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The elegance of movement in Silksong

183 points by theahura 1y ago

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Analemma_ 1y ago
There are probably a bunch of videos in this genre, but I found [0] to be a particularly good explanation of why Hollow Knight felt so good. If you’re experienced at game design none of this is probably news to you, but if you’re unfamiliar with terms like “coyote time”, “jump buffering” etc., this video is a great introduction to how video games break physical realism to provide a better-feeling experience, and how tuning this is critical to getting a game which feels great. Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. [0]: https://youtu.be/Vxt8uud5o_4 https://youtu.be/Vxt8uud5o_4
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. But Silksong feels terrible. Its movement is awful and difficult to control. Hollow Knight felt smooth. Silksong is the opposite of that. This very post is mixing its message: >> The secret to why this game is like crack is the movement. The movement is so buttery smooth that simply getting back to the boss that just ripped you to shreds is a complex, skillful, and fundamentally enjoyable experience. >> So am I having fun? I certainly don't feel joy in my heart when I fall into the lava for the seventeenth time because I missed a jump (if lava was a boss it would easily take the top spot for the number of times it killed me). Falling into lava seventeen times because you keep missing the same jump is not an experience of smooth movement with player affordances. Interestingly, there is coyote time in Silksong, but not enough that you can reliably do dash-jumps. It's just that occasionally you'll notice a jump starting from the wrong location, a little to the side of and below the edge you wanted to leap off of. Much more often, you'll notice that you hit the jump button but the jump never went off, which is the exact problem coyote time is supposed to solve.
  - stevenwoo 1y ago
    I am unsure if I am just terrible at this game or more of a casual gamer with poor reflexes now, but Silksong feels particularly unforgiving. I did all the jumping puzzles in the most recent Prince of Persia game and figured out almost all of the puzzles and bosses in Metroid Dread after practice (lots of trial and error) without resorting to walk throughs, Silksong just revels in punishing you for making mistakes and forcing you to work to get back to where you just died.
  - the_af 1y ago
    For the record, I didn't enjoy Hollow Knight much either. It felt too repetitive and difficult to me...
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      This article concludes with the thought "if you liked Hollow Knight, you won't like Silksong". That is the same conclusion that I and my brother both came to. The game is bizarrely punitive, from the very beginning, for no reason. It's as if they thought of it as being the next Hollow Knight expansion after Godhome, providing an additional challenge for the people who have beaten every pantheon with all bindings. ("The new challenge is: all of your controls now do something different!") But it's a sequel. Supposedly. Most sequels are aiming to appeal at least as much to players who enjoyed the first game as they do to a hypothetical new audience.
      - johnnyanmac 1y ago
        Is it really that bad? The beginning definitely ramps things up, but I don't think anyone who beat Hollow knight would call Silksong "punitive", at least not for the 10 hours I've played so far. The area I struggled in the most was clearly one I wasn't "supposed" to go into yet, but otherwise the difficulty curve is only slightly steeper than HK's early game. Some discourse makes it sound like we're thrown 20 hours into HK at the beginning of Silksong. I know I'm biased as someone who beat 100% of Hollow Knight (granted, there's 112% of completion, so I did not in fact beat ALL the content), since I've played more HK than average.
- osu_Vanilla 1y ago
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- slightwinder 1y ago
  > Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. They are similar, but different on annoying details.
fishtoaster 1y ago
> Selling to businesses is very easy. You go to a business and you say "hey, you like making money?" And the business will say "why yes, I do like making money" and you will say "great, I can help you make more money. This is so wrong it hurts. You'd be amazed at how often "I will save you $X, guaranteed, or your money back" is a non-starter when selling to companies. I've spent a career very slowly gaining respect for enterprise sales people - going from "Ugh, sales people are all snakeoil salesmen" to "I can't believe what they do is even possible, much less regularly done" over about 20 years. Selling software to large organizations involves finding a champion within the org, then figuring out the power structure within the org via an impressive sort of kremlinology. You have to figure out who loves your product in the org, who hates it, who can make the buying decision, whose approval is needed, who's handling the details of the contract, and so on. You need to understand the constellation of people across engineering, procurement, legal, leadership, and finance – and then understand the incentive structures for each. Then you have to actually operate this whole complex political machine to get them to buy something. Even if it's self-evidently in the interest of the whole organization to do so, it's not an easy thing to do. Anyway, all that to say: "b2b sales are easy" is... naive... to say the least.
- hujun 1y ago
  yes, and I think one big reason enterprise might not buy your product even if it is guaranteed to make/save $X is $ is often NOT most important thing to the people make buying decision, specially when it is not your own money to save or gain
  - mindwok 1y ago
    This is very true. Look no farther than the perennial problem of department heads spending all their budget to keep their budget. Decision makers rarely care about saving money in isolation.
- temp0826 1y ago
  Can confirm. At one point in my career (after reflection on the situation) I realized I had been made a champion by a subsidiary of IBM for one of their products. I found myself in some really bizarre meetings with our execs and their executive sales people that left me feeling like a puppet that was made to tell our CEO that we needed this. They really took us apart, It was all very slimy.
the_af 1y ago
Am I the only one who didn't like Hollow Knight? In theory, it's just the game for me: indie, charming graphics, technically well done. What's not to like? In practice, it felt too difficult, too much work, too repetitive, and simply unfun to me. edit: interesting, downvotes for expressing an opinion directly related to sentences in the article (how difficult games are enjoyable somehow to some people; the article is all about difficulty and enjoyment regardless!). Is this the famed respectful and intellectually stimulating discourse of HN? Guys (and gals) please realize I'm not saying you are wrong to like Hollow Knight or Silksong, just adding a data point to the fact some of us don't like punishingly difficult games.
- spacebuffer 1y ago
  I also didn't like hollow knight despite loving hades and dead cells (somewhat similar) although I only played it for ~ 2 hours I am loving silksong so far however
- sandoze 1y ago
  Different strokes for different folks. You don't need to please everyone, but it helps if you can move 15 million units with three developers. I don't play Candy Crush but yet somehow this little cash cow keeps getting updated and I'm not one of the 2.7 billion downloads!
  - the_af 1y ago
    > Different strokes for different folks Agreed! I hope you're not saying the only possible alternatives are the opposite extremes of Candy Crush or Hollow Knight, though :) I'd feel vaguely insulted. I did finish Cave Story after all (but maybe today I wouldn't, I no longer have the time or patience).
- lycopodiopsida 1y ago
  There are at least two of us :) I like exploration and I like bloodborne, elden ring, dark souls 3, demon’s souls, dark souls - in that order. Thus, I don’t mind difficult bosses and obscure storytelling. I’ve clocked 10h in HK but I can’t get over these fuzzy hitboxes (I say it as souls veteran!), shallow fighting system and difficult platforming. It is ok, just not a game for me.
OgsyedIE 1y ago
I'm not familiar with the the named platformer titles beyond word of mouth and I may not have the free time to become so for a while but anecdotally I found some years ago that the movement controls in the games Titanfall, Doom (2016) and Titanfall 2 produced the same feeling of flow between the hands and brain the author articulates. It may come to pass that games will one day be benchmarked by neurological metrics in the superior parietal lobule and ACC of their players next to their frames per second, load times, ping stability, 1% lows and memory scaling.
- dkersten 1y ago
  Titanfall 2 had excellent movement! The only games I’ve played that surpass it are the tribes games, which just have a whole new level of fluid movement for 3d games.
sfn42 1y ago
> You could play Silksong's predecessor, Hollow Knight, and not be all that good at it. Hollow Knight was a tough game, but I think you could get through it and fall in love with the environmental story telling and the lore and the music and characters. Silksong has all of this in spades, too, but it is so damn hard that you will not be able to access any of it unless you are willing to put in some serious effort. As a result, I suspect many of the people who enjoyed Hollow Knight will actually bounce off Silksong precisely because it is so hard, and they simply won't have the tenacity. I think this is an overstatement. I've put about 16 hours into Silksong so far, I've pretty much completed around 8-10 zones or so, unlocked most of the abilities and stuff. I don't think Silksong is that much more difficult than HK. Honestly it's been so long since I played HK that I'm not even sure it's more difficult at all but it probably is. If you went to Hunter's March as soon as you found it you probably had a bad time but going in there later on was honestly pretty easy. And aside from that and maybe a couple other spots it's been fairly alright in terms of difficulty IMO. Everything so far has felt achievable and reasonable to me, having played HK, Dark Souls, Elden Ring and other similar games I don't think Silksong is significantly more difficult than any of those - yet. Maybe it gets crazy later on, but that wasn't the claim in the article. The article claims you can hardly access anything without extreme effort and I don't think that's true at all.
- conradludgate 1y ago
  As someone who completed most of the HK main story, I've decided to stop playing silksong during act 1 because I'm just not having fun
  - sfn42 1y ago
    That's alright, you do you.
- creakingstairs 1y ago
  I had no trouble going through Silksong (and I'm having a blast!), but there were _a lot_ of times when I thought that this would be really hard for people who are new to the series. > Everything so far has felt achievable and reasonable to me, having played HK, Dark Souls, Elden Ring and other similar games I don't think Silksong is significantly more difficult than any of those If you are a type of player that plays HK, Dark Souls and Elden Ring, then yes Silksong isn't brutally hard. But I think the game is brutally hard for majority of people who hasn't played any of those. I think HK had a better difficulty ramp for beginners.
par 1y ago
Cute article but skong isn’t as hard as op makes it out to be. I wonder if he’s played any soulsborne games or even hollow knight. Git gud!!!
- kittoes 1y ago
  Don't so easily dismiss the opinions of others. For certain individuals it is indeed the hardest game they've ever played. I've cleared Steelsoul 100% in the OG Hollow Knight and would argue that Silksong is definitely the more difficult of the two.
- theahura 1y ago
  Played all the soulsborne and 100%-ed HK. Except the last pantheon, I couldn't ever beat ascended moth
- MikeTheGreat 1y ago
  Ok, this is as close as I'm ever gonna get to having a real reason to post this on HN, so here goes: "Git Gud" by Viva La Dirt League: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blSXTZ3Nihs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blSXTZ3Nihs
  - par 1y ago
    Praise the sun!
- M4v3R 1y ago
  Silksong is objectively hard, and if you're trying to argue otherwise you're either the mythical "god gamer" or just trolling. The game is unapologetically hard and punishing right from the beginning. The very second boss you encounter already hits you for 2 masks (which effectively means 3 hits and you're dead), and each time you try to fight him you first have to run back for a minute before you reach him. He even does 2 masks of contact damage. Heck, even some normal enemies you encounter in the first two hours deal 2 damage. The original Hollow Knight bosses didn't do 2 masks damage until half way through the game. Don't get me wrong, I still love the game and consider it pretty much a masterpiece, but many people believe (myself included) the game could have a better difficulty curve from the beginning and be less punishing (just give me a freaking bench before each boss so I don't have to run through 10 screens to have another try at it) while still maintaining the overall difficulty and challenge.
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cousin_it 1y ago
I think Hollow Knight and Silksong are mostly special for their art style, the movement feel is pretty average. Among 2D platformers in general, I think the medal for best movement feel goes to the Fancy Pants Adventure series. (You can still play it online on sites that have Flash replacements, start with the 4th game because it has everything.) But that's a deliberately easy game, you just run through the levels and have fun. Among difficult precision platformers, I'd say the N/N+/N++ series has the best movement. (The first game is also still playable online.) Be careful, this one is like a drug, it has a huge number of levels and it's really hard to stop playing.
- sfn42 1y ago
  The thing that makes HK and Silksong stand out to me is the full picture. Everything is well done. The movement feels great, the combat feels great, the exploration feels great, the progression feels great, the boss fights are awesome, the art and music are amazing, the characters are fun and the story is engaging, it just has everything. These people are extremely talented and put years of effort into this game to make it perfect, impatient fans be damned and it shows.
- zaptheimpaler 1y ago
  Oh man I forgot about N+, that game was incredible. Super cool to see there's a new N++.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Link to the original N if you haven't played it: https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n (Mandatory addiction hazard notice)
- harimau777 1y ago
  If you haven't triend Sundered yet I recommend it. If you go with the unlock path that specializes in movement abilities then the game gets really wild by the end.
- shayway 1y ago
  I'd also put Super Meat Boy up there for good platforming feel. But yeah, Fancy Pants is fantastic, it's what I always wanted Sonic games to feel like.
thedrexster 1y ago
Savage Beastfly killed me 43 times in a row. :/
- galleywest200 1y ago
  I too had trouble with this boss but eventually made it. The fact it summons little friends is the problem, so hard to dodge 2+ the boss!
- M4v3R 1y ago
  Most people struggle with this boss, I stopped counting how many times it killed me but I spent probably close to 2 hours fighting it. The fight is just unfair. And when I finally beat it I didn't even feel satisfied, just glad it's finally over and I can move on. Heck, there's even a dedicated subreddit for hating on this boss: https://www.reddit.com/r/fucksavagebeastfly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fucksavagebeastfly/
- whatevaa 1y ago
  After 10+ deaths just go somewhere else. It's optional boss.
  - thedrexster 1y ago
    Noooo, the 44th attempt felt amazing and I needed my crest :D
zaptheimpaler 1y ago
Fluid & fun movement feels great and a lot of my favorite games have it - Doom, Hades, Ori, Celeste, Apex Legends, The Finals and more. To me it's an ingredient in a great game, not something necessarily unique to Silksong though.
- singhrac 1y ago
  Surprisingly overlapping set with games I’ve played and enjoyed a lot! Dead Cells was another that has a lot in common.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    Yeah, agreed on all counts. I know it's divisive, but the movement in Doom Eternal was incredible. Double dash creating some amazing levels that would have been unthinkable in Doom 2016.
- vunderba 1y ago
  I'm a huge fan of pixel perfect platformers. Chalk Cuphead and Super Meat Boy up on the list of games with a very natural connection between player coordination and game mechanics.
- Ferret7446 1y ago
  I hesitate to call Doom and Apex movement fluid. Well, it is fluid in the sense that it feels like you're on cart with exquisitely greased bearings and futuristic servos. FPS movement is inherently unnatural because no organism moves like that. That's not to say they don't control well, but they don't control naturally. Third person games can actually flow naturally, because you can animate things like turning around, changing direction, momentum, etc. FPS characters have invisible crab legs.
  - kodisha 1y ago
    Funny, because the most fluid movement I have ever seen and experienced comes from a (25yo) FPS game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvAbbye-oCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvAbbye-oCY
kevinwang 1y ago
I remember reading an essay (probably from here?) about how a great way to build a game is to build it around a "toy" -- something that is pleasurable to simply interact with, even without objectives. I can't find it anymore -- the closest I can find is https://medium.com/@keerthiko/toys-to-games-25d35b40425d https://medium.com/@keerthiko/toys-to-games-25d35b40425d but I don't think it was that, although it's based on the book "The Art Of Game Design" which may have been a common inspiration. Anyways, I've often thought about Super Smash Bros. (particularly, Melee) as a prime example of that idea.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago
  Sounds like Tynan Sylvester’s game design book (Tynan Sylvester created Rimworld)
- wonger_ 1y ago
  Yes, movement in SSBM is so satisfying. Nothing else comes close for me. All other games just feel boring in comparison. A classic example for those who haven't seen it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JpOaQxrsaqI https://youtube.com/watch?v=JpOaQxrsaqI
- dmbche 1y ago
  It's promotional material, but I enjoyed what the Get To Work devs put together to show how they built the game up from kind of the same approach (all on youtube)
- shinymark 1y ago
  This article from 2005 has the toy idea. It has stuck with me. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/how-to-prototype-a-game-in-under-7-days https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/how-to-prototyp...
  - kevinwang 1y ago
    Thanks, that was a fun read!
- zahlman 1y ago
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mrinterweb 1y ago
I've played a couple hours of silksong. I don't get the hype. Its a fine game, but I really think people are over hyping it. The internet hype loop on this game is turning me off on it. It's a nice metroidvania game.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  I’ve had multiple friends insist that I absolutely have to play this game. But I just know I won’t like it because I don’t like any of the other games that are like it. This game seems to be the labubu of gamers in terms of social media hysterics.
  - frisia 1y ago
    I would recommend giving Hollow Knight a try, I think it has very good accesibility and I know many people who typically don't like these kind of games that did find Hollow Knight enjoyable. Silksong is a beast though, I love it but very few people I would actually recommend this game to.
    - swiftcoder 1y ago
      Hollow Knight also has a robust ecosystem of mods these days, which gives you a lot of scope to tune the difficulty to where you are comfortable with it.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  It is extremely over hyped. The first game was already regularly over hyped. The community is famous for treating as some sort of masterpiece and reacting very strongly to any form of criticism. Then you have a lot of opinion in the mix. I strongly disagree with the article for exemple on both the extreme difficulty, the game is difficult but manageable, the enjoyment, plenty of questionable design decisions are there purely to spite the player and it’s a game which often confuses wasting your time and being frustrating with being difficult, and the supposed elegance of the movement. Silksong is really weirdly tuned in that it has mechanics which will actually only bother you and make your experience more painful if you are already struggling while being completely invisible if you are flying through. And the punishment will be grinding, so wasting your time, not actually forcing players to encounter things which would make them better. Amusingly for a game so long in the making, I think it suffers from a significant lack of play testing.
Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun [...] I haven't actually played HK yet, and I don't normally play Souls-likes, but I did finally start playing Elden Ring about two months ago. Yes, I've had times where I'm cursing out loud because I've been trying to beat a boss for three hours without success, sometimes dying with the boss only needing one more hit to die, and I'm frustrated with myself because knowing he only needed to get hit one more time started making me greedy with my attacks, and so I take big hits to the face and don't back off to heal. But what makes them fun is the dopamine rush when I finally succeed. A couple times, it felt damn near orgasmic. I've been playing video games for probably around 35 years and nothing felt as good as when I finally downed Morgott.
- moonshinefe 1y ago
  I wish I could go back and experience soulslikes for the first time! They really are a treat if you experience them as you describe (not everyone feels that way, but I certainly do). You're in luck because that subgenre has exploded in popularity and there are a lot of good ones out there if you want to keep playing them these days. Elden Ring is one of the best though for sure.
- djtango 1y ago
  My first play through of Elden Ring was a pseudo challenge run - capped at 125RL (pvp meta) and dual UGS style. No ash of war usage. No guides for bosses. Malenia took me over a month, and probably over 500 deaths and I had to relax the ash of war usage (still limited by my very low FP) The entire end game was brutal as this was before the buff for UGS animation speeds and most boss openings were shorter than anything than a crouch poke but I loved every minute of it. Just like learning to play something new on an instrument just cos you can't nail it in one try, one week or even one month doesn't mean you won't eventually get it. One meta lesson I like about Souls is it provides a safe environment to learn what performing under pressure is like. The music and feints are absolutely diabolical for playing with your emotions and heightening your stress. I always play better on mute (but that's no fun)
SyrupThinker 1y ago
A good example of how the experience of something can be so different between people. I also feel the need to write an article about it, but I'm not done yet... At the surface I had a similar experience to what the author describes. The movement feels good to me (until it doesn't), the game is appealing in style and gameplay concept, and I die frequently. But unlike them I dropped it after throwing myself at the exact boss they mention. Not because I think the game is actually hard at this point (it seems quite early in the game), but because I don't think the game actually respects my time. Something they don't seem to have an issue with. They mention that they died over 30 times to the boss, and how it never felt unfair to them. And while I do not fully share this sentiment, I do not actually mind that part either. The difficulty of learning a boss is part of the game. What surprises me is the not really mentioned part, that these 30 deaths (if I were to take them) take up 1-2 hours of my time. And you might be thinking, 2-4 minute boss fight? Seems reasonable? To which I say, this person focuses so much on movement and dying to random stage hazards because at least 70% of that total time is spent getting back to the boss to begin with, a 1-2 minute run of the same segment of game, each attempt! That's right, I spend more time running to the boss, than actually fighting it, because it turns out that you make mistakes when you do something repeatedly, even if it is just getting to the boss. I wish I could learn the boss and "get gud", but the game just won't let me without wasting my time. Part of that is a skill issue on my part of course, but for this very segment at least, you just start to see all the little hazards the devs have placed on the optimal path, to trip you up if you ever lose focus for a second. For a part of the game you have already done, and are not actually concerned with at that very moment. At least for me this got tedious very quickly. And supposedly this actually gets worse in later parts of the game. At some point you start to wonder, "is the game punishing me by making me traverse the game world before fighting the boss again?" And this thought starts to infect the regular gameplay, were you are supposed to willingly explore the game world, you know, the core of a Metroidvania. At the end I just asked myself "why am I willingly playing a punishment?" The author even seems to have vaguely similar thoughts here, they say themselves that they are sometimes not having fun with this core part of the game. Isn't that worrying from a game design perspective? Anyway, I think that's enough ranting, sorry for not concluding this thought.
- crq-yml 1y ago
eviks 1y ago
Think the article makes a good distinction between games being hard because they're bugged and not designed well enough, so your expectations are broken and you're frustrated by how (game) life is unfair vs. a perfected design with precise match between your skill and results > movement is so finely tuned and so precise that I know deep in my bones that any hit or death is entirely on me. Of course, that in turn makes tangible improvement extremely visible. You go into a boss fight and die, and then you die again, and then again. Each time you get a bit further, and do a few more hits. And slowly, finally, painfully, you come out on top victorious
- socalgal2 1y ago
  How is this different than a game like Sega Genesis Contra Hard Corps? (Asking with genine curiousity). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzJyBQKDaeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzJyBQKDaeQ In that game, it's basically ~30 boss fights in a row (don't know the exact number). There are 4 paths through the game A->(B or C)->D->(E or F). So if you take path B you fight different bosses than path C. Same for E and F. One of those last paths has 2 endings with one more boss fight on one path. You have limited lives so making it to the end of the game requires effectively memorizing the boss patterns. So, your description fits. > You go into a boss fight and die, and then you die again, and then again. Each time you get a bit further, and do a few more hits. And slowly, finally, painfully, you come out on top victorious But I'm guessing Contra Hard Corps does not stick up to Eldin Ring. So what's Edlin Ring's special sauce?
  - Scaevolus 1y ago
    The player controller in that Contra game is extremely simple. Movement snaps and stops instantly, and the animation are simple. You stand, run left or right at a constant velocity, jump, and shoot in one of 5 directions. Giving your character more movement possibilities tickles the brain with the complexity, enables more fluid and aesthetic movements on the screen, and increases the possible difficulty of platforming sections and boss fights. Silksong has a very complex movement controller. The player has mass, can grab edges and climb up, and unlocks additional abilities as they play. Now they can dash, run, doing a running jump, wall jump, stall a fall with a float, and more. Attacks come in many flavors, with different styles enabling attacks of different speeds and distances and strengths, with different considerations to manage. More complex controls take more investment for players to learn and are more rewarding. An extreme example of this is found in games like Monster Hunter, where each of a dozen different weapons controls very differently and takes many hours to become proficient in. Elden Ring does not have an excessively complex movement system. You walk, run, jump, dodge, and have a handful of fast and slow attacks for a given weapon. It finds success through incredible world and level design and its difficult and rewarding bosses. The game loop is exploration, fighting difficult foes, and slowly growing stronger-- both through game mechanics of gear and stats, and through personal mastery of combat. Soulslike games revolve around players gambling directly with arbitrary amounts of time-- when you die you drop your money, and if you die again before reaching that grave it's gone permanently. They make you bid the only resource that you care about: your hard-won progress over time. Complexity and stakes deepen the intellectual and emotional enjoyment of a game.
KingMob 1y ago
This reminds me how my wife kept asking if I was enjoying Cuphead, because she hear a non-stop stream of curses from the other room.
furyofantares 1y ago
> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun. They are meant to delight with their whimsy. Sometimes, yes, they are meant to be challenging. But that challenge is in service of fun. Games, more than any other form of entertainment, offer skill challenges. As they've become more popular they've gotten better about offering spectacle also. Some people play games mostly for skill mastery, others play games mostly for spectacle. This is a more nuanced distinction than "hardcore" vs "casual" - which fails to capture skill mastery extremists who are barely even gamers because they only play one game, or spectacle extremists who could hardly be called casual because they make gaming their entire life. Most people care about both, but may care more about one side or another. Some games cater to one side or the other, and some games, like Hollow Knight and Silksong, achieve excellence at both.
- TriangleEdge 1y ago
  Spoilers: Silksong has arenas with 3 mobs that throw discs plus you. Idk about you, but I can't track 7 things moving at once. This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky. I like Silksong, but the only way some the bosses were made challenging was because of constant adds. Hollow Knight rarely had this.
  - crooked-v 1y ago
    Silksong has the basic issue that it was effectively designed as extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff in Hollow Knight, rather than as its own game or even as a sequel for people who had "just" beaten the basic game in HK.
    - yladiz 1y ago
      I think that’s a slightly uncharitable take. Yes, it was originally DLC, and yes it is unforgiving, but it’s nowhere near as hard as the White Palace from the first game, and it’s not brutally punishing (you are quite agile and get good upgrades pretty early on).
danielodievich 1y ago
This gaming household had two huge teenager fans of Hollow Knight, with t-shirts and hoodies merch. Us adults didn't see what the big deal was about but we are not their demographic. My wife tried it and found it too demanding for a middle-aged person. I watched a few minutes of Silksong over my kid's shoulder yesterday and commented that it looks a lot like Hollow Knight and I could see their eyes roll at me from behind them... as their character died for the 3rd time to some [admittedly cool looking] boss throwing needles at them. Oh to be a teenager again with lightning fast reflexes...
flobosg 1y ago
I like how the game took inspiration from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – https://x.com/h_wallacepires/status/1963958435487088678 https://x.com/h_wallacepires/status/1963958435487088678
qwertytyyuu 1y ago
Dying 30 times to a boss isn;t that bad…
- SyrupThinker 1y ago
  Is it if this constitutes an hour of two of your time, most of which is not actually fighting the boss, but walking back to it?
  - viraptor 1y ago
    Are there actually long runbacks in Silksong? I'm not that far in, but so far they've all been maybe 2 screens long at most which you can cross really quickly.
    - ianbutler 1y ago
      There are several runbacks that are quite painful. I'm on the last bit of the game now and while I've overall very much enjoyed it there's more than a few spots where I thought "this is just tedious".
      - pferde 1y ago
        A great motivation to get it right this time. :)
        ianbutler 1y ago
        True enough! XD
    - SyrupThinker 1y ago
      I mean, what does long mean in the grand scheme of things? Is a minute or two long? I think, no, in a vacuum they are fine, at least up to where I got. But even a short thing can get annoying if you need to do it often enough, which is at least my problem, and apparently also that of other players that don't mind the difficulty.
rochak 1y ago
Ehh, not interested in HK or similar games with such a high difficulty bar. Life is too short to be playing games that are not fun to play (for me).
samrus 1y ago
I disagree with the author saying silksong breaks the definition of a game because what it offers is challenge instead of "fun" Thats like saying shawshank redemption isnt really a movie because its not fun like the original charlie chaplain films I think the vast majority of games are meant to be digital toys, the way early movies were mostly cheap entertainment. But just like movies evolved as an art and artists began to become more comfortable with the medium, games will also become more artistic and less like toys. The interactive nature of games is so innovative in the art world that it hasnt really caught on how to use it. But its evolving. Dark souls, the spiritual ancestor to silksong and pther soulslikes, is harder and that was a response to games like call of duty which felt like they were just trying to get the player through the level with as little friction as possible, with the pakyers actions being an inconvenience the game has to overcome so as to give them their dopamine hit. Dark souls responded to that by respecting the player and trusting them with a challenge they can be proud of solving. This idea of one peice responding to another is exactly how art works. And the fact that the interactivity of the medium is what is being played with in these peices is a sign that we are moving towards art evolving to embrace interactivity like it did video Another example is DDLC. That game did amazing things with making the narrative meta that non interactive media simply cant do. A character in a movie turning to face tue camera and addressing the viewer is trippy for sure, but a character telling you your steam username is way fucking trippier, and sells the meta aspect way better Games arent just toys, they can be art. Art just hasnt evolved enough yet, but its on its way
glimshe 1y ago
I won't play action games without an easy mode anymore. I've beaten all Dark Souls games and I just got tired of proving myself over and over. Nowadays I just want mild challenge and the certainty I will win after trying a couple of times.
- j_maffe 1y ago
  I agree. The game got much more fun once I installed some nice QoL and damage reduction mods.
- dunefox 1y ago
  I can't play dark souls and eden ring without a fov mod, so I can't go online and summon if a boss gets too difficult. Sadly pointless for me.
- whatevaa 1y ago
  Mods already exists which can make game more forgiving. Limiting damage to one is great start. Don't be ashamed to use them on Silksong, developers went hardcore for this one.
  - quchen 1y ago
    I aborted my 3 Hollow Knight attempts because of boss runbacks. Is there a mod that, I don’t know, adds benches before bosses or something? Then I might finally finish the game. I do enjoy hard-but-fair boss fights after all.
    - segphault 1y ago
      Yes, there is a mod for Hollow Knight called Benchwarp that lets you place benches wherever you want and fast travel between them.
    - swiftcoder 1y ago
      So far Silksong seems to be much better about placing benches near to bosses than Hollow Knight was
mapcars 1y ago
There are more brutal games out there, like the whole "I wanna be" series
slightwinder 1y ago
Interesting how different impressions can be. Elegance is not really how I would describe movement in Silksong. Yes, the animation is smooth, but the actual movement and its controls are very crude and twisted. It's in the realm of those annoying games which feel very unnatural, unintuitive.
- eviks 1y ago
  What's the best alternative?
  - slightwinder 1y ago
    Alternative for what exactly?
    - eviks 1y ago
      which game has the most elegant movement system (as a better alternative)?
      - cyrialize 1y ago
        I'm partial to super smash brothers melee. I feel like no other game has come close in making me feel so in control of my character. That being said, it is kind of difficult to get into. Finding a good GC controller can be hard, and playing online is rough because everyone is so good these days.
      - slightwinder 1y ago
        First Hollow Knight is already better in that aspect, even though animation is less smooth IIRC. Personally, I prefer the Ori-Games in terms of movements, especially the second game. But gaming is big, and inside as also outside the genre there are many games with great movement and controls. It depends on how much of an alternative you really want, just the movement, or the whole game..
- threetonesun 1y ago
a022311 1y ago
Great, I can finally find out what my friends have been talking about all week.
whatevaa 1y ago
I found Act I not harsh but full of frustating elements. Traps in piss you off locations, 90% of flying enemies who dodge and are tanky for some reason. Like that one particular fly which spawns in exact precise location in runback to boss for you to collide, unless you are sprinting. Bullshit like this. Act II get's better as you unlock more movement and the lore develops. There is some unique stuff there. Boses are also fine for me, random summons are annoying but that's what you have tools for, kill them immediatelly.
- quchen 1y ago
  I’m curious about those traps. I used to hate Soulslikes, Elden Ring made it click, and I binged them all on PC. Traps became part of some twisted humor, I started waiting for the (literal) punchline. I missed traps, or as I started calling them, »FromSoft bullshit«, when there weren’t any for a while. I’m super careful and alert in all games now. I wonder whether Silksong’s traps scratch that itch, or whether they’re just annoying.
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    This game has plenty of traps, including booby trapped save spot after a dificult section which has claimed many lives.
- mock-possum 1y ago
  > unless you are sprinting So… why not just sprint?
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    You need to figure that part out. It's a jump platform in the middle of sandworms, not just straight runway.
Miraltar 1y ago
> The only other videogames that have this much focus on movement alone are the Mario 3D platformers — Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, and Mario Odyssey. Right. Cause you know all the games that exist. I know it's meant as a superlative and not to be interpreted literally but I hate this type of statements.
- cainxinth 1y ago
  As soon as I read that I thought: this reviewer hasn’t played the Ori series.
  - Levitz 1y ago
    Well I have, I don't think there is as much focus on movement there. Ori relies a lot on the grapple dash, there's way WAY less freedom in terms of movement, which is what the writer is going for when talking about 3d mario games, which are known for that.
throw4847285 1y ago
I guess somebody found a way to get the Silksong controversy onto Hackernews. Can't say I'm surprised. My take is, it's a good game and I'm enjoying it. I suspect the only reason it's generating so many takes is that it was so spectacularly overhyped that it cannot possibly live up to how much it has been built up. And that enthusiasm, which started within a specific niche fanbase, has spilled out onto the internet at large in such a way that that is unsustainable. I bet if we all wait a year, the back and forth will die down and we'll be left with a game that gets similar acclaim to Hollow Knight. People subconsciously think about hype on the same 1-10 scale as a review, but hype can drive a video game score well into the teens or 20s. Then even a 10 feels like a disappointment.
- echelon 1y ago
  I have no idea what this game is, and I'm pretty insulated from gaming news, culture, etc. The amount that this name, franchise, or whatever it is has been showing up on my feed is absurd. Reddit, YouTube, Google news, Hacker News. It's everywhere. What the heck is Silksong and why is it saturating the attention sphere? It's on my feed more than Trump and Ukraine and geopolitics and the latest AI fundraises. How did it manage to do this? What's the formula? Or is there simply a lull in the cycle?
  - matusp 1y ago
    It started as a meme by a small but loyal Hollow Knight fan base on reddit. They had this ongoing joke about waiting for Silksong to release. As subreddits do, they were repeating the same joke for years. For some reason, this admittedly pretty lame joke escaped into mainstream. That is basically all there is to it.
    - michaelsbradley 1y ago
      Well that, and someone made a long-running “daily news” on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews I enjoyed Hollow Knight an awful lot, and checked-watched DSN nearly every day since it started. But I never visited the subreddit.
theahura 1y ago
Author here! Reading some of the comments, I feel compelled to emphasize that despite my flowery language in the post, I really really like Silksong
cyrialize 1y ago
Silksong became a lot better for me once I gained the power up that allowed me to dash, sprint, and jump. I definitely have issues with the in-game economy, so to just not worry about it, I've been farming enemies to build up a stock pile of cash. Farming has helped me get better at my movement, and it is very, very fun. The movement itself reminds me of super smash brother melee, the dashing on ground and in air feels like wave dashing and air dodging.
ravenical 1y ago
Here's some of Celeste's movement design: https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/celeste_and_forgiveness/index.html https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/celeste_and_forgiveness...
- alberto-m 1y ago
  It was strange not reading the name of Celeste when the article wrote about “the only other videogames that have this much focus on movement alone”.
Groxx 1y ago
I'll just say: yes, I love the movement too. It's extremely good. And I just got a speed upgrade (on top of the liquid speed upgrade) with the wanderer crest and it's too much and I love it. Every encounter is a mad flurry of damage on both sides, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it and it's a blast. Very happy with my purchase. Every win feels earned, most deaths feel like my fault, which is exactly what I like in Souls-likes.
whalesalad 1y ago
Every time I see gameplay for this game, I just think it is a temu version of Ori and the Blind Forest. Is it distinct enough from that?
- pansa2 1y ago
  AFAICT the main difference is that Hollow Knight focuses on (and gets most of its challenge from) combat, whereas Ori focuses on platforming. Hollow Knight has 47 boss encounters - OatBF doesn't have any (but I think the sequel does).
buellerbueller 1y ago
Ulysses was such a great novel when I installed some mods to make it easier. But it wasn't Ulysses.
BryanLegend 1y ago
Silksong is really about BDSM
jayd16 1y ago
The hitbox image seems odd to me. My understanding was that darksouls actually has very good hitboxes.
butlike 1y ago
It's a streamer game. Meant for people to watch the streamer go through the attrition. It's not fun. I'm sorry I can't get a refund on PlayStation

183 points by theahura 1y ago

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Analemma_ 1y ago

There are probably a bunch of videos in this genre, but I found [0] to be a particularly good explanation of why Hollow Knight felt so good. If you’re experienced at game design none of this is probably news to you, but if you’re unfamiliar with terms like “coyote time”, “jump buffering” etc., this video is a great introduction to how video games break physical realism to provide a better-feeling experience, and how tuning this is critical to getting a game which feels great. Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. [0]: https://youtu.be/Vxt8uud5o_4 https://youtu.be/Vxt8uud5o_4

thaumasiotes 1y ago
> Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. But Silksong feels terrible. Its movement is awful and difficult to control. Hollow Knight felt smooth. Silksong is the opposite of that. This very post is mixing its message: >> The secret to why this game is like crack is the movement. The movement is so buttery smooth that simply getting back to the boss that just ripped you to shreds is a complex, skillful, and fundamentally enjoyable experience. >> So am I having fun? I certainly don't feel joy in my heart when I fall into the lava for the seventeenth time because I missed a jump (if lava was a boss it would easily take the top spot for the number of times it killed me). Falling into lava seventeen times because you keep missing the same jump is not an experience of smooth movement with player affordances. Interestingly, there is coyote time in Silksong, but not enough that you can reliably do dash-jumps. It's just that occasionally you'll notice a jump starting from the wrong location, a little to the side of and below the edge you wanted to leap off of. Much more often, you'll notice that you hit the jump button but the jump never went off, which is the exact problem coyote time is supposed to solve.
- stevenwoo 1y ago
  I am unsure if I am just terrible at this game or more of a casual gamer with poor reflexes now, but Silksong feels particularly unforgiving. I did all the jumping puzzles in the most recent Prince of Persia game and figured out almost all of the puzzles and bosses in Metroid Dread after practice (lots of trial and error) without resorting to walk throughs, Silksong just revels in punishing you for making mistakes and forcing you to work to get back to where you just died.
- the_af 1y ago
  For the record, I didn't enjoy Hollow Knight much either. It felt too repetitive and difficult to me...
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    This article concludes with the thought "if you liked Hollow Knight, you won't like Silksong". That is the same conclusion that I and my brother both came to. The game is bizarrely punitive, from the very beginning, for no reason. It's as if they thought of it as being the next Hollow Knight expansion after Godhome, providing an additional challenge for the people who have beaten every pantheon with all bindings. ("The new challenge is: all of your controls now do something different!") But it's a sequel. Supposedly. Most sequels are aiming to appeal at least as much to players who enjoyed the first game as they do to a hypothetical new audience.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      Is it really that bad? The beginning definitely ramps things up, but I don't think anyone who beat Hollow knight would call Silksong "punitive", at least not for the 10 hours I've played so far. The area I struggled in the most was clearly one I wasn't "supposed" to go into yet, but otherwise the difficulty curve is only slightly steeper than HK's early game. Some discourse makes it sound like we're thrown 20 hours into HK at the beginning of Silksong. I know I'm biased as someone who beat 100% of Hollow Knight (granted, there's 112% of completion, so I did not in fact beat ALL the content), since I've played more HK than average.
osu_Vanilla 1y ago
[dead]
slightwinder 1y ago
> Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. They are similar, but different on annoying details.

fishtoaster 1y ago

> Selling to businesses is very easy. You go to a business and you say "hey, you like making money?" And the business will say "why yes, I do like making money" and you will say "great, I can help you make more money. This is so wrong it hurts. You'd be amazed at how often "I will save you $X, guaranteed, or your money back" is a non-starter when selling to companies. I've spent a career very slowly gaining respect for enterprise sales people - going from "Ugh, sales people are all snakeoil salesmen" to "I can't believe what they do is even possible, much less regularly done" over about 20 years. Selling software to large organizations involves finding a champion within the org, then figuring out the power structure within the org via an impressive sort of kremlinology. You have to figure out who loves your product in the org, who hates it, who can make the buying decision, whose approval is needed, who's handling the details of the contract, and so on. You need to understand the constellation of people across engineering, procurement, legal, leadership, and finance – and then understand the incentive structures for each. Then you have to actually operate this whole complex political machine to get them to buy something. Even if it's self-evidently in the interest of the whole organization to do so, it's not an easy thing to do. Anyway, all that to say: "b2b sales are easy" is... naive... to say the least.

hujun 1y ago
yes, and I think one big reason enterprise might not buy your product even if it is guaranteed to make/save $X is $ is often NOT most important thing to the people make buying decision, specially when it is not your own money to save or gain
- mindwok 1y ago
  This is very true. Look no farther than the perennial problem of department heads spending all their budget to keep their budget. Decision makers rarely care about saving money in isolation.
temp0826 1y ago
Can confirm. At one point in my career (after reflection on the situation) I realized I had been made a champion by a subsidiary of IBM for one of their products. I found myself in some really bizarre meetings with our execs and their executive sales people that left me feeling like a puppet that was made to tell our CEO that we needed this. They really took us apart, It was all very slimy.

the_af 1y ago

Am I the only one who didn't like Hollow Knight? In theory, it's just the game for me: indie, charming graphics, technically well done. What's not to like? In practice, it felt too difficult, too much work, too repetitive, and simply unfun to me. edit: interesting, downvotes for expressing an opinion directly related to sentences in the article (how difficult games are enjoyable somehow to some people; the article is all about difficulty and enjoyment regardless!). Is this the famed respectful and intellectually stimulating discourse of HN? Guys (and gals) please realize I'm not saying you are wrong to like Hollow Knight or Silksong, just adding a data point to the fact some of us don't like punishingly difficult games.

spacebuffer 1y ago
I also didn't like hollow knight despite loving hades and dead cells (somewhat similar) although I only played it for ~ 2 hours I am loving silksong so far however
sandoze 1y ago
Different strokes for different folks. You don't need to please everyone, but it helps if you can move 15 million units with three developers. I don't play Candy Crush but yet somehow this little cash cow keeps getting updated and I'm not one of the 2.7 billion downloads!
- the_af 1y ago
  > Different strokes for different folks Agreed! I hope you're not saying the only possible alternatives are the opposite extremes of Candy Crush or Hollow Knight, though :) I'd feel vaguely insulted. I did finish Cave Story after all (but maybe today I wouldn't, I no longer have the time or patience).
lycopodiopsida 1y ago
There are at least two of us :) I like exploration and I like bloodborne, elden ring, dark souls 3, demon’s souls, dark souls - in that order. Thus, I don’t mind difficult bosses and obscure storytelling. I’ve clocked 10h in HK but I can’t get over these fuzzy hitboxes (I say it as souls veteran!), shallow fighting system and difficult platforming. It is ok, just not a game for me.

OgsyedIE 1y ago

I'm not familiar with the the named platformer titles beyond word of mouth and I may not have the free time to become so for a while but anecdotally I found some years ago that the movement controls in the games Titanfall, Doom (2016) and Titanfall 2 produced the same feeling of flow between the hands and brain the author articulates. It may come to pass that games will one day be benchmarked by neurological metrics in the superior parietal lobule and ACC of their players next to their frames per second, load times, ping stability, 1% lows and memory scaling.

dkersten 1y ago
Titanfall 2 had excellent movement! The only games I’ve played that surpass it are the tribes games, which just have a whole new level of fluid movement for 3d games.

sfn42 1y ago

> You could play Silksong's predecessor, Hollow Knight, and not be all that good at it. Hollow Knight was a tough game, but I think you could get through it and fall in love with the environmental story telling and the lore and the music and characters. Silksong has all of this in spades, too, but it is so damn hard that you will not be able to access any of it unless you are willing to put in some serious effort. As a result, I suspect many of the people who enjoyed Hollow Knight will actually bounce off Silksong precisely because it is so hard, and they simply won't have the tenacity. I think this is an overstatement. I've put about 16 hours into Silksong so far, I've pretty much completed around 8-10 zones or so, unlocked most of the abilities and stuff. I don't think Silksong is that much more difficult than HK. Honestly it's been so long since I played HK that I'm not even sure it's more difficult at all but it probably is. If you went to Hunter's March as soon as you found it you probably had a bad time but going in there later on was honestly pretty easy. And aside from that and maybe a couple other spots it's been fairly alright in terms of difficulty IMO. Everything so far has felt achievable and reasonable to me, having played HK, Dark Souls, Elden Ring and other similar games I don't think Silksong is significantly more difficult than any of those - yet. Maybe it gets crazy later on, but that wasn't the claim in the article. The article claims you can hardly access anything without extreme effort and I don't think that's true at all.

conradludgate 1y ago
As someone who completed most of the HK main story, I've decided to stop playing silksong during act 1 because I'm just not having fun
- sfn42 1y ago
  That's alright, you do you.
creakingstairs 1y ago
I had no trouble going through Silksong (and I'm having a blast!), but there were _a lot_ of times when I thought that this would be really hard for people who are new to the series. > Everything so far has felt achievable and reasonable to me, having played HK, Dark Souls, Elden Ring and other similar games I don't think Silksong is significantly more difficult than any of those If you are a type of player that plays HK, Dark Souls and Elden Ring, then yes Silksong isn't brutally hard. But I think the game is brutally hard for majority of people who hasn't played any of those. I think HK had a better difficulty ramp for beginners.

par 1y ago

Cute article but skong isn’t as hard as op makes it out to be. I wonder if he’s played any soulsborne games or even hollow knight. Git gud!!!

kittoes 1y ago
Don't so easily dismiss the opinions of others. For certain individuals it is indeed the hardest game they've ever played. I've cleared Steelsoul 100% in the OG Hollow Knight and would argue that Silksong is definitely the more difficult of the two.
theahura 1y ago
Played all the soulsborne and 100%-ed HK. Except the last pantheon, I couldn't ever beat ascended moth
MikeTheGreat 1y ago
Ok, this is as close as I'm ever gonna get to having a real reason to post this on HN, so here goes: "Git Gud" by Viva La Dirt League: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blSXTZ3Nihs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blSXTZ3Nihs
- par 1y ago
  Praise the sun!
M4v3R 1y ago
Silksong is objectively hard, and if you're trying to argue otherwise you're either the mythical "god gamer" or just trolling. The game is unapologetically hard and punishing right from the beginning. The very second boss you encounter already hits you for 2 masks (which effectively means 3 hits and you're dead), and each time you try to fight him you first have to run back for a minute before you reach him. He even does 2 masks of contact damage. Heck, even some normal enemies you encounter in the first two hours deal 2 damage. The original Hollow Knight bosses didn't do 2 masks damage until half way through the game. Don't get me wrong, I still love the game and consider it pretty much a masterpiece, but many people believe (myself included) the game could have a better difficulty curve from the beginning and be less punishing (just give me a freaking bench before each boss so I don't have to run through 10 screens to have another try at it) while still maintaining the overall difficulty and challenge.

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cousin_it 1y ago

I think Hollow Knight and Silksong are mostly special for their art style, the movement feel is pretty average. Among 2D platformers in general, I think the medal for best movement feel goes to the Fancy Pants Adventure series. (You can still play it online on sites that have Flash replacements, start with the 4th game because it has everything.) But that's a deliberately easy game, you just run through the levels and have fun. Among difficult precision platformers, I'd say the N/N+/N++ series has the best movement. (The first game is also still playable online.) Be careful, this one is like a drug, it has a huge number of levels and it's really hard to stop playing.

sfn42 1y ago
The thing that makes HK and Silksong stand out to me is the full picture. Everything is well done. The movement feels great, the combat feels great, the exploration feels great, the progression feels great, the boss fights are awesome, the art and music are amazing, the characters are fun and the story is engaging, it just has everything. These people are extremely talented and put years of effort into this game to make it perfect, impatient fans be damned and it shows.
zaptheimpaler 1y ago
Oh man I forgot about N+, that game was incredible. Super cool to see there's a new N++.
bigyabai 1y ago
Link to the original N if you haven't played it: https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n https://www.kongregate.com/games/MetanetSoftware/n (Mandatory addiction hazard notice)
harimau777 1y ago
If you haven't triend Sundered yet I recommend it. If you go with the unlock path that specializes in movement abilities then the game gets really wild by the end.
shayway 1y ago
I'd also put Super Meat Boy up there for good platforming feel. But yeah, Fancy Pants is fantastic, it's what I always wanted Sonic games to feel like.

thedrexster 1y ago

Savage Beastfly killed me 43 times in a row. :/

galleywest200 1y ago
I too had trouble with this boss but eventually made it. The fact it summons little friends is the problem, so hard to dodge 2+ the boss!
M4v3R 1y ago
Most people struggle with this boss, I stopped counting how many times it killed me but I spent probably close to 2 hours fighting it. The fight is just unfair. And when I finally beat it I didn't even feel satisfied, just glad it's finally over and I can move on. Heck, there's even a dedicated subreddit for hating on this boss: https://www.reddit.com/r/fucksavagebeastfly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fucksavagebeastfly/
whatevaa 1y ago
After 10+ deaths just go somewhere else. It's optional boss.
- thedrexster 1y ago
  Noooo, the 44th attempt felt amazing and I needed my crest :D

zaptheimpaler 1y ago

Fluid & fun movement feels great and a lot of my favorite games have it - Doom, Hades, Ori, Celeste, Apex Legends, The Finals and more. To me it's an ingredient in a great game, not something necessarily unique to Silksong though.

singhrac 1y ago
Surprisingly overlapping set with games I’ve played and enjoyed a lot! Dead Cells was another that has a lot in common.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  Yeah, agreed on all counts. I know it's divisive, but the movement in Doom Eternal was incredible. Double dash creating some amazing levels that would have been unthinkable in Doom 2016.
vunderba 1y ago
I'm a huge fan of pixel perfect platformers. Chalk Cuphead and Super Meat Boy up on the list of games with a very natural connection between player coordination and game mechanics.
Ferret7446 1y ago
I hesitate to call Doom and Apex movement fluid. Well, it is fluid in the sense that it feels like you're on cart with exquisitely greased bearings and futuristic servos. FPS movement is inherently unnatural because no organism moves like that. That's not to say they don't control well, but they don't control naturally. Third person games can actually flow naturally, because you can animate things like turning around, changing direction, momentum, etc. FPS characters have invisible crab legs.
- kodisha 1y ago
  Funny, because the most fluid movement I have ever seen and experienced comes from a (25yo) FPS game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvAbbye-oCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvAbbye-oCY

kevinwang 1y ago

I remember reading an essay (probably from here?) about how a great way to build a game is to build it around a "toy" -- something that is pleasurable to simply interact with, even without objectives. I can't find it anymore -- the closest I can find is https://medium.com/@keerthiko/toys-to-games-25d35b40425d https://medium.com/@keerthiko/toys-to-games-25d35b40425d but I don't think it was that, although it's based on the book "The Art Of Game Design" which may have been a common inspiration. Anyways, I've often thought about Super Smash Bros. (particularly, Melee) as a prime example of that idea.

SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago
Sounds like Tynan Sylvester’s game design book (Tynan Sylvester created Rimworld)
wonger_ 1y ago
Yes, movement in SSBM is so satisfying. Nothing else comes close for me. All other games just feel boring in comparison. A classic example for those who haven't seen it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JpOaQxrsaqI https://youtube.com/watch?v=JpOaQxrsaqI
dmbche 1y ago
It's promotional material, but I enjoyed what the Get To Work devs put together to show how they built the game up from kind of the same approach (all on youtube)
shinymark 1y ago
This article from 2005 has the toy idea. It has stuck with me. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/how-to-prototype-a-game-in-under-7-days https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/how-to-prototyp...
- kevinwang 1y ago
  Thanks, that was a fun read!
zahlman 1y ago

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mrinterweb 1y ago

I've played a couple hours of silksong. I don't get the hype. Its a fine game, but I really think people are over hyping it. The internet hype loop on this game is turning me off on it. It's a nice metroidvania game.

Gigachad 1y ago
I’ve had multiple friends insist that I absolutely have to play this game. But I just know I won’t like it because I don’t like any of the other games that are like it. This game seems to be the labubu of gamers in terms of social media hysterics.
- frisia 1y ago
  I would recommend giving Hollow Knight a try, I think it has very good accesibility and I know many people who typically don't like these kind of games that did find Hollow Knight enjoyable. Silksong is a beast though, I love it but very few people I would actually recommend this game to.
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    Hollow Knight also has a robust ecosystem of mods these days, which gives you a lot of scope to tune the difficulty to where you are comfortable with it.
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
It is extremely over hyped. The first game was already regularly over hyped. The community is famous for treating as some sort of masterpiece and reacting very strongly to any form of criticism. Then you have a lot of opinion in the mix. I strongly disagree with the article for exemple on both the extreme difficulty, the game is difficult but manageable, the enjoyment, plenty of questionable design decisions are there purely to spite the player and it’s a game which often confuses wasting your time and being frustrating with being difficult, and the supposed elegance of the movement. Silksong is really weirdly tuned in that it has mechanics which will actually only bother you and make your experience more painful if you are already struggling while being completely invisible if you are flying through. And the punishment will be grinding, so wasting your time, not actually forcing players to encounter things which would make them better. Amusingly for a game so long in the making, I think it suffers from a significant lack of play testing.

Sohcahtoa82 1y ago

> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun [...] I haven't actually played HK yet, and I don't normally play Souls-likes, but I did finally start playing Elden Ring about two months ago. Yes, I've had times where I'm cursing out loud because I've been trying to beat a boss for three hours without success, sometimes dying with the boss only needing one more hit to die, and I'm frustrated with myself because knowing he only needed to get hit one more time started making me greedy with my attacks, and so I take big hits to the face and don't back off to heal. But what makes them fun is the dopamine rush when I finally succeed. A couple times, it felt damn near orgasmic. I've been playing video games for probably around 35 years and nothing felt as good as when I finally downed Morgott.

moonshinefe 1y ago
I wish I could go back and experience soulslikes for the first time! They really are a treat if you experience them as you describe (not everyone feels that way, but I certainly do). You're in luck because that subgenre has exploded in popularity and there are a lot of good ones out there if you want to keep playing them these days. Elden Ring is one of the best though for sure.
djtango 1y ago
My first play through of Elden Ring was a pseudo challenge run - capped at 125RL (pvp meta) and dual UGS style. No ash of war usage. No guides for bosses. Malenia took me over a month, and probably over 500 deaths and I had to relax the ash of war usage (still limited by my very low FP) The entire end game was brutal as this was before the buff for UGS animation speeds and most boss openings were shorter than anything than a crouch poke but I loved every minute of it. Just like learning to play something new on an instrument just cos you can't nail it in one try, one week or even one month doesn't mean you won't eventually get it. One meta lesson I like about Souls is it provides a safe environment to learn what performing under pressure is like. The music and feints are absolutely diabolical for playing with your emotions and heightening your stress. I always play better on mute (but that's no fun)

SyrupThinker 1y ago

A good example of how the experience of something can be so different between people. I also feel the need to write an article about it, but I'm not done yet... At the surface I had a similar experience to what the author describes. The movement feels good to me (until it doesn't), the game is appealing in style and gameplay concept, and I die frequently. But unlike them I dropped it after throwing myself at the exact boss they mention. Not because I think the game is actually hard at this point (it seems quite early in the game), but because I don't think the game actually respects my time. Something they don't seem to have an issue with. They mention that they died over 30 times to the boss, and how it never felt unfair to them. And while I do not fully share this sentiment, I do not actually mind that part either. The difficulty of learning a boss is part of the game. What surprises me is the not really mentioned part, that these 30 deaths (if I were to take them) take up 1-2 hours of my time. And you might be thinking, 2-4 minute boss fight? Seems reasonable? To which I say, this person focuses so much on movement and dying to random stage hazards because at least 70% of that total time is spent getting back to the boss to begin with, a 1-2 minute run of the same segment of game, each attempt! That's right, I spend more time running to the boss, than actually fighting it, because it turns out that you make mistakes when you do something repeatedly, even if it is just getting to the boss. I wish I could learn the boss and "get gud", but the game just won't let me without wasting my time. Part of that is a skill issue on my part of course, but for this very segment at least, you just start to see all the little hazards the devs have placed on the optimal path, to trip you up if you ever lose focus for a second. For a part of the game you have already done, and are not actually concerned with at that very moment. At least for me this got tedious very quickly. And supposedly this actually gets worse in later parts of the game. At some point you start to wonder, "is the game punishing me by making me traverse the game world before fighting the boss again?" And this thought starts to infect the regular gameplay, were you are supposed to willingly explore the game world, you know, the core of a Metroidvania. At the end I just asked myself "why am I willingly playing a punishment?" The author even seems to have vaguely similar thoughts here, they say themselves that they are sometimes not having fun with this core part of the game. Isn't that worrying from a game design perspective? Anyway, I think that's enough ranting, sorry for not concluding this thought.

crq-yml 1y ago

eviks 1y ago

Think the article makes a good distinction between games being hard because they're bugged and not designed well enough, so your expectations are broken and you're frustrated by how (game) life is unfair vs. a perfected design with precise match between your skill and results > movement is so finely tuned and so precise that I know deep in my bones that any hit or death is entirely on me. Of course, that in turn makes tangible improvement extremely visible. You go into a boss fight and die, and then you die again, and then again. Each time you get a bit further, and do a few more hits. And slowly, finally, painfully, you come out on top victorious

socalgal2 1y ago
How is this different than a game like Sega Genesis Contra Hard Corps? (Asking with genine curiousity). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzJyBQKDaeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzJyBQKDaeQ In that game, it's basically ~30 boss fights in a row (don't know the exact number). There are 4 paths through the game A->(B or C)->D->(E or F). So if you take path B you fight different bosses than path C. Same for E and F. One of those last paths has 2 endings with one more boss fight on one path. You have limited lives so making it to the end of the game requires effectively memorizing the boss patterns. So, your description fits. > You go into a boss fight and die, and then you die again, and then again. Each time you get a bit further, and do a few more hits. And slowly, finally, painfully, you come out on top victorious But I'm guessing Contra Hard Corps does not stick up to Eldin Ring. So what's Edlin Ring's special sauce?
- Scaevolus 1y ago
  The player controller in that Contra game is extremely simple. Movement snaps and stops instantly, and the animation are simple. You stand, run left or right at a constant velocity, jump, and shoot in one of 5 directions. Giving your character more movement possibilities tickles the brain with the complexity, enables more fluid and aesthetic movements on the screen, and increases the possible difficulty of platforming sections and boss fights. Silksong has a very complex movement controller. The player has mass, can grab edges and climb up, and unlocks additional abilities as they play. Now they can dash, run, doing a running jump, wall jump, stall a fall with a float, and more. Attacks come in many flavors, with different styles enabling attacks of different speeds and distances and strengths, with different considerations to manage. More complex controls take more investment for players to learn and are more rewarding. An extreme example of this is found in games like Monster Hunter, where each of a dozen different weapons controls very differently and takes many hours to become proficient in. Elden Ring does not have an excessively complex movement system. You walk, run, jump, dodge, and have a handful of fast and slow attacks for a given weapon. It finds success through incredible world and level design and its difficult and rewarding bosses. The game loop is exploration, fighting difficult foes, and slowly growing stronger-- both through game mechanics of gear and stats, and through personal mastery of combat. Soulslike games revolve around players gambling directly with arbitrary amounts of time-- when you die you drop your money, and if you die again before reaching that grave it's gone permanently. They make you bid the only resource that you care about: your hard-won progress over time. Complexity and stakes deepen the intellectual and emotional enjoyment of a game.

KingMob 1y ago

This reminds me how my wife kept asking if I was enjoying Cuphead, because she hear a non-stop stream of curses from the other room.

furyofantares 1y ago

> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun. They are meant to delight with their whimsy. Sometimes, yes, they are meant to be challenging. But that challenge is in service of fun. Games, more than any other form of entertainment, offer skill challenges. As they've become more popular they've gotten better about offering spectacle also. Some people play games mostly for skill mastery, others play games mostly for spectacle. This is a more nuanced distinction than "hardcore" vs "casual" - which fails to capture skill mastery extremists who are barely even gamers because they only play one game, or spectacle extremists who could hardly be called casual because they make gaming their entire life. Most people care about both, but may care more about one side or another. Some games cater to one side or the other, and some games, like Hollow Knight and Silksong, achieve excellence at both.

TriangleEdge 1y ago
Spoilers: Silksong has arenas with 3 mobs that throw discs plus you. Idk about you, but I can't track 7 things moving at once. This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky. I like Silksong, but the only way some the bosses were made challenging was because of constant adds. Hollow Knight rarely had this.
- crooked-v 1y ago
  Silksong has the basic issue that it was effectively designed as extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff in Hollow Knight, rather than as its own game or even as a sequel for people who had "just" beaten the basic game in HK.
  - yladiz 1y ago
    I think that’s a slightly uncharitable take. Yes, it was originally DLC, and yes it is unforgiving, but it’s nowhere near as hard as the White Palace from the first game, and it’s not brutally punishing (you are quite agile and get good upgrades pretty early on).

danielodievich 1y ago

This gaming household had two huge teenager fans of Hollow Knight, with t-shirts and hoodies merch. Us adults didn't see what the big deal was about but we are not their demographic. My wife tried it and found it too demanding for a middle-aged person. I watched a few minutes of Silksong over my kid's shoulder yesterday and commented that it looks a lot like Hollow Knight and I could see their eyes roll at me from behind them... as their character died for the 3rd time to some [admittedly cool looking] boss throwing needles at them. Oh to be a teenager again with lightning fast reflexes...

flobosg 1y ago

I like how the game took inspiration from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – https://x.com/h_wallacepires/status/1963958435487088678 https://x.com/h_wallacepires/status/1963958435487088678

qwertytyyuu 1y ago

Dying 30 times to a boss isn;t that bad…

SyrupThinker 1y ago
Is it if this constitutes an hour of two of your time, most of which is not actually fighting the boss, but walking back to it?
- viraptor 1y ago
  Are there actually long runbacks in Silksong? I'm not that far in, but so far they've all been maybe 2 screens long at most which you can cross really quickly.
  - ianbutler 1y ago
    There are several runbacks that are quite painful. I'm on the last bit of the game now and while I've overall very much enjoyed it there's more than a few spots where I thought "this is just tedious".
    - pferde 1y ago
      A great motivation to get it right this time. :)
      - ianbutler 1y ago
        True enough! XD
  - SyrupThinker 1y ago
    I mean, what does long mean in the grand scheme of things? Is a minute or two long? I think, no, in a vacuum they are fine, at least up to where I got. But even a short thing can get annoying if you need to do it often enough, which is at least my problem, and apparently also that of other players that don't mind the difficulty.

rochak 1y ago

Ehh, not interested in HK or similar games with such a high difficulty bar. Life is too short to be playing games that are not fun to play (for me).

samrus 1y ago

I disagree with the author saying silksong breaks the definition of a game because what it offers is challenge instead of "fun" Thats like saying shawshank redemption isnt really a movie because its not fun like the original charlie chaplain films I think the vast majority of games are meant to be digital toys, the way early movies were mostly cheap entertainment. But just like movies evolved as an art and artists began to become more comfortable with the medium, games will also become more artistic and less like toys. The interactive nature of games is so innovative in the art world that it hasnt really caught on how to use it. But its evolving. Dark souls, the spiritual ancestor to silksong and pther soulslikes, is harder and that was a response to games like call of duty which felt like they were just trying to get the player through the level with as little friction as possible, with the pakyers actions being an inconvenience the game has to overcome so as to give them their dopamine hit. Dark souls responded to that by respecting the player and trusting them with a challenge they can be proud of solving. This idea of one peice responding to another is exactly how art works. And the fact that the interactivity of the medium is what is being played with in these peices is a sign that we are moving towards art evolving to embrace interactivity like it did video Another example is DDLC. That game did amazing things with making the narrative meta that non interactive media simply cant do. A character in a movie turning to face tue camera and addressing the viewer is trippy for sure, but a character telling you your steam username is way fucking trippier, and sells the meta aspect way better Games arent just toys, they can be art. Art just hasnt evolved enough yet, but its on its way

glimshe 1y ago

I won't play action games without an easy mode anymore. I've beaten all Dark Souls games and I just got tired of proving myself over and over. Nowadays I just want mild challenge and the certainty I will win after trying a couple of times.

j_maffe 1y ago
I agree. The game got much more fun once I installed some nice QoL and damage reduction mods.
dunefox 1y ago
I can't play dark souls and eden ring without a fov mod, so I can't go online and summon if a boss gets too difficult. Sadly pointless for me.
whatevaa 1y ago
Mods already exists which can make game more forgiving. Limiting damage to one is great start. Don't be ashamed to use them on Silksong, developers went hardcore for this one.
- quchen 1y ago
  I aborted my 3 Hollow Knight attempts because of boss runbacks. Is there a mod that, I don’t know, adds benches before bosses or something? Then I might finally finish the game. I do enjoy hard-but-fair boss fights after all.
  - segphault 1y ago
    Yes, there is a mod for Hollow Knight called Benchwarp that lets you place benches wherever you want and fast travel between them.
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    So far Silksong seems to be much better about placing benches near to bosses than Hollow Knight was

mapcars 1y ago

There are more brutal games out there, like the whole "I wanna be" series

slightwinder 1y ago

Interesting how different impressions can be. Elegance is not really how I would describe movement in Silksong. Yes, the animation is smooth, but the actual movement and its controls are very crude and twisted. It's in the realm of those annoying games which feel very unnatural, unintuitive.

eviks 1y ago
What's the best alternative?
- slightwinder 1y ago
  Alternative for what exactly?
  - eviks 1y ago
    which game has the most elegant movement system (as a better alternative)?
    - cyrialize 1y ago
      I'm partial to super smash brothers melee. I feel like no other game has come close in making me feel so in control of my character. That being said, it is kind of difficult to get into. Finding a good GC controller can be hard, and playing online is rough because everyone is so good these days.
    - slightwinder 1y ago
      First Hollow Knight is already better in that aspect, even though animation is less smooth IIRC. Personally, I prefer the Ori-Games in terms of movements, especially the second game. But gaming is big, and inside as also outside the genre there are many games with great movement and controls. It depends on how much of an alternative you really want, just the movement, or the whole game..
threetonesun 1y ago

a022311 1y ago

Great, I can finally find out what my friends have been talking about all week.

whatevaa 1y ago

I found Act I not harsh but full of frustating elements. Traps in piss you off locations, 90% of flying enemies who dodge and are tanky for some reason. Like that one particular fly which spawns in exact precise location in runback to boss for you to collide, unless you are sprinting. Bullshit like this. Act II get's better as you unlock more movement and the lore develops. There is some unique stuff there. Boses are also fine for me, random summons are annoying but that's what you have tools for, kill them immediatelly.

quchen 1y ago
I’m curious about those traps. I used to hate Soulslikes, Elden Ring made it click, and I binged them all on PC. Traps became part of some twisted humor, I started waiting for the (literal) punchline. I missed traps, or as I started calling them, »FromSoft bullshit«, when there weren’t any for a while. I’m super careful and alert in all games now. I wonder whether Silksong’s traps scratch that itch, or whether they’re just annoying.
- whatevaa 1y ago
  This game has plenty of traps, including booby trapped save spot after a dificult section which has claimed many lives.
mock-possum 1y ago
> unless you are sprinting So… why not just sprint?
- whatevaa 1y ago
  You need to figure that part out. It's a jump platform in the middle of sandworms, not just straight runway.

Miraltar 1y ago

> The only other videogames that have this much focus on movement alone are the Mario 3D platformers — Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, and Mario Odyssey. Right. Cause you know all the games that exist. I know it's meant as a superlative and not to be interpreted literally but I hate this type of statements.

cainxinth 1y ago
As soon as I read that I thought: this reviewer hasn’t played the Ori series.
- Levitz 1y ago
  Well I have, I don't think there is as much focus on movement there. Ori relies a lot on the grapple dash, there's way WAY less freedom in terms of movement, which is what the writer is going for when talking about 3d mario games, which are known for that.

throw4847285 1y ago

I guess somebody found a way to get the Silksong controversy onto Hackernews. Can't say I'm surprised. My take is, it's a good game and I'm enjoying it. I suspect the only reason it's generating so many takes is that it was so spectacularly overhyped that it cannot possibly live up to how much it has been built up. And that enthusiasm, which started within a specific niche fanbase, has spilled out onto the internet at large in such a way that that is unsustainable. I bet if we all wait a year, the back and forth will die down and we'll be left with a game that gets similar acclaim to Hollow Knight. People subconsciously think about hype on the same 1-10 scale as a review, but hype can drive a video game score well into the teens or 20s. Then even a 10 feels like a disappointment.

echelon 1y ago
I have no idea what this game is, and I'm pretty insulated from gaming news, culture, etc. The amount that this name, franchise, or whatever it is has been showing up on my feed is absurd. Reddit, YouTube, Google news, Hacker News. It's everywhere. What the heck is Silksong and why is it saturating the attention sphere? It's on my feed more than Trump and Ukraine and geopolitics and the latest AI fundraises. How did it manage to do this? What's the formula? Or is there simply a lull in the cycle?
- matusp 1y ago
  It started as a meme by a small but loyal Hollow Knight fan base on reddit. They had this ongoing joke about waiting for Silksong to release. As subreddits do, they were repeating the same joke for years. For some reason, this admittedly pretty lame joke escaped into mainstream. That is basically all there is to it.
  - michaelsbradley 1y ago
    Well that, and someone made a long-running “daily news” on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews I enjoyed Hollow Knight an awful lot, and checked-watched DSN nearly every day since it started. But I never visited the subreddit.

theahura 1y ago

Author here! Reading some of the comments, I feel compelled to emphasize that despite my flowery language in the post, I really really like Silksong

cyrialize 1y ago

Silksong became a lot better for me once I gained the power up that allowed me to dash, sprint, and jump. I definitely have issues with the in-game economy, so to just not worry about it, I've been farming enemies to build up a stock pile of cash. Farming has helped me get better at my movement, and it is very, very fun. The movement itself reminds me of super smash brother melee, the dashing on ground and in air feels like wave dashing and air dodging.

ravenical 1y ago

Here's some of Celeste's movement design: https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/celeste_and_forgiveness/index.html https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/celeste_and_forgiveness...

alberto-m 1y ago
It was strange not reading the name of Celeste when the article wrote about “the only other videogames that have this much focus on movement alone”.

Groxx 1y ago

I'll just say: yes, I love the movement too. It's extremely good. And I just got a speed upgrade (on top of the liquid speed upgrade) with the wanderer crest and it's too much and I love it. Every encounter is a mad flurry of damage on both sides, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it and it's a blast. Very happy with my purchase. Every win feels earned, most deaths feel like my fault, which is exactly what I like in Souls-likes.

whalesalad 1y ago

Every time I see gameplay for this game, I just think it is a temu version of Ori and the Blind Forest. Is it distinct enough from that?

pansa2 1y ago
AFAICT the main difference is that Hollow Knight focuses on (and gets most of its challenge from) combat, whereas Ori focuses on platforming. Hollow Knight has 47 boss encounters - OatBF doesn't have any (but I think the sequel does).

buellerbueller 1y ago

Ulysses was such a great novel when I installed some mods to make it easier. But it wasn't Ulysses.

BryanLegend 1y ago

Silksong is really about BDSM

jayd16 1y ago

The hitbox image seems odd to me. My understanding was that darksouls actually has very good hitboxes.

butlike 1y ago

It's a streamer game. Meant for people to watch the streamer go through the attrition. It's not fun. I'm sorry I can't get a refund on PlayStation