The founders ofTeam Cherry, Ari Gibson and William Pellen, have finally explained whyHollow Knight: Silksongneeded seven years of development.
At last, Silksong has a release date, and it’s imminent:June 23, 2025, forPlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and PC.
Fans endured seven long years of rumors, false starts, and even despair, but now the wait is almost over. Still, one big question remains:why did it take so long to finish Silksong?
In an interview withBloomberg, Jason Schreier spoke with Gibson and Pellen, who revealed what happened during those seven years.
“It was never stuck, it was always moving forward,” Gibson explained, adding that the small size of the team was a factor.
Silksong was first announced in February 2019, originally planned as a DLC before evolving into a full sequel. At first, the world was going to be smaller, built around a mission system that would let players revisit different zones and cities.
“Even then we realized it was going to be as big asHollow Knight, or even bigger,” Gibson said.
The so-called “problem” wasn’t really a problem: the team was having fun and kept adding new ideas. “Our workflow is great, and you can see results quickly,” Gibson noted. “But that also makes us go off on tangents.”
Pellen added: “We’re always coming up with new ideas, new locations, objects, bosses… We could have gone on forever, but we had to stop and finish the game.”
According to Gibson, development could have gone on almost endlessly: “I had to stop sketching. Otherwise, it would have taken 15 more years.”
As for whyTeam Cherry went quiet after 2019, Gibson explained: “We didn’t want to frustrate fans, because the only thing we could say was that we were working on it.”
Why It Took So Long
The silence actually helped speed things up, and the studio avoided the worst of the2020 pandemicthanks to their isolated workplace in Adelaide.
But the game kept growing, which meant more work and inevitably a longer development cycle.
The massive success of the originalHollow Knightgave the team the funds to sustain such a long project. “We’re very lucky in that sense,” Gibson admitted.
By early 2025, Team Cherry finally started to see the finish line. With just weeks until release, the studio is still polishing the game.
They’ve also confirmed that more content is already in the works: “What’s coming next is just as exciting as the release itself.”Hollow Knight: Silksonglaunches July 20, 2025.
