Wisdom through gameplay

A concept I have lately struggled with is the idea of things being difficult.

- Anusha Ganapathi

I shouldn’t have to wait more than 10 minutes to book a cab. I can’t handle cooking food that takes more than an hour of preparation. And god forbid I write a line of code that fails more than three times — I would seriously reconsider my career, wouldn’t you? So you can imagine the fairly systemic shock that I went through when I started playing Hollow Knight: Silk Song. I’m honestly surprised that this game has sold over three million copies already. That’s three million people putting themselves through the above-described extreme discomfort and difficulty in a video game! And for those of you who don’t know about this long-awaited sequel, I’m just about to explain it to you.

Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania game released in 2017 by a very small team of people. It broke out quite dramatically in gaming circles and was best known for its challenging game style — similar to Souls-like games. And ever since the first game released, the world has been waiting for Silk Song to come out. Silk Song was released earlier this month and it’s even more complex and larger than the first game.