Hollow Knight: Silksong

Hornet has fallen. Silksong’s opening cutscene reintroduces our heroine in captivity, being dragged away from Hallownest, where once she served the role of Hollow Knight’s most fearsome recurring boss.

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Her powers have been stripped away, but at least some of the old steel remains. Just short of her destination, the Pharloom Citadel, she manages to break free, sending her cage – and herself – tumbling down into the abyss. So it is that, taking control of this character for the very first time, after all these years of waiting, we find Hornet at the bottom of a pit.

Hollow Knight was a descent, down into the caverns beneath Dirtmouth; it’s immediately clear that Silksong’s journey, starting at the bottom, will invert that. And so we climb. A room to the left, over to the right, hopping back and forth across the central shaft that Hornet dropped down to get here, gradually working our way back to the surface. It’s a chance for Silksong to teach you the basics – jump, slash, heal – and to introduce the game’s structure in miniature.

Here, a bench to save your progress. There, a couple of secrets to find, if you’re inclined to look. A lockedroom duel against the game’s first miniboss. Emerging above ground, triumphant, your first encounter with an NPC – the first in a very, very long line of memorably odd bugs chatting away in their strange little voices. This is, more or less, everything you’ll be doing over the next 60-plus hours, condensed down into a few minutes. But Silksong’s not done with the microcosmic introductions – at least, not in our case.