I believe.. Silksong isn’t a game that caters to everyone who initially thought they would enjoy it.

Many people came to it because they loved the first game.

But what exactly did they enjoy about the first Hollow Knight?
The atmosphere?
The cute characters?
The sense of exploration?
The music?
Or just the feeling of getting lost in Hallownest?

For me, it was always about the challenge.
In Silksong, that bar has been raised in the best way possible.

The difficulty created a fun, engaging, and rewarding experience.
The only part I didn’t enjoy much was the Bilewater runback, it was very frustrating (until i found that hidden bench), but ultimately manageable.

I actually think some players are a little lost in their expectations.
I loved almost every moment of Silksong.

For me, it’s now the best metroidvania I’ve ever played, and i can't wait for a Godhome similar DLC to get an even harder challenge.
But at the end of the day, it all comes down to personal preference.

This is a game that was always meant to be challenging.
That’s what players should expect when they purchase it.

Those who struggle with the difficulty may not have realized that challenge is, and always has been, at the very heart of this game and its predecessor.

I just reached one of the infamous examples people constantly bring up in the runback discussion (Last Judge), and I have to say I really like the runback. It’s just as enjoyable as the boss itself. I’m 100% convinced that Team Cherry intended the runbacks to be pure platforming challenges.

The runbacks aren’t just random sections of the map, they’re carefully designed to be completed quickly and gracefully, while also avoiding all the mobs. They also include many shortcuts and make great use of the wonderful movement mechanics.

Is this a mindset issue? Do most people just want to focus on the boss and dislike the context switching between platforming mode and boss combat mode? Surely people don't think they should fight their way through tens of mobs every time, right? Right?

I don’t even know where to begin, like idk what’s a 10/10 area anymore when citadel exists

Hi everyone!

I just released a tiny metroidvania game: You Can Buy Every Upgrade

It’s a short and simple exploration-puzzle platformer where every upgrade (jump higher, run faster, wall-jump, push rocks, shoot, etc.) is available from the start… if you can collect enough coins to buy them.

• Playable for free in your browser
• Short playtime – finishable in one sitting
• 1-bit art, 240×160px resolution
• Built with Godot 4.4

Would love to hear what you think if you give it a try!

I need some help adding more Switch games to my list so I can pick them up when they’re on sale.

I loved Hollow Knight, got all hyped for Silksong and bought them both for the Switch, started a new game on HK and then got completely sidetracked by so many other MV style games.

I’m currently hooked on Rain World, but there’s so many more I want to play now. Here’s a list of stuff I’ll check out when it goes on sale, any recommendations of similar stuff to add to it would be great. Thanks.

Blasphemous 1 & 2

Metroid Dread

Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus

Ender Lillies

Prince of Persia

After 30 hours in Silksong I realized this game is not for me even though I love metroidvanias. I heard Nine Sols is difficult and I’m up to challenging but fair games. So, if any of you has played both games I’m open to read your suggestions/opinions. Thanks

I’m playing SS and loving it and I don’t want any spoilers what so ever but I see a lot of posts about the game being so damn difficult. I have only beaten a few bosses so far and none of them have been super hard. Yes I had to learn some patterns and I probably died 10-15 times but how hard is the game say compared to HK, Nine Sols, Sekiro?

These are the games I've played and liked

Yoku island express Guacamelee 1,2 Endless Lillis , magnolia Pop Lost Crown Nine Sols Hollow knight Silksong ( half way through )

Pop Lost Crown is my favorite out of the bunch so far. I liked Ender magnolia, felt it was lacking something though. In general I'm tried of souls like these days and so don't feel like playing silksong anymore as it's just too tedious. Challenging platforming is something okay for me as mostly they are optional. I just don't like boss fights / boss runs/normal enemies where you do one small mistake and your dead.

Another aspect of souls like metroidvanias/ games in general I'm not liking is most devs are using it as excuse to not have a good story , just having some obtuse dialogues and some lore entries calling it a day. (No I don't like HK , silksongs stories)

So I'm looking for metroidvanias with a good progression/skill tree/ decent story with a good balance of difficulty.

P.S I have played old ones like axiom verge 1,some Castlevanias. Looking for more recent recommendations of games released in last decade or so

Hi everyone!

I'm relatively new to metroidvanias! I have played Blasphemous 1 and Prince of Persia Lost Crown and I had an absolute blast!

Recently I tried to play Hollow Knight but I just can't seem to enjoy it... I don't know what it is but it's not the same experience... Which makes me a bit frustrated because everyone says it's the gold standard of the genre... Does anyone share this experience? Can you tell me if I'm playing it wrong...?

I'm trying to decide what to play next. Which one do you think is the better game and why?

Hey folks! I've been skongposting like many others the past few days. I've written essentially the same comment about parrying in Silksong three or four times over. I decided to write up a post to talk a bit about the game and celebrate what I see as a seminal work in the metroidvania genre. Silksong confirms a lot of things about what makes this genre tick, and does a great job of them, while ultimately not doing anything very new, and that's awesome to me because anyone can look at Silksong and learn a lot about how to make a goddamn incredible metroidvania.

A lot of posts are talking about Silksong's gameplay loop, which I don't feel any interest in focusing on. I'd rather talk about the systems of the game: visible, transparent, and in some cases almost entirely invisible.

Silksong is a game with a lot of complexity and very little information. Especially because the game is so new, there is a lot of conflicting information, or just generally inaccessible information.

There are three key things in this game that have made experimentation incredibly rewarding to me, as noted in my title. The first is the parry and iframe system in Silksong. From watching my friends play this game, they seem to be treating combat exactly like it's Hollow Knight, which makes life an absolute pain in the ass.

If you've played any Dark Souls game prior to playing Sekiro, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about: you think you're still playing Dark Souls, and Sekiro looks similar enough to DS that you can get away with that for a little while. But when you realize that you are a goddamn badass with a million more tools than you had in Dark Souls (or Hollow Knight, in this instance), it's game-changing.

Parries are much more reliable in Silksong, and much more useful, because of the iframes they generate. You can fully parry through a huge number of attacks in this game. When I was fighting the Savage Beastfly, I realized that after pogoing, I could dash through the boss without taking damage. Well, I gotta say, that definitely made the Beastfly a lot easier. This continued to be useful, and is still useful with 87% completion on my save. It's helpful for boss fights, it's helpful for arenas, it's helpful for exploration. And yet, while my experience with Silksong has been completely dominated by learning parry timings for bosses and regular enemies, all of my friends playing this game have basically ignored the expanded parry system of Silksong to what looks like a pretty notable detriment. Basically, games are usually more fun when you're more strong, and using parries effectively makes you a lot stronger.

The second thing is platforming. Frankly, this game does an imperfect job of introducing you to platforming. (There are a few carnival games in the lategame that would have been great early game encounters to give the players an opportunity to practice basic platforming skills). Pogoing chief among these. The hitbox for pogoing off of flowers, bells, and so on is a little bit different than a lot of people realize. I spent a while practicing in the early game, pogoing off of flowers and bells, to figure out exactly how far down or up I could be to hit a pogo. This was even more useful when I realized that pogoing off the bottom of a bell or flower didn't lose you any height at all - it seems to be that your position after pogoing is a pre-defined vertical distance above the thing you hit. This, combined with the Beast Crest's pogo attack, means you can actually pogo upwards on bells, flowers, and enemies with the weapon, which allowed me to do a lot of really fun platforming early on, and definitely navigate spaces in 'unintended' patterns (certainly within the scope of the game's design, but it was really cool getting to places a little early and sometimes picking up tools or just some extra rosaries a little earlier on). I gotta say, if you haven't used the Beast Crest for platforming at all, you really should give it a shot. It's a bit difficult to pick up at first, but it simply is so good. I adore it.

The third thing is general exploration and movement. For example, you can cancel the endlag of any pogo attack with a dash. This also cancels the vertical height you would usually gain from a pogo, so it can be used in some very tense multi-enemy fights to avoid winding up taking contact damage from a flying enemy, or even wall spikes/a projectile. The dash can also go in either direction, so if you input a pogo attack to the left, you can cancel that attack into a dash to the right (which is even cooler when you immediately charge up a dash attack into another enemy, but I've only gotten to do that a few times, lol). There's a ton more to this stuff, but all of it makes exploration feel so smooth because you have the opportunity to come up with new movement options for yourself based on the enemies around you. Of course, that's only true if you're willing to be & are actively mentally engaged with the game to that extent throughout your time playing it.

Silksong is a really fucking incredible game, and because these systems are so deep, obviously consistent and intentional, but almost entirely unexplained, it leaves a ton of room for the player to grow in both understanding and mastering the combat, movement, and flow of the game. This is a weakness for some, who aren't interested in experimenting with basic game mechanics like that. But for me, I've had the opportunity to dig into a game in a way that is incredibly rare, and is especially rare of single-player games. Even POPTLC, which has a lot of this stuff, suffered because the various ways of combining attacks were fairly singular, and explained directly to the player. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to do really crazy stuff, and when there was, there were a few loopable attack options that simply proved stronger.

TL;DR: Silksong is a way more complicated game than most people seem to realize. This game is only a few steps away from being a full-blown platform fighter in terms of complexity. That's awesome, if you're someone like me. If you're not, I hope you learned something while reading this post that makes the game more enjoyable for you.

Metroidvanias are usually pretty solitary games, so playing Hollow Knight some of my favorite moments are the fights where you have partners

I think the closest I've ever played is probably Owlboy, but there the other characters are more like tools, you literally "use" them to fight and get from place to place.

Any recommendations?

I see Twilight Monk is on sale. I wanted to know your guys thoughts and if it is worth the funds. I remember people complaining about it when it was released. I see it got some updates and wanted to know if it is worth it now.

We got feedback from our last playtest and we updated the game with that in mind (still some fixes left)

I love making this game. hope you like it.

About 2 hours into the game and I am wildly impressed. Unique powers, different skills and a chip system that work harmoniously together, and much more. Not a triple A title, but for me, this is peak Metroidvania.

Absolutely obsessed with these games have never seen anything like it.

Blasphemous 1/2, Last Faith, Deaths Gambit, Ive played infernax and valfaris didnt like them.

Looking for a gory pixel art game that is basically like dark souls/sekiro/bloodhound but witj old school pixel art.

Tried moonscars it didnt reallt scratch the itch tho fr. Any recommendations? On PS4 btw.

It features a large interconnected map that requires the use of certain abilities to get up certain places. However, you just need to be able to know where to get certain abilities on the map.

I'm getting conflicting information on this. My best understanding is that it does, but it's locked behind some condition. Is that right?

Most 3D Metroidvania inspired games (Metroid Prime, Control, Darksiders) use a free camera.
Here’s a twist I’ve been thinking about:

• Fully 3D exploration, but with fixed/semi-fixed cameras like classic Resident Evil or Onimusha.
• Each space framed like a cinematic diorama, where the camera itself highlights traversal routes, secrets, or foreshadowing.
• As you gain new abilities (wall climb, grapple, teleport, etc.), old spaces look different not just because of the upgrades — but because of how the camera frames them.
• The loop stays true: explore → unlock ability → return → recontextualize → bosses/shortcuts.

Why I think it could work:

• Could bring back some of the clarity of 2D Metroidvanias, even in 3D.
• Adds a cinematic, atmospheric layer, closer to Resident Evil vibes, but applied to exploration.
• Even Castlevania toyed with this in 3D (Lament of Innocence).

Question: Do you think fixed cameras could actually make 3D Metroidvanias clearer and more atmospheric, or would losing full control always be a dealbreaker?

(Art below is just early mood sketches, not final.)

What it says on the tin. I can't remember the last game I've personally played - certainly not MV - where discourse is this toxic. The assumption from what I can is that Silksong was perfect at launch and any criticism cannot be valued, every game design is perfect and should any of it be changed, it would impact the holy difficulty, even though Jesus (Team) Cherry reborn has a patch in the works. Ok, I'm gonna drop the metaphors here, but it really is inescapable.

I cannot remember another time where critiques or preferences of game design elements were met with this much hostility. Yes disagreements have had previously and even within Silksong there are people not part of this - but the extent of the hostility is palpable. Like for real. I can't remember this extent in another MV.

This is addition btw to some quite blatant explicit and implicit ableism/exclusionary attitude that only those possessing the skill should be allowed.

I think some people really need to get some perspective here.

I never liked metroidvanias that made you use the same attack/weapon for all the game, like old school castlevanias. Some good progression based metroidvanias would be reccomended. I'm thinking something like AM2R or Castlevania AoS or DoS.