At some point the memes on Silksong ever coming out were bound to end. Earlier this year, it made very brief appearances in some events, such as the Nintendo Switch 2 announcement. A lot of excited gamers were expecting a release date announcement, maybe early 2026.

When the release date was finally announced, we had less than three weeks to prepare. Other developers moved their own release dates because they did not want to compete with Silksong.

Silksong came out and it crashed Steam with over 500,000 concurrent players on the first day. Let me repeat that, Steam crashed. A platform that has tens of millions of users everyday, crashed because of a single game.

The hype alone has made Silksong a threat to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s throne for Game of the Year. I’m still rooting for E33 but Silksong comes close, dangerously close.

Silksong is not an easy game. It is harsh. Combat is swift and brutal. The platforming sections are dizzying and intricate. Although if you’re a fan of intense platforming such as the kaizo levels made by players of the Super Mario Maker series, Super Mario World romhacks, and Celeste, you’ll feel right at home with Silksong. Though I suspect in the coming months, once developers Team Cherry release DLCs, we will see the truly intense Silksong platforming can be, as evidenced in the first Hollow Knight game. Path of Pain, anyone?

Silksong, after all, began as a DLC for Hollow Knight, before becoming too huge for it not to be its own thing. It was as if Team Cherry decided to carry on as if Silksong was still part of the Hollow Knight DLC.

There are jokes around the internet right now about how Silksong’s difficulty starts off with the same difficulty as offered by endgame Hollow Knight. The joke has been tossed around so much that people started calling Hollow Knight the tutorial of Silksong. And I can see why. Almost every single enemy takes way too many hits before they die, even with an upgraded weapon. Enemies are fast and reactive, they dodge your attacks and have multiple movesets that give off the feeling many enemies encounter has that quasi-boss vibe.

Oh, don’t get me started with the boss fights. All of them except the very first one are intense and unforgiving. In fact, they are so brutal, Team Cherry had to nerf some of them with a patch (I take pride I beat those bosses pre-nerf). But many bosses retain their difficulty. Some of them, in the case of, spoilers, Savage Beastfly, exist for the purpose of giving players a headache. (It’s not that it’s hard, per se, it just tends to gank you with minions.)

For a 2D platforming game, Silksong is massive. I don’t say that lightly. It is a huge game with many secrets to discover. It is bigger than most Metroidvania games I played, like Axion Verge. Metroidvania is derived from the titles Metroid and Castlevania. It is a genre where players explore a large map with limited capabilities, but as you progress and gain new skills, your ability to reach newer areas becomes a possibility. But in most of these Metroidvanias, exploration can feel limited and stifled, and you can sense how developers are funneling you into certain areas.

This wasn’t the full case with Silksong. Even without the movement upgrades, you are able to explore a vast amount of the map, visiting multiple areas in any order. The upgrades you pick up feel like actual rewards for your efforts rather than prerequisites to help you navigate the map. You’d be surprised by how much the game has to offer.

It’s only a shame that Silksong has to go head-to-head against Clair Obscur for Game of The Year. Both are great contenders. If Team Cherry waited for 2026, then they would have competed against Grand Theft Auto VI and there is no competing against that. But for now, if you haven’t checked out Silksong, then you should. It is a fantastic game with great mechanics and a deep story full of lore. However, the difficulty, even with the nerf, will serve as a barrier for many players who just want to have fun. Silksong is for the masochists who think going up against Promised Consort Radahn from Elden Ring without armor and only with fists is fun. But Silksong has its own rewards that are fulfilling in their own way.

Should you get Silksong anyway even knowing the challenge it presents? By principle, yes. It’s made up of a very small independent team. It’s ridiculously cheap. It is only P615 on Steam and it offers more value than some games priced at P3,000. Silksong is itself an experience, so go check it out.