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Hopefully equipped with suitable personal protective equipment, one brave Hollow Knight: Silksong scholar extracted and analyzed 260,000 Steam user reviews of the game to quantify trends in what people like about Team Cherry's critically acclaimed, but unabashedly cruel, sequel. The results absolutely will not shock you.
YouTuber and *checks notes* game dev Newbie Indie Game Dev took a magnifying lens to Silksong's Steam reviews in a recent video study (video by Nati Mendez, per the description). The data, which covers nearly all of Silksong's current 277,451 Steam reviews (which are 85% positive), is presented via a few categories that primarily examine how frequently certain words and phrases were used, and how they correlate to positive or negative reviews.
In a Reddit post sharing the video, Newbie Indie Game Dev also provides links to charts plotting phrases according to the sentiment attached. I'm partial to the chart for two-word phrases; it's overly cluttered, but it's a good mix of legible terms and large selection. Swipe your cursor across the orange cluster and bask in gamer frustration, as warm and pure as sunlight. But for clearer finds, go for the three-term phrases.
The trends here are fascinating, and it's revealing just how commonly specific issues are mentioned. If you've played Silksong or followed the discourse around it, a lot of these frequently used phrases will sound familiar.
- Phrases related to enemies dealing double damage trend more negative, with roughly 45% to 60% positive sentiment
- There are some negative mentions of the rosary bead economy and how it can feel grindy
- Boss runbacks and bench checkpoint placement come up a fair bit, with "long run backs" at 58.44% positive sentiment across 77 reviews mentioning it verbatim
- Reviews mentioning flying enemies lean negative, with "many flying enemies" itself at 43.48% positive across 69 reviews
- "Worth the wait" or some variation is a recurring, overwhelmingly positive phrase
- "Harder Hollow Knight" and "better Hollow Knight" are hugely positive and are mentioned much more frequently than extremely negative-leaning comments like "[play] Hollow Knight instead" or "worse Hollow Knight"
- The most-used phrases are also among the most positive ones: things like "original Hollow Knight," "best game ever," "thank Team Cherry," and just "Hollow Knight Silksong"
- The single most-used word? "Game." Yeah, that makes sense.
- Elden Ring and Dark Souls come up roughly 1,700 times combined, with around 67% positive sentiment
In many ways, this reads like a shotgun blast of gamer rage overpowered by the folks who smiled through the pain. Struck down by flying enemies or frustrated with the trek back to the boss that just turned their insides into outsides, some of these players surely pulled up the game's Steam page with a vengeance and let their fingers fly with righteous fury.
In their video, Newbie Indie Game Dev shares an amusing chart of how mentions of individual bosses compared to review sentiment. Last Judge, an infamous early wall in Silksong, has the harshest critics at 65% positive.
Shockingly, Savage Beastfly, easily the most-mentioned boss and one so hated it got its own anti-fan club, is sitting at 81% positive. The most popular bosses and characters are the beloved Bell Beast (90% positive), Garmond and Zaza (94%), Shakra (88%), and Disgraced Chef Lugoli (94%).
As you'd expect, some trends are skewed by memes. "Shaw," the most iconic voice line of Hollow Knight boss turned Silksong protagonist Hornet, and a line so dearly missed that players modded it into Silksong, comes up a lot. "Git gud," an enduring, intentional misread of another of Hornet's old lines, is in a similar boat.
Some responses are crunched on the graph, with comments like "worth [the] wait" being condensed to just "worth wait" in the analysis of two-word phrases. It's also important to note that, though positive and negative trends across all the reviews were analyzed, the standout phrases were pulled from 100,275 English reviews. Valve's figures show that most of the game's reviews are written in English, and 100,000 is still a solid sample size.
As Newbie Indie Game Dev acknowledges, the methodology isn't perfect. As another example, a positive review might include negative comments about difficulty, the rosary bead economy, specific bosses, or other complaints. But because the review itself is positive, results for those words may be skewed. Extreme cases of "liked the game, hated all of this crap" could create outliers.
But for all the (very reasonable) caveats, this is still an impressively detailed breakdown of the best reservoir of Silksong player feedback that we're going to find. If I had to sum up all 260,000 Steam reviews, I would say this: great game, can be annoying sometimes. That sounds pretty close to our own Hollow Knight: Silksong review, come to think of it. I choose to believe that means we're correct.
