Stardew Valley creator ConcernedApe has a secret cameo in Hollow Knight Silksong

hollow knight silksong hornet attacking a stardew valley jumino

Published:

5 September 2025

Last Updated: 5 September 2025

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Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone is a busy guy, working on both his new game Haunted Chocolatier and a surprising new Stardew Valley update. As it turns out, Barone is a person with many hats as the indie developer also has a surprise role in Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Silksong, Team Cherry’s long in-development metroidvania, is finally out after crashing Steam, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo servers. Now that players are actually able to play the game, fans noticed a curious addition to the game’s voice cast: the aformentioned Eric Barone.

As it turns out, the Stardew Valley creator has a secret role within the world of Hollow Knight: Silksong. Confirmed by The Verge, Barone’s vocal talents are somewhere in the game as one of the game’s characters. Where is he? No one knows quite yet.

It’s worth noting that the characters throughout Hollow Knight Silksong don’t speak, per se. Instead, the characters are represented with cutesy scuttles, mumbles and quarks. (It’s very reminiscent of games like Cave Story… because I’ll take any chance I get to rep my fave.)

Considering the fervour of both the Stardew Valley fanbase and the Hollow Knight fanbase, Barone’s performance will likely be hunted down and discovered within a day. With both fanbases known for sniffing out any possible detail of their respective games, it won’t be long before someone finds out which secret Parloom resident is voice by ConcernedApe.

While Hollow Knight Silksong is finally here, Team Cherry has admitted that this isn’t the end of its cutesy bug-themed franchise. Following the game’s launch, the studio is already working on post-launch content that will give players even more content to play through.

This is entirely unsurprising given the studio’s treatment of the original Hollow Knight game which received the Hidden Dreams, The Grim Troupe, Lifeblood and Godmaster free DLCs which added additional bosses, quests, and even an additional game mode to the title. In fact, Silksong began as an additional DLC before the scope ballooned into its own standalone experience.

About The Author

Lewis White

Lewis White is a veteran games journalist with over a decade in the field. Starting with beloved Xbox website ICXM/XboxMAD, Lewis became the Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser before becoming the Editor in Chief of StealthOptional and Gfinityesports. Lewis later jumped to By Gamers For Gamers where he jumped to become EIC of VideoGamer and the host of the New VideoGamer Podcast prior to the website’s acquisition.

Over the years, Lewis has also seen long-form investigative pieces published in outlets such as Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, Retro Gamer, Nintendo Life, and EDGE. Now, as the Editor in Chief of FRVR Blog, Lewis strives to bring the same level of quality journalism with interview-led content to the site in both written and audio form with the FRVR Podcast.

With a First Degree BA Hons in Games Journalism and Public Relations, Lewis has been a stable part of the British games press for over a decade, and has frequently displayed his love of Halo, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and other games pretty much everywhere he’s worked. And FRVR is no different.

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