Team Cherry, the small unit of devs behind the just-released Hollow Knight: Silksong, certainly had an interesting way of marketing their game… or not marketing it, for that matter. Originally announced in 2019, only infrequent updates were given on the game’s progress until they stopped entirely for more than five and a half years. Despite the silence, Silksong became the most waitlisted game on Steam.

We felt like continued updates were just going to sour people on the whole thing,” Team Cherry co-founder Ari Gibson said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. “Because all we could really say is, ‘We’re still working on it.’

Now, however, one of the original Hollow collective explained why the team was so quiet during the game’s years of development. “The work ethic is off the charts,” OG Hollow Knight technical director David Kazi told The New York Post. “If they’re not talking to anyone right now, I bet they’re over at the office working on stuff.”

So, did the silence pay off? In part, yes, it did. At the time of writing, more than 230,000 players are rattling through it on Steam, rocketing up to the fourth most-played game. But it’s not been all smooth sailing. Amidst the praise from critics and fans alike, there’s a growing number of complains, mostly aimed at the game’s difficulty.

Of the 41,000 or so review on Steam, Silksong currently sits at a ‘Very Positive’ rating, compared to the original’s ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ verdict. “Above all else, this just feels *mean* in a way HK wasn’t”, writes one player on Steam.

The good news is that we can already expect more content in the form of DLC and additional content in a similar vein to the original game’s post-launch support. The team has already revealed that while launching the game is ‘quite exciting’ there are ambitious plans post launch.

“Launching it is obviously quite exciting,” Team Cherry’s William Pellen said. “What comes after for us is equally as exciting.”