Hollow Knight: Silksong devs never read YouTube or Reddit comments, but they're aware a community of increasingly desperate Silkposters is out there: "Feels like we’re going to ruin their fun by releasing the game"

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a long-awaited sequel to a beloved game, and I think it's fair to say the desperation for its release has taken on a life of its own. The devs at Team Cherry, the tiny Australian indie studio behind both games, say they try to stay offline, but they're certainly aware of the community of Silkposters that has grown increasingly prolific over the past few years.

Team Cherry co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen tell Bloomberg that they never read YouTube or Reddit comments, but friends and family have kept them apprised of the funniest bits. "It's nice that people are passionate about the game, and that they’ve obviously formed their own strange or very exciting communities around it," Gibson says.

"Feels like we’re going to ruin their fun by releasing the game," as Pellen puts it.

I doubt that too many of the self-described Silkposters that have memed their hearts out over the long wait for the new Hollow Knight will actually be disappointed by the fact that Silksong is finally coming out on September 4. But what then? After all this anticipation, all the clown makeup, and all the Nintendo Directs derailed by calls of 'skong wen,' is everyone now just going to… move on?

Hopefully Silksong will be a great game – Team Cherry certainly has the chops to make it so – but no individual game could ever possibly live up to the levels of hype and mystique that the community has built around it. Here's hoping the Silksong community can find a new use for its energies when the game finally launches – perhaps speculating about the post-launch updates to come.

Hollow Knight Silksong hands-on: 2,379 days after its reveal I finally played the elusive metroidvania, and it is absolutely worth the wait.