Hollow Knight: Silksong Deserves GOTY For Its Unique World Design

2025 has a truly stacked lineup of GOTY contenders, but Hollow Knight: Silksong stands out as my personal pick for reasons beyond just its excellent Metroidvania gameplay. In an era of large, washed-down big-budget titles, Silksong’s unique approach to how players interact with its world makes it truly unique, just like the original Hollow Knight back in 2017.

One of the biggest conversations regarding Silksong is its difficulty. While a worthwhile topic to discuss how the game has connected with its audience, it is a small factor around a much larger series of design choices. In many ways, **Silksong goes against many “traditional” lines of logic within gamin…

One of the biggest conversations regarding Silksong is its difficulty. While a worthwhile topic to discuss how the game has connected with its audience, it is a small factor around a much larger series of design choices. In many ways, Silksong goes against many “traditional” lines of logic within gaming, harkening back to a past era that makes it stand out as a much clearer GOTY winner for me.

Silksong Tells You Very Little While Respecting Your Freedom Of Choice

Everything Is Learned Over Time Instead Of All At Once

While the movement mechanics, combat gameplay, and other core features of Silksong are all worth praising, the most interesting aspect of the game to me is how little it tells the player. From the beginning, you are almost thrown instantly into your adventure, with no real idea of how to fight or where to go.

This immediately respects a player’s intuition, allowing them to grow accustomed to the gameplay at their own pace. Trial and error are often forgone approaches, replaced with lengthy tutorials that have to tell you everything about a game before you can really “play.”

In Silksong’s challenging areas, you are allowed to easily get lost, to lose to enemies over and over, and learn what does or doesn’t work at first. For example, one of my early experiences within the game was adjusting to the diagonal angle of Hornet’s aerial attack, both for platforming and combat. There was no tutorial for when to best use this technique; I had to learn how to use it myself quickly.

Little things, such as Hornet’s position on the map, how to unlock the outlines of new areas, and what locations to travel to first are never communicated to the player when they start. You have to discover how to find solutions to these problems all on your own.

This *“hands-off”*strategy may not work for other games, but in Silksong, it thrives due to how its world is set up. Environments are exciting to explore, encouraging you to take on their unique problems and find answers to various challenges personally. With no external input, every solution becomes yours, instead of the game telling you what the best option is all the time.

Natural Exploration & Learning Combat Doesn’t Have Easy Solutions

Bosses And Environmental Obstacles Feel Like Greater Challenges By Being Vague

Silksong’s respect toward player freedom of choice extends to when they encounter bosses or areas where the map gets incredibly hazardous. Although difficulty has been a contentious topic for the game, I feel that the lack of any difficulty modes forces players to learn tricks to combat, but not from the game giving them advice.

This creates a feeling where every combat trick you learn comes from a combination of gameplay options available to you and your own ideas about how to win. This builds upon player agency, giving greater satisfaction to players who find ways to overcome challenges that they struggle with. With unique Tool builds in Silksong, this is emphasized even more.

Tools, charms, and other passive bonuses you acquire can be applied to Hornet for unique builds. Much like an RPG, Silksong gives players a chance to build a preferred playstyle for themselves, which deepens their immersion into the game.

As you explore, this design choice is seen through how environments are set up. Like other Metroidvanias, Silksong has places players can’t reach until they get certain abilities. However, even if players do gain skills to progress to new locations, they still have to learn how to use them to reach new parts of the game’s story.

This is seen through Hornet’s Clawline Grappling Hook, Double Jump, and several other abilities that open up new platforming paths. Some places are hard to reach even with all of Hornet’s abilities, lending once again to player freedom. The environmental design doesn’t reveal or tell anything about how to move through it, rather creating suggestions that players have to piece together.

Silksong Tells You Very Little While Respecting Your Freedom Of Choice

Everything Is Learned Over Time Instead Of All At Once

Natural Exploration & Learning Combat Doesn’t Have Easy Solutions

Bosses And Environmental Obstacles Feel Like Greater Challenges By Being Vague

More Content Is Rewarded To Anyone Who Engages With Silksong Deeply

Additional Interactions And Questions Leads To Fun Discoveries

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