The sleeping giant that is Australia’s video game industry was awoken last week when “Hollow Knight: Silksong,” a game produced by Team Cherry, a three-person team based in Adelaide, was released to the world on Friday, September 5, and it’s not an understatement to say it broke the internet.
Video game storefronts worldwide were overloaded by purchases, with Steam (the leading digital marketplace for PC and Mac gamers) crashing due to demand, with users unable to purchase the game for two and a half hours. Other platforms also struggled to keep up with the intensity of purchases and downloads.
At the time of writing, less than seven days after release, the game has sold over three million copies, generated over $50 million USD in revenue and charted five million active players across PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo, well over eight times as many players as the first game. These stats make it one of the most successful video game launches in history.
This rampant success is a monumentous result for the independent developers, who created the original “Hollow Knight” on a budget of $57,000 raised on Kickstarter, then sold for $29.50 per copy. The project of “Silksong” began as an add-on for the first title, but expanded into a separate game to allow for more ambitious upgrades to core gameplay.
That gameplay is 2D, in a gothic fantasy-themed platformer/Metroidvania style of level design laced with deliberately challenging combat encounters, with storytelling done through the design of the game’s minituarised fantastical world of Hallownest. The player, a tiny horned warrior armed with naught but a broken nail, fights all the way up from the lowliest bugs to the in-game equivalent of the sun.
The plans for “Silksong” expanded because, as said in an interview with Bloomberg, the developers were “having too much fun adding to it.” After its announcement, the news all but vanished. And that might have been the secret behind its meteoric launch. Years went by with not a peep, and fans snowballed every crumb of details until it was more of a myth than a game. Leave social media to stew, and you’ll soon have a powder keg. See below for a taste of that enthusiasm.
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HOLLOW KNIGHT FAM, WE WERE HERE. SILKSONG IS REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND COMING SO SOON AFTER SO MANY YEARS! pic.twitter.com/PXVd3yaDUt
— cσσkíє 🎮 Silksong 🪡 (@ArcanaLegacy) August 21, 2025
When the release date finally came, other indie developers postponed releases so they wouldn’t be lost in the fevered noise of the “Silksong” launch. Imagine the chaos if the game hadn’t been as well-received as it has been. Thankfully, it’s also a critical hit, alongside the aforementioned commercial success. Metacritic scores the game at 92/100, in the ‘universal appeal’ levels of popularity.
Gamingbolt describes it as “a masterpiece in every way,” Screenrant hails it as the “purest form of a Metroidvania,” Rock, Paper, Shotgun called it a “beautiful bastard of a game” and IGN’s Tom Marks said, rather pointedly, “honestly, I just can’t wait to stop typing this so I can dive back in.” This writer has yet to try it, but he’s certainly looking forward to it.
Team Cherry has certainly earned a day off. But like any game launch, the work is far from over, there’s always improvements to be made, and hopefully some new content too. Here’s hoping they’ve opened at least one bottle of champagne to toast their project becoming one of the biggest indie games in history.
“Hollow Knight: Silksong” is available now on PC, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2. Purchase it on your platform of choice here.