SA-made game goes gangbusters worldwide
An Adelaide-based developer has released its hugely anticipated video game, crashing digital storefronts and receiving mixed reviews across translations.
At its peak on Friday, Hollow Knight: Silksong was understood to be gaming platform Steam’s third most played game in the world.
SA-based Team Cherry’s sequel to its bestselling Hollow Knight had a 24-hour peak of about 568,000 players at one time and crashed Steam upon its release.
It followed Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 with its Steam player numbers, and at the time of writing holds the number one and two spot on Nintendo’s Australia eShop.
The first game, Hollow Knight, sits comfortably in fifth place on the Nintendo eShop charts, also benefiting from the release.
Silksong is priced at $29.50 on Nintendo and US$20 on Steam.
The three-person Team Cherry is made up of co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen and coder Jack Vine.
The team took almost seven years to release Silksong after it was officially announced in February 2019, and it became Steam’s most wishlisted game of all time as the hype built.
The September 4 release date for Silksong was announced at Germany’s 2025 Gamescom.
SA developer Rupert McPharlin, who attended with the support of SA Film Corporation, said he was “incredibly proud” to see Team Cherry as a prominent feature of the Nintendo and Xbox booths at the international event.
You might like
The game features lethal hunter Hornet who battles bugs and beasts with landscapes of coral forests, mossy grottos and gilded cities.
There are over 150 new villains from beasts to assassins, monsters and knights, and has an orchestral score by award-winning composer Christopher Larkin, an Elder Conservatorium of music graduate.
According to the SA Film Corporation, the SA game development industry is growing at around 30 per cent year on year.
Team Cherry is an independent developer, but received praise from SA Film Corporation’s CEO Kate Croser on the release.
“The fact that it was wishlisted over five million times on Steam – the most ever for a game – is a testament to the quality of Team Cherry’s work and the size of the fanbase they have built,” Croser said.
Croser said the hyped announcement of Silksong at Germany’s Gamescom “provided a boost to other South Australian developers and studios who were in attendance to pitch original content and develop networks in the global marketplace”.
“South Australia is recognised internationally as a fertile bed for game developers and studios and Team Cherry is a world-leading talent that truly exemplifies the creative excellence coming out of South Australia’s screen industry,” she said.
Arts Minister Andrea Michaels also congratulated the team on the release, saying the games industry has lots of SA potential, contributing over $36 million to our state’s economy annually.
“I’d like to congratulate Team Cherry on their record-breaking success! South Australia’s games sector is an incredibly exciting industry that is growing rapidly,” she said.
Prior to release, other games, including Necrosoft’s independent RPG Demonschool, published by Ysbryd Games, delayed its release, saying in a statement that September will be “Silksong’s moment”.
“With 11 years under our belt as an indie publisher, we at Ysbryd Games are reasonably qualified to say that any point of 2025, on balance, has been or will be as brutal as market conditions can get when it comes to releasing a game,” the statement read.
“We have to remind ourselves that gaining visibility for Demonschool is our main goal. Thus, the Ysbryd team strongly believes we would not be doing our game any favours by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red,” the statement read.
Stay informed, daily
“If the September period is going to be Silksong’s moment, then we need to be elsewhere on the calendar to give Demonschool its own moment to be seen and talked about meaningfully.”
Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft don’t make player numbers public, but it’s understood Silksong is drawing large numbers across all platforms.
On Friday, there were user reports of outages across Steam, as well as Xbox, with some users finding they could not complete the purchase of the game, and PlayStation, where users found the store page failed to load or crashed.
One player, James Windt said he got lucky purchasing the game, refreshing the store until it worked.
At about 10 hours in, James said he’s “really impressed” by the sequel.
“It feels like a true sequel to Hollow Knight – the areas, art, combat tools, enemy variety, and music are all a step up,” he said.
“I’m not very far in yet, but it already feels really special.”
On Steam, Silksong has received an “overwhelmingly positive” review status, but it’s being brought down by reviews for its simplified Chinese language version.
Criticism from reviewers included that the translation doesn’t convey the original game’s tone and has a mismatched direction.
Marketing and PR partner for Team Cherry, Matthew Griffin responded to the backlash in a statement on X, saying the team is “working to improve the translation over the coming weeks”.
