Team Cherry Says Silksong Was So Fun They Couldn't Stop — From Empty Spaces to Mario-Style Masterpieces

Silksong actually exists. Seven years, a lot of mystery, and apparently a lot of fun. Now Team Cherry is finally talking about how they built it, and the nuts-and-bolts stuff is very inside baseball in a good way.

Seven years, still having fun

In a new ACMI interview, co-directors William Pellen and Ari Gibson walk through the surprisingly flexible process behind Hollow Knight: Silksong. Yes, that game that took roughly seven years and that the team kept saying they were having fun making. Based on how they describe it, you can see why.

The plan, but not a Plan

Gibson says they try to be methodical: pick an area, focus on it for the month, move on. There is a plan. But it is not carved in stone. If something better pops up two weeks, two months, or even two years later, they change course. That looseness ends up steering a lot of the game’s best ideas.

World first, levels later

This is the key shift: they do not design Silksong like a run of discrete levels. Pellen explains they think in terms of a place you could actually believe in, not a checklist of jumps and enemy placements. He contrasts it with a classic level-builder mindset: instead of asking if a room needs a few platforms and a specific enemy, they start by saying, OK, this is a cavern with a lake off to the left, or a ruined tower, and let the micro-layout fall out of the larger vibe. That’s also why the game flows without screaming that you just hit the part where you earn Power-Up X before Backtracking Y.

The Citadel as the compass

The anchor for a lot of Pharloom (Silksong’s dreary, decaying world) was The Citadel, the main location in Act 2. Pellen calls it a guiding example for how the rest of the world took shape. You can find traces of that holy city scattered through the entire game, which gives everything a loose, elegant interlock.

They imagined The Citadel perched at the top of the world and asked simple, story-forward questions: What surrounds it? Where do those paths lead? Who lives there? What do they want from you? If you help them, what changes? And where does that leave you as a player?

When the world starts writing itself

Gibson compares their worldbuilding to character writing. Once you know the character well enough, the character starts making choices for you. The world did that for them: lay foundations, make the rules clear, and suddenly the space tells you what else belongs in it. Then you chase those threads all the way down, from Moss Grotto to the gilded heights of The Citadel.

The softer opening they added late

Fun wrinkle: the game’s first area wasn’t actually the first thing they built. Team Cherry added it later when they realized the opening needed a gentler on-ramp without sanding off all the edges.

"We’re trying to be kind of respectful to the player. We’re not trying to baby them."

If you want the tl;dr on how they build

• Work in focused chunks (one area at a time, usually by month), but keep the plan flexible enough to pivot even years in.
• Design the world as a place first, then let the small-level details fall into place naturally.
• Don’t obsess over linear power-up gating; aim for a seamless sense of exploration.
• Use a strong landmark (The Citadel) as a thematic and structural guide across the whole world of Pharloom.
• Let the world’s logic suggest new ideas and follow those ideas to their conclusion.
• Craft the opening to be welcoming without hand-holding, even if that means adding it late.

It’s a very un-glamorous way to explain a very glamorous outcome, but it tracks. If you build a world that makes sense on its own terms, you don’t have to force the fun. It kind of finds you.