Post Script

Silksong turns up the volume on some of Hollow Knight's finest ideas

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Bapanada. If you've played Hollow Knight through, chances are good that series of letters typed out on the page will be enough to trigger some mental soundboard, and that you'll have just heard the voice of shopkeeper Iselda echoing in your head. It's a particularly memetic line, due to Iselda's brilliant sighing delivery of those nonsense syllables, but it's just one of many examples of Team Cherry putting audio front and centre in its debut.

Think of the broken lullaby, echoing through the caverns, that warns you're closing in on The Shade, readying you for a fight with your own ghost - or how many times you backpedalled after hearing the yowl of a grub trapped nearby. The latter sound effect is even turned against you and weaponised, with a heinously similar cry given out by an explosive Belfly as it prepares for ambush. Trained to hear the sound as a cry for help, you're likely to freeze in your tracks, just for a moment, long enough that it'll be much harder to dodge the detonation that follows.

And this is without mentioning the orchestral score by Christopher Larkin, which moves effortlessly between stirring and hectic, triumphant and funereal.

For Silksong, Larkin has composed twice as many tracks, and brought in choral singers to accompany the instruments. It's an aural escalation we should have seen coming, given the game's title.

This realisation dawns, for us at least, as we notice the sheer number of bells Pharloom has to offer.