct shows a section of Hornet using it to bounce off a series of higher and higher bells.

This isn’t the only mobility options teased in the videos. Glimpses of a grapple type move, a spinning lunge, and a dash were shown. The dash is a returning ability. Hornet will move quickly in one direction as a pseudo-dodge. This can be used in the air or on the ground. Using it on the ground will put Hornet into a sprinting state after the dash ends. The spinning lunge looks like a jump out of a sprint to cover large distances. This is shown as a way to minimize the time spent on hot coals. The grapple hook was demonstrated less, but it’s exactly like it sounds. Hornet throws her needle into an enemy or wall and is pulled toward her needle.

Lethal Acrobatic Action

Another move that’s new to Silksong is a ledge climb. When Hornet comes in contact with the ledge of a platform after jumping she’ll climb onto the ledge. Before the Knight would either do nothing or, farther into the game, slide onto the ledge to jump off of it. Early on in the reveal trailer there is a moment when Hornet does jump off of a wall, but it is unknown whether or not wall jumping is an unlockable ability.

It’s hard to know what abilities will be unlocked later in the story, but there is one later level demonstration in the videos. The Treehouse Demo after Moss Grotto moves to Deep Rocks, a lava covered industrial level. Immediately, you should notice a new icon next to Hornet’s masks and silk stores. This corresponds to Hornet’s straight pins, a thrown item that acts as a ranged attack.



The upper left corner of the screen shows a full straight pin reserve and how many shell shards were exchanged to fill it

Straight pins are part of the new tools system that Silksong introduces. Tools are beneficial abilities attached to a finite meter. Refilling the tool meter is a new mechanic to the series. Tools are made from a currency called shell shards. Shell shards can be farmed from enemies or found in breakable statues. Hornet remakes her tools when resting at benches. A full replenish on straight pins costs 40 shell shards.

Hornet will feature a large cache of tools to master. The reveal trailer has a showcase of her arsenal. Hornet can carry with her spike traps that also aid in traversal, throwable bombs, small bugs that fly around her, a needle that grants her a blue mask health point, and a motorized saw blade that damages enemies it runs into.

These tools likely tie into Silksong’s charm system. Team Cherry refers to this as a crest system. The reveal trailer gives us a look at the crest page.

I’m pretty sure this is true because, for starters, the word “Tools” is featured on the page twice. Secondly, A lot of the tools mentioned above have charms that look exactly like them. The spike balls, throwable bomb, flying bugs, saw blade, and the blue needle are all present here. If you look at the faded out portion of the charms, you can see the charm for straight pins. All of these charms slot into the red circle with the needle drawing. There are two more colored circles: two blue half circles and a yellow symbol that resembles a compass. I would guess the compass symbol would be for navigation charms. I’m unsure of what the blue symbol could be.

A few more notes on the crest page screenshot. In the bottom left of the screen there is a “Change Crest.” The image next to the text looks exactly like the picture surrounding the charm slots. I believe the image is the crest. In the top right there is the word “Wanderer.” This is possible the name for the crest. No other crests were shown. It isn’t possible to say how a different crest would affect playstyle. Would a more aggressive crest have three red charm slots? Finally, if you look closely at the background, you’ll see Hornet sitting on a bench. It would seem that the crest system can only be altered at benches like charms in Hollow Knight.

How she acquires these tool charms isn’t outright said, but the place they might come from is shown. While in the Deep Rocks section of the Treehouse demo they come across a smithy. This is the home of Forge Daughter. During a brief conversation she tells Hornet that she can make her new tools with the right materials. Hornet needs to go and collect these materials though. Since Hornet replenishes her own tool resevoir, it would make sense for Forge Daughter to make Hornet new tools. Anything past this interaction with Forge Daughter wasn’t shown.

The next major addition to the Hollow Knight formula featured in Silksong is an upgraded quest system. While the original game did feature quests, Hornet will be able to more easily track the ones she takes on with a quest log. The quest log is shown off in the reveal trailer.

Five quests are shown here with a more detailed look at two of them. The first detailed look is of the quest called “Mossberry Brew.” Quests given an icon and tag, which relate to the contents of the quest. The icon is of plants growing in front of wings and the tag reads “GATHER.” To the right of the icon page there is more information about the quest. It lists who gives you the quests – in this specific case the quest giver is the Druid of the Moss Temple – and gives a small description of what the quest entails. From the description it sounds like Hornet must collect a bunch of cooking ingredients. The reveal trailer potentially gives a look at the Druid of the Moss Temple. Near the section on new quests there is a moss covered bug mixing something in a cauldron.



The fruit shown here is likely one of the ingredients required for the quest

The second quest detailed is called “Madness of the Pilgrims.” The quest giver for this one is Grunby of Bonebottom. The tag is “HUNT.” The description mentions that Grunby’s old home is being surrounded by violent pilgrims. I don’t know for sure what the solution is to the quest, but it’s very likely that the solution is to violently clear the pilgrims from the area.

The three other quests aren’t given detailed views. The only information about the quests come from the icon and tag. “Glimmering Pearls” is another gathering quest, but the other two have new information. One quest has a new icon and tag. The quest “Haunted Gallery” is tagged “WAYFARER.” Is this a quest that requires Hornet to navigate to the Haunted Gallery? The last quest, “Plumed Rhino,” is given the tag “GRAND HUNT.” The icon is similar to hunt, but has three hooks instead of one. The mission is likely to hunt down whatever a Plumed Rhino is. Is it a boss or only a large enemy?

While not an exact match, the colors of the three quests correspond to the three colors of the crest system. Tools, which are used for combat, are red like the hunting quests. The quests that could be related to navigation are yellow like the yellow icon under the crest system. The blue crest icon isn’t the same shade of green as the gathering quests, but they are, at least, in the same color family.

The last note about the quest log is that it actually isn’t a page that Hornet can pull up at any time. For a brief second in the reveal trailer, we see Hornet standing in front of an interactable piece of fabric with pins on it. Interacting with this makeshift board opens up the quest log menu. This is curious for a number of reasons. Does this mean that quest boards are littered around Pharloom? Does Hornet have a home base that she can return to and check off quests?

What is a part of the pause menu is a general equipment page. We get a look at this during the Treehouse demo. There are slots for how many mask fragments have been collected, Hornet’s silks stores, her needle, and the amount of new currency she has. The people of Pharloom use rosary beads as currency. These are collected from a number of sources. Enemies will drop them, or they can be found in breakable items around the levels. Like geos, Hornet will lose rosary beads upon dying. At least she will unless she has an item called a “rosary string.” This is seen in the Treehouse demo. Later in the demo the currency saving aspect of the item is mentioned. The trio hosting the demo also say that breaking the rosary string is an option. The reason why someone would want to break the item isn’t stated.

Most of the inventory screen is taken up by nothing so far. There is a large amount of space for what looks like equippable items. This section is where Hornet’s cloak is listed along with another item that we aren’t given a look at. The item resembles a metal heart decorated with a red gem. We are shown the entire description for the Hunter’s Cloak however. Based off how much space is in the part of the screen it looks like there will be a large amount of items with intrinsic effects in Silksong.

There isn’t a whole lot of information available about the story of Silksong. Team Cherry mentions that while Hollow Knight is a game about descending a cursed kingdom, the new entry is about ascending one. No one states what that curse is. The word that keeps coming up when discussing Pharloom’s plight is “haunted.” The enemy bugs encountered around Pharloom aren’t just mindlessly shambling about though. The demonstrator from the Treehouse section said that they are working toward something. The example given was the enemies in Deep Rocks were sending coal up to a citadel at the top of the kingdom. Another thing that’s often mentioned about Silksong’s story is a musical focus. One key moment that we know about is freeing then ringing a bell, which summons a white rune. What the ringing does isn’t shown in the videos.

Not every bug is possessed though. There are several bugs that have been shown to aid you as well as towns full of free bugs. The reveal trailer mentions towns in the plural form specifically. This is a contrast to Hollow Knight which featured one town; I don’t count the mantis village or City of Tears. There are four scenes shown after the announcement of new towns: a mostly white shaded village with noble appearing bugs, a barnacle covered area, a bustling city covered in brass, and a collection of tents that has a bug attacking the inhabitants.

As well as the non-violent bugs in the towns several bugs were shown outside of the towns. A few seem to be helping Hornet during her journey. The most mysterious one is known as the Church Keeper. Coming across this bug is how the Moss Grotto section of the Treehouse demo ends. The bug rings a bell and Hornet passes out. This would seem ominous, but the Church Keeper was specifically stated to be a mentor for Hornet in Silksong. The Church Keeper is shown in the reveal trailer, but with Hornet playing her needle like a stringed instrument near her.

Other NPCs featured are a new fast travel bug, one bug guarding a gate, one bug ringing a bell to open one, and mounted bug fighting enemies with Hornet.

Something strange about the fast travel bug is that the exact same type of bug was shown in the section detailing some new bosses. Do we have to defeat a fast travel bug before we unlock fast travel?

Hornet has quite a leg up over the Knight in making friends thanks to her ability to actually speak to other people. Hornet is confirmed be a voiced protagonist. Her voice lines will still be in the pseudo-gibberish that all the voices are recorded in, but that will be translated in the text box. Who is speaking is related by a little symbol at the top of the text box. Hornet’s symbol is essentially her mask shape.



The character that Hornet is speaking to is Forge Daughter

The very last thing that I wanted to mention is how often masks similar to the ones found in Deepnest are seen. The icon to mark when someone is done speaking is the mask symbol. There is a crest page with a similar mask as well as a charm to match. Hornet is seen channeling in front of a cocoon bearing a Deepnest mask. How much of the game’s story revolves around Herrah and the stories from Deepnest is unclear. It would have to be some, at least.

I need to stress that this article isn’t exhaustive. There are still plenty of mysteries found in the videos as well as several written pieces of information that I didn’t include. I didn’t mention any of the bosses that were shown. Mostly because there just isn’t that much information available, and this is already a huge article. I didn’t show the brief glimpses of other areas than Moss Grotto and Deep Rocks for the same reasons. Hollow Knight: Silksong has a website and Team Cherry post updates on their own website about the game. For those of you who are still hungry for more information, those are the best places to look.

To read a member of the team’s thoughts on the original Hollow Knight, that review is here. To read some thoughts on a similar game to Hollow Knight, check out the review of Momodara: Reverie Under The Moonlight. Share your thoughts with us by joining our Discord. Or, if you like what we do here at Nindie Nexus, please consider buying us a coffee. We run on passion and caffeine, after all!