Hollow Knight

As the wait for Silksong nears its end, can the original justify all these years of anticipation?

- By ALEX SPENCER

Higher beings, these words are for you alone. So begins the first inscription you discover in Hallownest, and then many others thereafter, a hint that its message is aimed not to characters in the world but the player. You might detect a touch of flattery here, then. And, in fairness, if you first read those words in early 2017, then you'd have every right to feel a little smug because if you weren't quite alone in playing Hollow Knight back then, you were certainly in a minority.

When Team Cherry took its debut to Kickstarter in 2014, the campaign attracted just over 2,000 backers, falling short of its loftier stretch goals (including a PS Vita port and the promise of a third playable character). When the game hit 65,000 sales in the first month after release, the small Australian studio was ecstatic. Now that seems rather parochial.

Eight years and millions of sales later, we live in a world where Nintendo and Sony broadcasts are assailed by cries of "Silksong when" in the live chat, and that sequel originally conceived as an expansion to introduce that second playable character has almost passed into myth. After another summer of announcements without any solid news on Silksong's release, there's a growing sense that all the hype could curdle.

Just what was it about this game that caused such excitement to spread in the first place, and managed to sustain it for so long? We fire it up for the first time in years and begin a fresh save. Might its appeal have been blunted by the many imitators that have followed? Emerging a few days later with 30 hours and a completion rate of 95 per cent under our belt, we're relieved to report that Hollow Knight has still got it.

It's a common complaint that Hollow Knight