Team Cherry has finally opened up about the development process behind its highly anticipated indie game, Silksong. In a report by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, co-founder Ari Gibson shared that the team initially planned to release the game as DLC for Hollow Knight but eventually decided to expand it into a standalone release.
The delay in releasing Silksong was met with immense fan anticipation, with some fans creating memes and online identities around the wait. However, Team Cherry revealed that they were having too much fun developing the game and that there came a point where they had to stop ideating to avoid an 15-year-long development cycle.
Financially, the team took advantage of the prolonged wait for Hollow Knight’s success, selling millions of copies during the extended period without releasing Silksong. Interestingly, this created a marketing strategy benefit for the game, as the public hype surrounding its release was substantial, drawing attention that could have cost big-budget games tens of millions of dollars.
Despite no grand reveals in the report, it’s clear that Team Cherry’s openness about the development process has shed light on the creative decisions behind Silksong.
Source: https://www.polygon.com/hollow-knight-silksong-dlc-expansion-team-cherry-development-time