After years of memes, delays, and wild speculation, Hollow Knight Silksong is finally out in the wild, and Team Cherry has crossed the finish line on one of the most anticipated indie sequels in modern gaming. The tiny Australian studio spent around seven years crafting this follow up, and that long wait has clearly paid off. 
Silksong has sold millions, earned multiple nominations at The Game Awards, including the prestigious Game of the Year nod, and firmly cemented Team Cherry as one of the most respected names in the indie space.
With a journey that long and a success story that loud, many players might assume the developers are off on a well deserved break, quietly enjoying the glow of their achievement. But that is not really how Team Cherry operates. Instead of slipping into cruise mode, the core duo of Ari Gibson and William Pellen are already deep in planning and production for what comes next. That means both fresh content for Hollow Knight Silksong and the first serious conversations about games that step outside the familiar insect filled caverns of Hallownest and Pharloom.
A recent interview shed light on how the studio is thinking about the future, and it revealed something that will delight fans who are not ready to leave Silksong behind. Team Cherry has downloadable content for Silksong in active development. Not only that, but some elements that were originally intended for the base game are now being reshaped and polished into DLC, alongside completely new ideas that sprung up during development. For a studio that has always valued quality over speed, this next phase is all about taking promising concepts that did not quite fit the launch version and giving them the attention they deserve.
One of the most intriguing pieces of cut content is Steel Assassin Sharpe, a character and encounter that fans have heard whispers about for years. In the interview, Gibson described Sharpe as still waiting just off stage, a presence that was prepared but ultimately set aside as the scope of Silksong ballooned. Sharpe was not removed because the team lost interest, but because every boss, area, and enemy in a Hollow Knight game demands a remarkable amount of tuning. Animations, patterns, music, narrative context, and environmental staging all have to lock together. When you are only a handful of people, that level of polish takes time.
Sharpe is not coming alone, either. Gibson mentioned Sharpe and companions as a kind of little suite of encounters that were tucked away while Silksong was pushed across the finish line. Rather than throwing them into the game half baked, Team Cherry chose to ship a cohesive core experience and circle back later. Now, with the launch behind them, the team is excited to bring those ideas back into focus. Fans can reasonably expect Sharpe to join Silksong in a more dramatic, fully realised fashion once DLC lands, rather than as a stray extra boss with no narrative weight.
The interview also touched on another mysterious element that had caught the community’s attention: the Village of Lions. When asked whether this location is part of the DLC plans, Gibson did not confirm specifics, but he did make one thing clear. Team Cherry intends to deliver on its promises, including previous commitments made to backers and fans during the long development of Silksong. At the same time, the studio has its own fresh ideas for expanding the world, ideas that did not come from obligations or stretch goals but from pure creative energy.
This creates a delicate balancing act. On one side, there are expectations and commitments that the team genuinely wants to honour. On the other side, there is the freedom to experiment, to add new regions, enemies, quests, and systems that will surprise even the most lore obsessed players. According to Gibson, the team is still juggling how and when these different pieces will come together. That means the final shape of Silksong’s DLC is still evolving behind the scenes, guided by the same slow, meticulous approach that shaped the main game.
As for timing, Team Cherry is not offering any bold release windows. The memory of Silksong’s own drawn out timeline is still fresh, and the team is determined not to repeat the stress of trying to meet public expectations that do not line up with reality. Gibson pointed out that the seven years spent making Silksong were never part of some grand plan. Development simply took as long as it needed to, driven by a philosophy that prioritises iteration and refinement until things feel right. That philosophy has not changed just because the studio has more fame and more pressure.
Fans hoping for a rapid drip feed of DLC will probably have to temper their expectations. Team Cherry has seen firsthand how a project can quietly grow from a modest expansion into a sprawling new world. The studio is not promising that kind of multi year odyssey again, but it is being honest about the risks that come with building dense, interconnected worlds filled with secrets and optional challenges. Every extra enemy type, every new area, every additional story thread multiplies the amount of testing and polish required.
Beyond Silksong itself, the interview ventured into a more existential topic: what happens to Team Cherry when Hollow Knight is no longer the only universe it explores. Both Gibson and Pellen acknowledged that they already have ideas for future games that have nothing to do with Hallownest or Pharloom. There are concepts, mechanics, and stories they want to try, and there is a growing awareness that each large scale project eats up huge chunks of their lives. When a single game can occupy seven or more years, the number of remaining projects they can realistically make becomes a serious consideration.
They have spoken candidly about time, even joking grimly about the inevitability of death and how many more ambitious games they can finish before it arrives. It is a darkly humorous way of expressing something most creatives feel as they get older. There are more ideas than years, and hard choices have to be made about which ones are worth that enormous investment of energy. For Team Cherry, the hope is to fit in several more games, some set in familiar territory and some striking out into places players have never seen from them before.
Crucially, stepping away from Hollow Knight for a while does not mean they are tired of it. Gibson stressed that creating another Hollow Knight game right now would still be enjoyable. The team is not desperate to escape their breakout hit. Instead, they are drawn to the challenge of seeing what their signature approach looks like in a different genre or setting. Big, strange worlds, eccentric characters, oppressive atmospheres, and towering bosses are likely to remain part of their creative DNA, even if the creatures on screen are no longer bugs.
That thread is what Gibson described as a kind of through line that will connect whatever they make next to the work fans already love. Players who come to a new Team Cherry game seeking intricate level design, demanding combat, and environmental storytelling will still feel at home, even if the lore, themes, and visuals shift radically. At the same time, the team is careful not to box itself in. They do not want to become known only as the Hollow Knight studio, locked forever into one series. Space to reinvent themselves is just as important as the comfort of returning to a beloved world.
In the end, the picture that emerges is both reassuring and exciting. There is more Hollow Knight Silksong on the way in the form of DLC that resurrects cut content like Steel Assassin Sharpe and likely introduces entirely new surprises. There are long term plans for games that push Team Cherry into unexplored territory while still carrying forward the qualities that made Hollow Knight special in the first place. The wait for concrete dates and trailers may be long, but for fans of carefully crafted, atmospheric action adventures, Team Cherry’s future looks anything but empty.
1 comment
bro seven years per game and they still sound hyped, that is some real passion right there