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By Gianfranco Di Giovanni
Topic:Video Games
After seven years of development, the sequel to local game Hollow Knight releases today to massive anticipation.
Team Cherry, which is based in South Australia, was relatively silent during the development process but announced a surprise release date two weeks ago.
Players will get their hands on the game from today and development will be showcased as part of the upcoming ACMI Game Worlds exhibit in Melbourne from September 18.
It's a world of anthropomorphic bugs, tucked away in a hidden ruined kingdom — and it's one of the most highly anticipated video games of all time.
The small game development studio based in Adelaide behind Hollow Knight have been almost entirely silent for seven years.
Now they're back with its sequel — Hollow Knight: Silksong.
The original game sold more than 15 million copies, developed by Ari Gibson, William Pellen and Jack Vine of South Australia's Team Cherry with composer Christopher Larkin.
When news broke of an impending sequel, excitement quickly grew to a fever pitch, increased by wild speculation at each tiny update.
When it launched overnight, demand was so great that players crashed online PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and PC stores.
But there was no big secret behind their tight-lipped timeline, just the desire to do exactly what they wanted.
Speaking to Bloomberg, developer Ari Gibson said that the development process was so enjoyable that the team just took the time to make the game they wanted to make, and dismissed concerns the game was halted in production.
"It was always progressing. It's just the case that we're a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn't any big controversial moment behind it," Gibson said.
The team at Team Cherry created a spritesheet, a large image which contains all the frames of animation for each pose and move that player character Hornet can take. (Supplied: Team Cherry)
Gibson said that due to the way the team developed the game, every idea that was conceived was added quickly to the game, and that he needed to stop sketching, otherwise the game would 'take 15 years to finish'.
Australia's video game industry has gone from being almost non-existent after the global financial crisis to pioneering in the space of 15 years.
Silksong was originally intended to be an expansion for the first Hollow Knight game which was crowdfunded in 2014.
This new game features a new playable character called Hornet, a boss and secondary protagonist in first game, exploring her own story.
Gibson said in a recent interview that the scale of this new story meant it needed to be its own title.
"For a time, we imagined you would be able to dynamically switch to Hornet in Hollow Knight, she would have her own adventure and her abilities would allow her to access new areas," he told ACMI curator Jini Maxwell as part of the Game Worlds exhibition.
Gibson said that the scale of the game quickly grew and it made sense for the project to become its own sequel.
William Pellen said that the game in the team's mind was already a success, with their biggest hope being a smooth launch.
"The 'goal' is already kind of done. I think, we had an idea for a game that we wanted to make, a version of the game that satisfies the theme, the best version we can make," Pellen said.
"It's a hard one, honestly. I think just releasing it with no major bugs."
On the PC gaming platform Steam, the largest online store for video games, Silksong currently sits at number one on the wishlist chart with around 418,000 players following the title, 26,000 of those followers were added in just the last week.
While the game appears to be two dimensional, it's actually a 3D game built in layers, similar to a theatre stage. (Supplied: Team Cherry)
So great is the anticipated impact of the launch of the game, a number of other video games have been delayed until later in the year or even early next year.
Singaporean publisher Ysbryd Games said in a statement their title Demonschool originally slated for launch yesterday would be delayed because September would be 'Silksong's moment' and to allow their title 'to be seen and talked about meaningfully'.
Baby Steps which was made by a team including Australian developer Bennett Foddy was another title pushed back, moving from September 8 two weeks later to September 23.
Pellen said that the team was surprised with its enduring appeal, but that it spoke to their distinctive style that didn't age.
"The fact that people keep discovering Hollow Knight, the original, and this was our hope with it, suggests that it hasn't fallen out of date," Pellen said.
"The satisfying thing with Hollow Knight was that we were making something that was to our tastes, and that meant that we were making things that were slightly different it was inspired by older games, so its qualities were slightly different from the more modern games of the time.
"In a way that it's sort of outside of time, hopefully Silksong can achieve that too."
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