Hollow Knight: Silksong developer Team Cherry has commented on the use of mods following heated debates over the game’s imposing challenge.
Silksong’s difficulty level has been an ongoing discussion since the game finally released back in September. Developer Ari Gibson previously said players “have ways to mitigate the difficulty via exploration, or learning, or even circumventing the challenge entirely, rather than getting stonewalled,” though this wasn’t enough for some. Soon after Silksong came out, several mods were released for the game, which added certain adjustable variables like damage and health.
“The fact that people are modding it is totally fine,” Team Cherry’s William Pellen has now said in a new interview with Bloomberg, discussing Silksong’s difficulty level. “Maybe our thinking is that part of presenting the game is creating the fiction that it’s a real world that exists independent of you. Most of the decisions ultimately hinge on that. And one of those decisions is not making it so that you can necessarily reach in and play around with how difficult certain parts are.”
Pellen said that “encourages” Team Cherry to “give you ways around things, different ways of approaching battles or coming back to challenges once you’ve geared yourself up, or just avoiding certain things and creeping around them instead”.
“I feel like limiting it in that way – as in, not giving the player an out to fiddle with things when they hit a wall – it means when we’re making it, we don’t have an out either. We have to be quite considerate about that stuff, and we’re playing it constantly as well,” the Silksong developer continued, before Ari Gibson added:
“Years of the game’s development is us in there creating new options for ourselves and then for the players. Hitting those walls and going, ‘Well this is difficult,’ and we potentially would be roadblocked, so let’s find other ways around. Let’s find a second route. Let’s find a little crack that you can worm through. Let’s find something that rewards the explorer more than the combatant.”
The duo said while they could probably still come up with this sort of experience even if there were difficulty sliders included at the start, this way of approaching things “help you focus in a way, which is quite nice”.
Said Pellen: “When you’re thinking about what the player’s options are, and how they might react to the world, you’re not thinking about them backing out to the options and changing the world. It’s nice. All of your thinking is in the world itself rather than on a meta level.”
Gibson said the “ideal” Silksong experience is to come back to a once punishing boss with a new level of knowledge and different equipment and be victorious.
When further asked if Team Cherry felt it had found the right balance in Silksong’s difficultly even with those out there who found it too punishing, Pellen said he was “largely” happy with it.
“We did some tweaks of various things, a light touch making some things a little less punishing. For how much there was in the game and how few people had played it at release, I was happy with the fact that we only needed a month or so. It may change a bit in the future, but I think it’s at a pretty good point now,” he replied. Gibson also added that, now that we are a few months away from the initial release, there are those within the Silksong community who are helping others who are struggling.
“The Last Judge being a very good example,” Gibson explained. “That is a huge wall, and admittedly that’s exactly how the character presents, but there is another circuitous route that will allow them to completely skip that challenge and then come back potentially much, much later in the game, where they’re far more prepared for it.”
What do you think about Silksong’s difficulty levels? Meanwhile, if you are struggling with getting past a certain section, be sure to check out Eurogamer’s Silksong guides and walkthrough. Here is one on Silksong’s bosses to get you started.
In the same chat, the Silksong developers also spoke about DLC, but it is still staying coy on the details.
On its release, we awarded Silksong five stars. “Pretty and charmingly mean-spirited, this is a game filled with revelations and genuine personality,” reads Eurogamer’s Silksong review.