All games used to be hard by virtue of not really having endings. It's not like the sort of difficulty challenge you find in Hollow Knight: Silksong is only a modern trend. Arcade games stretching back to the '80s were designed to balance the thrill of score chasing with munching quarters – no game was truly finished before a kill screen literally broke the code. Donkey Kong will be beaten but always rise. The Centipede will keep descending. And Pac-Man will forever be hounded by ghosts. And, as we all know, video games have come a long way since Pac-Man.
To grossly oversimplify the trajectory of tricky games – this trend continued with home console gaming through the '90s where relatively short and simple games would last you multiple replays with life systems, and began to soften up when storylines came to the forefront alongside memory cards for saving game progress. Eventually, on PS3, the enigmatic world of Demon's Souls captivated many with its old school design, developed by the equally old school FromSoftware. Demon's Souls' sheer hostility and demanding nature of its fights became a defining trait that'd be honed to a fine edge with Dark Souls. It's from this trend of Soulslikes that Hollow Knight: Silksong takes inspiration.
