It’s that time of year again, when Geoff Keighley is pressing his suit, and game journalists are prepping themselves for fan backlash. 

That’s right, it’s video game award season. 

Over the next few months, video games of all sorts will be receiving accolades from various outlets, but one award sits above the rest. One award is known as the highest recognition a game can receive each year. 

I am, of course, talking about Game of the Year. 

And while many games will be considered for the honor, few games have as many eyes on them as Team Cherry’s long-awaited sequel to the 2017 hit, Hollow Knight. 

But will Hollow Knight: Silksong be able to take home gaming’s greatest trophy? There are many that would think so, and understandably. Silksong  is full of beautiful, immersive environments; loveable and terrifying characters; and all intertwined in a deep, compelling story. 

And yet, there are plenty of naysayers, as well. Players have taken to message boards, social media, rating sites, and on and on to vent their frustration. While much of the negative feedback has simply been a struggle with difficulty, there are genuinely valid objections to Silksong’s design. And after nearly 70 hours of gameplay to reach 98% completion, I have to say that, not only are those objections valid, they are enough to say that Team Cherry’s newest game does not deserve gaming’s highest honor. And the reason why could all be summed up into one sentence: 

In a game where difficulty is a distinct feature, Team Cherry has attempted to disguise low quality of life as challenge. 

Before I get into details, I want to make something very clear: Silksong is a spectacular game. Don’t think the goal of this is to say why it is a failure and everything about it is terrible. That’s simply untrue. It excels in so many beautiful and wonderful ways and large parts of it aren’t just good, they’re masterpieces of game design. But these things are all hindered by struggles with quality of life. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “quality of life” as it applies to video games, let me give a brief definition. Quality of life (or QoL) is a measurement of how easy it is to play a game, but is distinctly different from the challenge of the game itself. If a game’s enemies are difficult and its environments are dangerous, that’s not a quality of life issue. QoL is how easy it is to experience those challenges in ways that make sense within the game and that avoid unnecessary repetition, unfair expectations, etc.  

For example, imagine playing a board game like Monopoly, but there was a rule that stated the dice needed to be rolled on a table separate from the game, at least five feet away. Players get up from the table; one player rolls; they note the total and go back to the other table. A rule like this would slow down the game, have no meaning in the actual theme, and would be an overall detriment. 

The game itself isn’t more difficult, it’s just more difficult to play. 

That is low quality of life. In a video game, it’s partly accessibility features like color blind modes and larger subtitles, but it’s also how often the player can save, how often they have to repeat the same task, how easily the player can traverse to previous areas, etc. 

And, unfortunately, Silksong has its fair share of low quality of life issues. 

What’s worse, when the average game is struggling with QoL issues, it’s usually remedied in patches later on. But in the case of Silksong, Team Cherry has intentionally created these hurdles and upholds them as part of the challenge of the game. They have purposefully made their game, not just difficult, but difficult to play. 

I’m going to provide examples, but before I do, I want to address that one type of person. 

You know who you are. 

The one that thinks that any issue a person has with a challenging game is that they are simply lacking ability. 

The one that, when people are honestly asking for help, your unironic response is “git gud.” 

To you, I say be a better human being that there is a difference between an enemy that has a unique moveset and design that takes time to learn and defeat, and an enemy with one million hp and you only deal one damage at a time, but they empty your HP in one hit. Both would be seen as “difficult,” but one is poorly designed. While I wouldn’t say that anything is “poorly” designed in Silksong, I will say that shortcuts were taken that often retract from the game, rather than benefit it. 

Okay, we got that out of the way? Let’s talk about the quality of life issues. 

1. Save Points.  

In Silksong, the main character, Hornet, rests at benches that are scattered around the world of Pharloom. These benches restore her health and set her respawn point before she ventures out to face more dangers. When she is defeated, she drops all of her currency (rosary beads) and part of her ability to heal inside of a cocoon, and the player must retrieve that cocoon to recover the lost beads and healing ability. 

Unfortunately, these benches are often put far apart from one another, so far as to make character death more than just a failure, it becomes a chore. If you spend half an hour of gameplay time exploring and you do not find a bench, when you die, it means you have to retread the ground you already navigated in that half an hour. Even if it only takes a third of the time to do so, that’s ten minutes you have to repeat. 

Over and over again. 

Every time you die. 

Until you find another bench. 

Areas like Mount Fay and Bilewater go from beautiful and challenging locations to a slog of repetition as the player has to retread ground that they’ve already completed several times, sometimes often enough to have mastered those areas. Yet, because they haven’t mastered the next area, and since there have been no benches, failure means doing it all again. 

Truly, I thought this problem had been solved with the Stake of Marika mechanic in Elden Ring. A respawn point that doesn’t return what you’ve lost but does count as a respawn point would make these areas significantly more enjoyable in Silksong. The challenge and tension are maintained because you can still lose your currency, but the chore or repetition is lessened. 

Alas, Team Cherry has ignored the lesson learned in Elden Ring, and Silksong suffers for it. 

2. Enemy Strength 

The land of Pharloom is filled with all sorts of hostiles, from the smallest of grubs to massive Roachkeepers. These enemies are understandably dangerous, and each of them provides their own unique challenge. And while these enemies look fantastic, the actual combat part of encountering some of them is much less enjoyable. 

As it often is with side scrolling adventure games, Hornet’s health is very clearly measured into a maximum of ten increments. For the majority of enemies, if they hit you, you lose a single health. 

Simple mechanics: ten health, get hit ten times, you’re defeated. 

Except in Silksong, there are a large number of enemies for whom that damage is doubled. While this may seem intuitive (stronger enemies dealing more damage) when health is as limited as it is in Silksong, and when it’s clearly segmented, it’s not just dealing double damage, it’s also as if these enemies arbitrarily cut your health in half. 10 health, get hit 5 times, you’re defeated. What’s more, these enemies are often much tougher than others, taking several more hits to defeat.  

I want to be clear; these enemies are no more difficult to fight than the other enemies. The actual challenge of combat is the same. The only increase in difficulty is that mistakes are punished more and success is rewarded less.  

This is a perfect illustration of shortcuts in design. If the goal is making things more difficult, instead of designing a greater challenge, you design a similar challenge with greater punishment and less reward. While not all enemies are designed this way in Silksong, there are enough to become a detriment overall. 

I do want to say that there are spectacularly designed fights in this game. Enemies like the Silk Snipper and the Roachcatcher have unique design that force the player to be creative in combat. The Cogwork Dancers and the First Sinner are some of the greatest boss fights I’ve ever experienced.  

But when you juxtapose these with enemies like the Mortician or bosses like the Savage Beastfly, you can see how the latter become drudgery, simple to fight but difficult to defeat. Unfortunately, enough enemies fall into the latter category to be a disservice to Silksong. 

3. Negative Possibility Space 

Though it sounds complicated, negative possibility space is simply when developers create areas to explore that have no reward. 2024 Game of the Year winner, Astro Bot, avoided this very well. Every corner the player could turn, every height they could climb, every jump they could reach, something was waiting for them, even if it was just a coin.  

Silksong has many secret areas, rewarding the player for their effort in searching for breakable walls, secret pathways, and barely reachable heights. It encourages players to explore every nook and cranny, braving enemies and platforming challenges all the while. 

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for a player to run down a hallway, navigate through thorns, or make their way on top of something, only to find…nothing. No mask pieces, no rosaries, not even beast shards. Just a dead end, intentionally put there, rewarding the player with nothing but frustration and disappointment. Some of these areas are even on the other side of dangerous enemies or platforming challenges, possibly taking from the player without making the risk worth it in any way. 

This makes exploring hard to reach areas less exciting and more stressful. When a previously unseen path is found, instead of wondering what treasures wait at the end, players are often wondering if their trek will even be worth it. 

And oftentimes, the answer is no. 

I could continue, but for the sake of not getting nitpicky, I’ll just say that in multiple ways, Silksong becomes more difficult by taking design shortcuts and lowering quality of life. Forcing the player to repeatedly overcome the same obstacles, drawing out combat that the player would otherwise be able to manage, luring the player into dangerous areas with no purpose, this is all artificial difficulty, making playing the game more challenging, rather than making the game itself more challenging.  

It should be said that there are many who actually enjoy these aspects of Sliksong. Perhaps they don’t mind the repetition or were skilled enough to overcome the obstacles quickly. There is nothing wrong with this, and their enjoyment is valid. But that doesn’t change the reality of the points made above. 

I’ll reiterate that I have genuinely enjoyed the majority of my time with Silksong. It’s a fantastic game that is nearly perfectly executed in many aspects. But it’s important that we be able to criticize things we love. Without that, we are never challenged to improve. Silksong deserves many awards for its music, art, and story, but there are also noticeable other issues holding it down.  

As wonderful as Hollow Knight: Silksong is, wonder dragged down by self-inflicted drudgery does not deserve Game of the Year.