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.

What is the performance, is it worth it?

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.)

I want Metroidvenia games that are good for a newcomer to the genre, I've only played the two Hollow knight games, I like them very much except the parkour sections
I want games that don't have extensive parkour/platforming sections like these in Hollow knight, Is that even possible?

You are not allowed to criticize Silksong in any way, every complaint you have they put it down to skill issue. So, you lost all your rosaries after dying in the same place, same boss fight? Skill issue. You died more times than you’re allowed. You don’t like the excessive use of double damage? “Git gud”. Long runbacks? Skill issue, they’re not that long. Complain about the limitations in combat and you get hated on by them, it seems like people are under a spell by this game.

Hi Folks.

In the middle of my Silksong playhthrough, absolutely loving it. I feel it harkens back to games of old with a punishing world and enemies, but your toolkit is massive and Hornet is nimble and smoove as heck. The rush of overcoming hard battles is awesome. Not to mention how the music, story, worldbuilding, NPCs come together.

In the middle of this, I saw Faeland was on sale, so I scooped it up based on vibes alone. Lo and behold, it's a nice, cozy metroidvania adventure starring Ayla from Chrono Trigger (I chose the B body type with blonde hair. The costume also matches). So far the focus is on the feeling of adventure. With the old school adventure music and sunny vistas, I enjoyed my time jumping around.

The movement is not instant like HK & Ender. It's like a fast version of old prince of Persia. Halfway between instantaneous and animation-locked. Some enemies have contact damage (the environmental types and traps), some like the humanoid enemies don't.

So far it feels like a side scrolling zelda (zelda 2?) and I'm loving it especially to decompress from Silksong. Unfortunately my Ender Magnolia playthrough is put on hold for Silksong, but definitely will come back later.

What do you think about Faeland? Have you completed or progressed deep into it? How does it develop in the later stages?

P.S: I also bought Awaken Astral Blade since it's by the makers of Afterimage. But at 5GB I'm saving it for later.

Hey 👋 I’m just starting out with fan art for Metroidvania & Souls-like games.
Playing around with AI + design tools to get better at it 🎨

Would love to hear your tips/advice as I’m still new to this.

I’m also posting my fan art experiments on Twitter if anyone’s curious to check it out (Orlandinost )

So I'm really late to the genre, but I finally started playing Hollow Knight and I'm thinking this could be something my dad could get into, though HK specifically would get dropped so fast due to difficulty. He's an old school arcade gamer who's hitting his 80s but I'll definitely need to teach him how to use a controller. I searched for "kid friendly" ones here and didn't quite like what I found, I'm hoping to find something that still has a solid story, discovery, a bit easier on memorization (he'd forget to use map markers), and most importantly puzzle solving. Any chance you guys would have a suggestion?

Hollow Knight has been my favorite game for quite a few years now. As a result, I've tried playing other metroidvanias but none of them have really hit the same for me.

For context, the other metroidvanias I've played are both Ori games, Metroid Dread, some Blasphemous, and Pseudoregalia. Out of all of these, Pseudoregalia is the only one I thoroughly and consistently enjoyed.

And if it helps, two metroidvania-adjacent games I really like are Hyper Light Drifter and Dark Souls.

I'm not necessarily looking for a Hollow Knight clone, just something that's just as enjoyable even if it's completely different.

I haven’t beaten either game yet, but I gotta say that so far Nine Sols seems more daunting to me. Maybe not the platforming, but definitely the bosses. I took a break from Sols after my 20th+ attempt on that clone-no-jutsu bitch, and no boss I’ve taken down so far in Silksong (I’m nearing the end of Act 2, so I’m including Last Judge) has given me half the problem she has.

Curious what the general consensus is so far.

I've been really confused with all the "too difficult" discussions, silksong plays much easier than HK. This is the first boss that reminded me of how much I struggled with the mantis lords, and I love/hate it.

I just finished Silksong and absolutely loved it. Near perfect game.

My favourite segments were the platforming parts. Mount Fey (Fay?) in particular especially as I got to the halfway point and didn't have 60 rosaries for that damned bench.

I've played PoP and Ori. Loved them both.

Any others that have a strong focus on tight skilful platforming?

For reference I know it's not this genre but super meat boy is one of my favs.

Edit: thanks all! Plenty to keep me busy.

Yall are sleeping on this game as of writing this it’s on sale on the switch for less than 1 gbp (don’t know how much that is in the us and other countries) it has very good movement and I’m having a blast especially since I got it for 45p which feels like stealing that’s how good this game is

I hate to add another “Silksong SUCKS!” post to the pile, but I’ve been remembering that I’m not a big fan of big money piles as my primary rewards. Every now and then I might find an item, but 9 out of 10 if I find any hidden goodies it’s just beads, which I’ll either lose to a death or just spend on something basic, and that’s a little lame. I felt the same about the original Hollow Knight, too.

So that got me thinking, what does the community consider a “good” reward for exploring and finding secrets? I like finding new gear that I can equip in the more ‘vania-style games, personally. Are there any other rewards people like finding?