Hollow Knight: Silksong vs Crowsworn

Welcome to another instalment of VERSUS. A segment where we take a look at two highly anticipated upcoming games that have a lot of similarities and stack them up against each. First, a little background for each title, why we think each game will be great and finally, which title we are more excited for.

If you want to see the previous entry where we compared two highly anticipated ninja reboots with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, check out the video embedded below:

One game in this segment will always have a slight edge, but spoiler alert, this is always going to be comparing two games that look great and the answer will always be to buy both. This time around we are going to be heading into the metroidvania genre and comparing Hollow Knight: Silksong and Crowsworn.

Crowsworn and Silksong are both dark, hand-drawn 2D Metroidvanias that are being developed by very small indie teams as Team Cherry consisting of three core members, Mongoose Rodeo has a core of around five people, and both games also share the same marketing/PR Director.

Continuing, these two titles have humble kickstarter beginnings. Hollow Knight was able to attract a little over 47k from around 2000 people. Thanks to the added exposure Hollow Knight brought to metoridvanias on the platform, Crowsworn was able to get around 20k backers who contributed over 1.2 million. The similarity that most fans are aware of is that both games have outgrown the initial project scope.

As we can see, although Hollow Knight: Silksong and Crowsworn are arguably two of the most anticipated Metroidvanias with the possible exception of Metroid Prime 4, they also have a lot in common, which is why it makes perfect sense to compare them

HOLLOW KNIGHT: SILKSONG BACKGROUND

Let’s start with Hollow Knight: Silksong, which was initially planned as DLC as part of the initial Kickstarter campaign. If Team Cherry was able to reach a stretch goal of 56,000, they would add a second playable character that would have their own unique quests and abilities.

When the pledge round closed down, Team Cherry had secured slightly over 57,000 which was thanks to just over 2000 people who took a chance on a Metroidvania from an unknown studio from Australia. Even back on the original KickStarter page from 2014, where they listed bosses of the game, there were hints of greater story about Hornet “Quick with her deadly needle, relentless in battle, Hornet is exploring Hallownest to find the answer to a riddle that has plagued her. She has so far resisted the infection, but will still cut you down if you stand in her path”

Fast forward to 2019 and Hollow Knight has become one of the biggest Metroidvania success stories of all time. In February 2019, on the official Team Cherry site, Silksong was officially unveiled. it was revealed that almost immediately after the release of Hollow Knight in February 2017, Team Cherry began working on what would become Silksong, however they quickly realized that they had something better than they were expecting on their hands.

“Almost from the very start, Hornet’s adventure was intended to take place in a new land, but as we dove in, it quickly became too large and too unique to stay a DLC, as initially planned. We do know that makes the wait a little longer, but we think the final, fresh world you’ll get to explore is worth it”

Silksong is an adventure taking place in a whole new kingdom with a very different move set compared to Hollow Knight as you engage in lethal acrobatic action as you take on over 150 all new foes. Let’s not forget, this was back in 2019. Who knows how many enemies are in Silksong today. You will find yourself battling beasts, hunters, assassins, knights, monsters and kings.

In addition to what was experienced in Hollow Knight, Silksong also has a greatly expanded gameplay including a crafting system to create powerful tools, weapons, traps and mechanisms. The other new gameplay addition that I am most excited about is the quests where you need to hunt down rare beats and solve ancient mysteries to help you find long, lost treasures.

Since E3 2019, where they were featured prominently in a Nintendo Treehouse, updates have been few and far between, but based on what we have all seen and played with Hollow Knight, combined with their words, they are perfectionists and anything less won’t suffice.

One of the questions on the original Kickstarter page was asked about the challenges and risks that lie ahead to which Team Cherry answered “Time is always an issue, as is making sure that the core of the game is tight, challenging and a blast to play”Our team size is small and we’ve limited bandwidth for bug fixing…our standard being to match the stability and impeccable presentation of a First-Party release on the Super Nintendo”

The game is coming along fine and to the people that think that this silence is detrimental to the success and popularity of Silksong, all you have to do is check out Google Trends and you can see that interest in the title has only grown since it was first revealed. There are ups and downs on the graph, but overall, it’s a steady upward trajectory.

CROWSWORN BACKGROUND

Crowsworn is not trying to hide its inspirations. On their Kickstarter page the description read “Explore a grim fantasy world inhabited by men and monsters alike in this action-packed Metroidvania inspired by Hollow Knight, Bloodborne, and Devil May Cry! Crowsworn is a hand-drawn Metroidvania with a strong design emphasis on explorative platforming, immersive combat, and compelling storytelling”

Another reason Crowsworn sounds exciting is because two of their achieved stretch goals on Kickstarter were to add voice acting for the main character, some NPC’s and some bosses. The other stretch goal was to feature fully animated cinematic cutscenes, which were outsourced to a studio with expertise in the field and will be akin to the trailer cinematics. Both of these features are not only going to make Crowsworn feel much more like a premium game as opposed to the indie that it is, but it will also breathe life into the world and hopefully make it even more immersive.

All of this sounds promising, but you never know until you get your hands on something and I was foruntue enough to be given access to the media and backers demo. The demo feels clean and highly polished. The sound of your feet as you dash thorough dark puddles, the way your shadow bounces of certain elements in the background with its parallax environments, how tight the controls feel, and how weighty the combat feels. Drawing from their Bloodborne inspiration, every single enemy is challenging. They react different every time and it’s just as easy to be overwhelmed very quickly from low level mobs.

As a reminder, none of this will be included in the final game and the demo is representative of the state of the game likely at least a year ahead of its release.

What Mongoose Rodeo did to create the demo was take all of the cut content and create some newly designed areas to create something that felt like a more cohesive experience. The easier thing to do was just to stitch these rooms together and release it, but that wasn’t good enough. There are two things to take away from reading between the lines of the demo release. The first is that the standards of Mongoose Rodeo are extremely high as they didnt want to release a disjointed demo experience. Furthermore, the demo felt incredible and its easy to forget this is the level of quality that didn’t make the final product. Both of these bode very well for the full release of Crowsworn.

MORE EXCITED

We are over the moon as excited about Hollow Knight: Silksong as most of you are too. We love Metroidvanias and Hollow Knight is one of the best, but after playing the backers demo for Crowsworn, we are more excited for what Mongoose Rodeo has in store. Once again, it needs to be said that there is no doubt in my mind that both of these titles will be excellent, both will be a day one purchase, and there isn’t a wrong answer.

However, the tone of Crowsworn just resonates with me on a deeper level. It’s grungier, it’s more gothic, it’s more foreboding. The score of the game is constantly ominous and uneasy. It feels much more akin to dark experiences like Bloodborne and Darkest Dungeon.

The one big caveat is that what we knew about Hollow Knight: Silksong and what we know about it are vastly different because it’s been almost five years since we got a really good look at the game.

WHEN

The lingering question isn’t which game will be better, it’s which game will release first. As for why the development on these titles feels long, there are plenty of reasons. To begin with, both teams are quite small, both teams only want to release the best product and both team have the ability to do so as they likely have funds to ensure development isn’t rushed. In a recent AMA with one of the Crowsworn leads, they were asked something along the lines of what is happening with development and their answer was that while creating the game, some amazing ideas came up and it would have been to the detriment of the game to not include them.

Mongoose Rodeo also spoke of features that were completely new to the genre. We can assume that similar sentiments apply to Team Cherry as well, so with the absurd amount of high quality games that are constantly releasing, these titles can come out when the time is right for them.

The expectations for when we might see these games usually shift from the next event to the next event and the next logical event where one of these might show up would be the Nintendo Switch 2 reveal. If Nintendo didn’t have great first party support, having a game like Silksong at launch would be a strong choice and they have a relationship already established from E3 2019.