After almost eight years since the original Hollow Knight, the long-awaited sequel has arrived: Hollow Knight: Silksong. Blending Action, Adventure, and Indie elements, it presents a world shaped by detailed, hand-made 2D artwork that gives the game its unmistakable look.
You play as Hornet, a former boss and reluctant ally from the first Hollow Knight. After being captured and taken to this unfamiliar land, she manages to break free. Instead of simply escaping, however, Hornet chooses to stay and uncover who ordered her capture and put an end to their plans. Enemies and bosses are tougher than before, the areas are more varied, and the sheer number of secrets waiting to be uncovered brings the whole world to life.
Team Cherry has once again crafted a world that feels deeply interconnected. Every area has its own ecosystem, full of insects, animals, and NPCs going about their routines. The developers themselves describe Pharloom as a “naturalistic” world. Each region exists because it makes sense within the kingdom, not because the game needs a setpiece, giving the sense that these places grew into their current shapes over time.
This is not a game you rush through. It encourages you to pause, explore, and notice the small details, mirroring the attention and care real ecosystems need. Playing as Hornet gives you a unique perspective: seeing the world through the eyes of a small creature makes you notice how every plant, insect, and tiny being has a role. The way she moves quick, vertical, always weaving through the environment also emphasises the scale and life of the world around her. Even the sound design, built from real-world materials and textures, reinforces the feeling of a living, breathing space.
All of this makes Silksong’s world feel not just hand-crafted, but alive. It subtly highlights the interdependence of life, reminding players that even the smallest creatures can have ripple effects in a larger system, a perspective that feels especially grounding in our fast-paced, human-centered world.
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While Silksong is not explicitly framed as an ‘ecogame’, it exhibits several relevant design aspects:
The motif of a ruined civilization and environmental degradation: The setting of Silksong is presented as a vast, interconnected ecosystem, similar to Hallownest, the world of the game’s predecessor Hollow Knight. Players discuss how the in-game ‘Citadel’ has polluted the game world in various ways clearly reminiscent of contemporary environmental destruction (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Silksong/comments/1o9p927/how_the_citadel_ruined_pharloom_part_1_water/).
The world as a ‘character’: The environments themselves — mossy grottos, coral forests, cities or misty moors — are very detailed and hand-drawn, with life-like vegetation. Arguably, the exploration of this ecology and its focus on the nonhuman world are a central part of the player’s experience, that raises questions about coexistence.
Bestiary and Biomes: The diverse bestiary features creatures that are unusually deeply integrated with and adapted to their specific environments, with creatures specific to different biomes.
Interdependence: The world is designed to feel like a functioning (or formerly functioning) ecosystem, in which characters, enemies, and environments are tentatively linked. For example, some side-quests involve hunting rare beasts and restoring or interacting with the world in ways that go beyond combat.
Thus, while Silksong doesn’t simulate an ecological system for the player to manage or actively learn about sustainability, it can be viewed from an eco-critical perspective because its world-building, aesthetics, and narrative create a vivid threatened natural environment of insects and bugs that partially unsettles anthropocentric views.