It’s been a week since Hollow Knight: Silksong came out, and much of that time has been filled with Discourse over the game’s immense challenge. Like Hollow Knight before it, Silksong is a game full of tough bosses and precise platforming that, at first glance, seem borderline impossible. It’s easy to get stuck in a boss fight for hours and wonder if you might ever climb out of that hellhole. You’d think, then, that most players aren’t making a ton of progress through the game. But based on the publicly available achievements stats, Silksong‘s gargatuan challenge might be slightly overstated online.
On Steam, 87% of all players as of this writing have beaten the first real boss, the Bell Beast. Players on PSN, meanwhile, have a clear rate of 83%, making the achievement common. Compare that to the available stats for Hollow Knight, its predecessor: 71% on Steam, and 59% on PSN.
Obviously, both sales numbers and time influence these statistics; Hollow Knight has been out for nearly a decade, and there are at least 15 million copies out in the wild. Silksong is also selling millions and breaking records, but its achievement rates might look pretty different seven years down the line. Still, many single-player games see their player concurrent hit the highest possible peak around launch, even if a DLC revitalizes interest in the game. That, and, Silksong bosses that appear further down the line have some surprisingly high stats too. Widow, for example, who appears after multiple bosses and areas, have a clear rate of 46% on Steam (whereas PSN does not seem to have an achievement tied to that battle.)
Silksong also has the distinction of being a game where a surprising number of people never experienced the first one, meaning that they jumped in based on hype. Other notoriously difficult games like Elden Ring might’ve reached a saturation point in the mainstream, but even actual Souls games offer more concessions than Silksong does. Malenia might be a ridiculous boss fight, but you can also take her on with a friend, or upgrades and abilities like summoning that make it more approachable — and there’s no enormous runback to contend with.
Really, the achievement statistics are fascinating to look at overall. Less than half of all players on both platforms have acquired four mask shards, meaning they’re playing through the game with five health blips. That one single extra mask makes a huge difference for Hornet’s survivability, even if many enemies deal double damage. And since fewer than half of existing players have defeated Widow, it’s probable that an even smaller percentage has managed to upgrade the damage to their needle, which can only occur after you clear the Haunted Bellheart. In short, people are getting farther through the game than you’d think, and they’re doing it with arguable handicaps.
Unfortunately, there’s no achievement tied to bosses like Moorwing. It’s hard to judge what the backend statistics might look like, and how those might’ve influenced Team Cherry’s decision to nerf specific bosses in an upcoming patch. Team Cherry did not respond to a request for comment. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers are slightly higher than expected, and might only continue to rise between the patch, increased knowledge of cheeses, and information on how to skip the fight altogether proliferates.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ve got the Silksong masters with godly reflexes. Would you believe that around 6% of players on Steam have finished the game, whereas only .17% (less than a percent!) have done the same on PSN? I will leave conclusions about skill levels on different platforms for you to decide. I’ll only add that, while the most popular mods on PC make the game easier, it’s unlikely that those downloads have meaningfully moved the needle on PC progress overall.
Perhaps the most impressive stat is that absolutely no one on Steam has finished Silksong on the game’s permadeath mode, which also means no one has reached 100% completion on the absurd mode. PSN doesn’t seem to have an equivalent, but less than a percent of PlayStation players have beaten the game in under five hours.
These stats only offer a partial glimpse at the player experience when it comes to Silksong. A number also cannot reflect the pain necessary to reach those achievements. But personally, every time I’ve hit a roadblock in the game, the same thing happens. I’ll bash my head against the wall. I’ll curse Team Cherry, and its tendency to design enemies designed to attack in the exact places a player might jump or dash to in a panic.
I’ll rage quit. I’ll scour online for any tips. For a little while, I’ll start doing a little better as I figure out boss patterns. Eventually, I’ll hit a point where I’m actively becoming worse at the game. Spirit nearly broken, I’ll put Silksong down. I’ll come back, this time with a bit more patience and with a renewed resolve to stop doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. And then the thing that had been thwarting me endlessly, inflaming my thumbs into a semi-permanent reddish hue? Bam, I do it. Every single time, without fail. I’ve learned that, no matter how frustrated I get, I’m always underestimating what I’m capable of achieving in Silksong.
I see the same thing online, too.
“This is inhuman,” one Reddit post reads, from a player who reached a point in the game where the platforming challenge in Hunter’s March is laughable by comparison.
“I have no idea how this is even possible,” the post later continued. “I’ve played hundreds of games, including Hollow Knight, and I’ve never seen something that just completely stumps me like this.”
Guess what. That same day, they posted again saying they had progressed through the area. That’s Silksong in a nutshell.
