Ep. 047: Hollow Knight & Silksong)
Emo Bug Boys, Seven Years in the Making
Luke has been telling Alex to play Hollow Knight for approximately seven years. Pre-podcast. Through multiple platform generations, through the Silksong meme cycle, through at least one other mutual friend finally caving and playing it. Alex bought it on a Nintendo sale years ago, let it sit, and got around to it now — which is exactly the right time, because now there's a sequel to discuss in the same breath.
Hollow Knight was developed and published by Team Cherry and released in 2017. It earned a Metacritic score of 87 on PC and 90 on Switch, and HowLongToBeat puts a standard playthrough at around 27 hours with completionists stretching to 65. Alex is playing on his Switch OLED. Hollow Knight: Silksong — also Team Cherry, released 2025 after a development cycle that became its own meme — debuted at a Metacritic 91 on PC and is classified under universal acclaim. HLTB estimates run 40 to 45 hours for a meaningful playthrough, 60-plus for full completion. Luke is playing Silksong on his Steam Deck and wishes he'd gotten it on Xbox instead — sweaty palms on a handheld are their own kind of suffering. Neither host has rolled credits. Both are deep enough to have opinions.
The first game is a Metroidvania that doesn't hold your hand for a single second. You're a small unnamed bug knight dropped into a gorgeous, moody underground kingdom called Hallownest with almost no explanation. The atmospheric sound design is immediately overwhelming in the best way — a quality both hosts compare to Super Metroid, which shares the same gift for making you feel the weight of a world without narrating it to you. The map system is built around a cartographer character (Cornifer) who hums as you explore, his humming growing louder as you get closer — and finding him to unlock each area's map is one of those small mechanical pleasures that makes the game so satisfying to inhabit. The combat is souls-adjacent: enemies drop Geo on death, you lose it when you die, and you have to return to your corpse to recover it. Healing requires building soul meter by landing hits, then holding a button — but tapping the same button casts a spell, which means panicked button-mashing burns your only lifeline at the worst possible moment.
The unlock that cracked the game open for Alex was the Mantis Claw. Up to that point the dash is useful but logical — you need to cross a gap, you dash. The Mantis Claw lets you grab walls and jump between them, and the first time you do it the whole map you've been navigating opens up into something completely different. Luke watched Alex get destroyed by the Mantis Lords with Ace for a long stretch before finally clearing it. The memory of watching someone die repeatedly to a boss you've already beaten is a specific kind of warm.
Silksong is harder. Measurably, deliberately, mercilessly harder. Where Hollow Knight enemies mostly deal one point of damage, nearly every enemy in Silksong deals two. You play as Hornet — the rival you fought in the first game, here with her own moveset built around a needle and thread — and Team Cherry has clearly internalized their own game so deeply over eight years of development that they tuned Silksong for people who have done the same. The enemies aren't just stronger, they're placed with obvious intent to punish impatience. Getting back to a boss fight means running a gauntlet of enemies you have to take seriously every single time. Luke is 15 to 20 hours in and describes having made barely any progress, while simultaneously marveling at every new area he finds. The Belllake region gets a specific callout: creepy, beautiful, the kind of place that makes you want to see the rest of the map even as the map keeps trying to kill you. He knows there's a mega-dash ability coming that will completely transform how the open spaces feel. He's looking forward to it.
The visual and audio detail in both games is the kind of thing that makes you take screenshots you won't fully understand later but that captured something in the moment. The layering in Silksong's backgrounds — the things falling in the foreground, the movement behind the action — is remarkable for a game at this scale. Team Cherry is three people. They dropped Silksong day-of at $20. Hollow Knight launched at $15. For a game that will run you 40-plus hours, both prices are frankly ridiculous in the best way.
Ratings: Luke gives Hollow Knight 4.5 out of 5 Geos from memory, confident that's where it lands without a recent replay. Silksong gets 4 out of 5 Rosemary beads so far — the hot sauce, as he puts it, is a little too hot. Both games recommended: Hollow Knight to essentially any gamer, Silksong specifically to anyone who has played Hollow Knight and has their calluses ready.
Side Quests: Both hosts have been playing Megabonk, which gets described as vampire survivors in a 64-bit 3D environment — empty-calorie junk food gaming, deeply delicious. Alex has been dabbling in Tears of the Kingdom (couldn't get back into the flow after dropping it) and made a brief pass at the Skate early access, which he describes as Skate 3 if it were Fortnite — streamer-coded, zoomer-facing, and not necessarily for the guy who considers Skate 2 and 3 hallowed ground. Luke assembled the LEGO Game Boy set (423 pieces) as a solo date night, got excited about doing bigger sets with his kids when they're old enough, and has been watching Task on HBO. Alex has been watching the Timberwolves, mentioned Patch Notes and Save States — the new weekly editorial series running on lowfivegaming.com — and gave a shout to PocketPix and STRTSCRN, the short-form content rolling out on the socials.
This episode is unofficially brought to you by being fat pieces of work who ate half the Halloween candy before Halloween, watched a teenager pilfer the bowl on the Google Nest cam in full stealing posture with a pillowcase that had clearly been doing this all night, and then spent ten minutes defending Almond Joy, Heath bars, and candy corn to varying degrees of success.
Both games are available on Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, and multiple other platforms. Full episode wherever you listen. Come complain about Silksong difficulty in the Low Five Discord.
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