All online video game stores have collapsed at the same time. Steam, the Nintendo Store… All of them have fallen due to the Silksong effect. After so many years waiting for its arrival, to the point of becoming a meme and with a very dedicated fan community, how could it not succeed spectacularly? Team Cherry has scored another hit that will provide enough profits to wait another five years for the third installment, and no one doubts that Hollow Knight is one of the most resounding successes of the last ten years. However, it wasn’t always like this.
This is not going to work
Hollow Knight began its journey in 2013, during a jam where they had to create a video game in 24 hours. Ari Gibson and William Pellen, the developers, hurriedly made Hungry Knight, whose protagonist already had the same design that it retains to this day, and the result was… well, “special.” In other words: absolutely nobody liked it, and for years it had the worst rating on Newgrounds, where they decided to put it so that anyone could enjoy it. It’s not that Hungry Knight had much to do with Hollow Knight, but it opened a small door in their minds.
Both tried to secure funding a bit desperately, and seeing that no one was going to buy their project, they decided to try their luck on Kickstarter, where they raised $57,000 from just over 2,000 people (imagine if they had done the same for Silksong!), enough to start working on it. They left their jobs, founded a small team, Team Cherry, and in 2015 they released a trailer hoping to convince the public to give it a chance. I would love to say that the result was incredible, but the truth is that, on Reddit, many predicted a monumental failure.
“Last year my best friend quit his full-time job to pursue his dream and make a complete game. Today he released a trailer and it looks more than amazing“, said the Reddit post featuring Hollow Knight. Some comments were notably positive, yes, but others showed no mercy.
“I’m sure it’s fine, but the market is currently saturated with side platforms, so I think this game may not do as well as expected”; “It’s a strange market… I’ve seen great games go unnoticed and at the same time others like Flappy Bird succeed. There’s a lot of luck involved” or “I’ve seen the trailer and I have the feeling that I’ve seen it before” are just some of the more disenchanted phrases directed at it. People definitely know how to see the future clearly.
Imagine you are making Hollow Knight and suddenly you read comments like “The indie platformer number 503829 with dungeons for bosses and a monochrome background,” “There’s no reason to play it, played one, played them all,” “I’m pretty sure I’ve played this game a million times with different names” or “I hope they have another plan besides video games“. Anyone would have gotten depressed, but they kept going, taking their time… And we all know the result.
Team Cherry has taken seven years to finish Silksong, and for whatever reason, no one has complained that it looks like a generic 2D platformer. On the contrary: it has made the Internet explode like few times before. Who knows where those who wrote those absurdities are, of course. I hope they are not predicting anyone’s future.
