Team Cherry explains why Hollow Knight: Silksong took so long to launch

The team behind Hollow Knight: Silksong has spoken about why it’s taken so long for the game to launch.

After years of anticipation, the title is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 and Switch in just a couple of weeks. Team Cherry revealed today that the release date is set for September 4, 2025.

Team Cherry co-founders Ari Gibson had this to say about the long wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong in an interview with Bloomberg:

“We’ve been having fun. This whole thing is just a vehicle for our creativity anyway. It’s nice to make fun things.”

“It was never stuck or anything. It was always progressing. It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it.”

Some fans may recall that once 2019 wrapped up, Team Cherry kept fans in the dark about the status of the project. However, Gibson said this was only because the team felt that “continued updates were just going to sour people on the whole thing” given all they would say is that it’s still being worked on, and they wanted to avoid spoiling players.

Another factor is that Team Cherry didn’t think development would take this long. After the studio decided to keep quiet, they “thought we’d go quiet for a year or two, then the game would come out,” according to Team Cherry co-founder William Pellen. Pellen further noted: “There was a period of two to three years when I thought it was going to come out within a year.”

There are a few other points to touch on as well. Team Cherry is ultimately a very small team, they didn’t want to rush the game, and felt the need to make sure it was fully polished. Bloomberg also notes that Silksong “has more elaborate bosses than Hollow Knight, more gameplay systems and more interactivity”, plus “Gibson and Pellen wanted objects in the world to react to Hornet’s various tools, which required a ton of drawing and animation work.”

Gibson told the outlet:

“I think we’re always underestimating the amount of time and effort it’ll take us to achieve things. It’s also that problem where, because we’re having fun doing it, it’s not like, ‘It’s taking longer, this is awful, we really need to get past this phase.’ It’s, ‘This is a very enjoyable space to be in. Let’s perpetuate this with some new ideas.’”

Hollow Knight: Silksong is now just a couple of weeks away on Nintendo Switch 2 and Switch. See the brand new trailer here.