Rarely has "worth the wait" been higher praise than in discussions of Hollow Knight: Silksong. Developer Team Cherry kept Hollow Knight fans waiting for more than six years, mostly in silence so agonizing that people formed a cult for fun, but it didn't disappoint in the end. Silksong is wonderful. Yet here in this wondrous and foreign post-Silksong era, what's really stuck with me, even as I crown the game itself my personal 2025 GOTY for a thousand reasons, is the constellation of coincidences which led to the moment that a bug-themed Metroidvania made by a small Australian dev team crashed game stores around the world.
I've been covering games for 13 years now, and in that time I've never seen another game or launch quite like Silksong. And increasingly, I doubt we will see another. It's not even about crashing Steam or selling a zillion copies or winning a bunch of awards – all of that is infinitely more likely than the circumstances and effects around this game. And when I lay it out with the clarity of hindsight, I can't help but think that this was a one-off, in part because it might be foolish to even try to recreate it.
