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For some Hollow Knight: Silksong fans, finally playing the finished game simply was not enough, and so they've turned to mods to extend the life of Team Cherry's long-awaited sequel. One of the most determined among them is YouTuber and Twitch streamer SuddenlySpoons, who has spent several weeks concocting a version of the notorious Savage Beastfly boss fight which is becoming increasingly detached from our reality.
Every day, for 16 days now, SuddenlySpoons has let Reddit users in the Silksong community suggest the next modifier to add to the Beastfly fight. The most popular comment wins. This cycle of voting and modding will continue until SuddenlySpoons simply cannot defeat the Savage Beastfly any longer.
SuddenlySpoons tells me he got into Hollow Knight via Xbox Game Pass, then "when it turned out Silksong existed," he needed more. "I got into modding after I beat my first playthrough of Silksong and did everything I could possibly do on that save," SuddenlySpoons tells me. "I then realized that I felt empty inside. I needed more Silksong."
Day 16 of fighting Savage Beastfly everyday until I can't beat it anymore, but the most upvoted comment on this post decides how I make tomorrow's fight harder from r/Silksong
The only problem was that SuddenlySpoons doesn't actually know how to make mods themselves. Luckily, modder cometcake575 released a Silksong level editor called Architect, and it's pretty intuitive to navigate even for mod novices.
Here is the current, glorious list of modifications made to the Savage Beastfly fight (the redux version, down in the lava flows) so far:
- Add Fourth Chorus back to the arena
- Beastfly spawns Choir Clappers
- Every 15 seconds a Spit Squit spawns. Also placed an emotional-support Primal Aspid
- Bells randomly fall throughout the fight
- Two chaotic, spinning fleas bump me around the arena
- Lava falls in center of stage
- Trobbio sensory overload
- PILBY HAS DIED
- Added Second Sentinel, Garmond and Zaza, Shakra, and Sherma as allies
- Must ring gong to keep Sherma alive or I die
- Substituted slubberlugs for Groal's wrecking ball
- Substituted GMS attacks for Crawfather chains
- Doubled my health
- Four invincible Servitor Borans
- Ass Jim DVD screensaver
The current top comment on the latest Reddit post in the series reads: "You know what these fights need? More visual clutter! Add in some Subway Surfers gameplay and Family Guy funny moments so people can actually focus on the video." Reddit giveth, and taketh away.
The hardest modification to implement has actually been the spinning fleas bouncing around the fight. SuddenlySpoons had to get crafty to work with existing limitations within Architect. "I used the mod to import pngs of the fleas, made them spin for fun, and then made them move around super randomly," he explains. "Then I put invisible bumpers on the same paths as the fleas so it would look like the fleas themselves were pushing me around. The physics aren't exactly the same, but those two fleas have killed me more times than I can count."
The biggest spike in gameplay difficulty, meanwhile, has come from the intermittent lava falls in the middle of the stage, as this broke the usual approach to the fight and greatly limited movement and safe spaces. "I was constantly dashing into the lava or getting knocked into it," SuddenlySpoons says.
"As for the upper limit of what I can feasibly beat, it's hard to say," our hero explains. "It really depends on how nice Reddit is to me. So far they've done a really good job of ramping up the difficulty at a reasonable rate, but it just takes one absurd request to end it all. I can handle more visual clutter and things attacking me for a good while longer, but the moment they say something like use a blindfold or only use one hand it's all over."
SuddenlySpoons, much like me, is honestly surprised that this challenge has lasted this long. "I don't know why, but my gut says that Day 30 will be the last," he says. "I can't even imagine what the fight would look like by then, but people are really into the challenge so they've thrown me a couple of bones to keep it going for longer. I think there's plenty of life left in this challenge, and I'll keep going as far as I possibly can." Getting double health certainly helped, but if I learned anything from playing Megabonk last year, it's that bottomless hitpoints doesn't matter when you can't see or move.
This whole thing started as a way to play more Silksong and tinker under the hood, and it's become ammunition for SuddenlySpoons' YouTube channel, but there's also pride at stake.
"When Silksong released, I knew that this could be my game," SuddenlySpoons says, having decided to try content creation as a career. "As I kept making Silksong videos, I kept getting better and better at the game. Eventually I realized the stuff I was doing for videos was far harder and crazier than anything I'd seen on Reddit or YouTube. Hell, I started wondering if I was the best Silksong player out there. So when I thought of this challenge idea, I realized it was the perfect way to find out."
I'll say this: for all the incredible speedrunners and no-hit masters making Silksong look easy, I haven't seen anyone else fight a Beastfly like this.
