Live data from Hacker News

The elegance of movement in Silksong

theahura.substack.com

11–20 of 358 posts

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#11
> You could play Silksong's predecessor, Hollow Knight, and not be all that good at it. Hollow Knight was a tough game, but I think you could get through it and fall in love with the environmental story telling and the lore and the music and characters. Silksong has all of this in spades, too, but it is so damn hard that you will not be able to access any of it unless you are willing to put in some serious effort. As a result, I suspect many of the people who enjoyed Hollow Knight will actually bounce off Silksong precisely because it is so hard, and they simply won't have the tenacity.

I think this is an overstatement. I've put about 16 hours into Silksong so far, I've pretty much completed around 8-10 zones or so, unlocked most of the abilities and stuff.

I don't think Silksong is that much more difficult than HK. Honestly it's been so long since I played HK that I'm not even sure it's more difficult at all but it probably is. If you went to Hunter's March as soon as you found it you probably had a bad time but going in there later on was honestly pretty easy. And aside from that and maybe a couple other spots it's been fairly alright in terms of difficulty IMO.

Everything so far has felt achievable and reasonable to me, having played HK, Dark Souls, Elden Ring and other similar games I don't think Silksong is significantly more difficult than any of those - yet.

Maybe it gets crazy later on, but that wasn't the claim in the article. The article claims you can hardly access anything without extreme effort and I don't think that's true at all.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#12
post #7

Am I the only one who didn't like Hollow Knight? In theory, it's just the game for me: indie, charming graphics, technically well done. What's not to like? In practice, it felt too difficult, too much work, too repetitive, and simply unfun to me. edit: interesting, downvotes for expressing an opinion directly related to sentences in the article (how difficult games are enjoyable somehow to some people; the article is…

I also didn't like hollow knight despite loving hades and dead cells (somewhat similar) although I only played it for ~ 2 hours

I am loving silksong so far however

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#14
post #7

Am I the only one who didn't like Hollow Knight? In theory, it's just the game for me: indie, charming graphics, technically well done. What's not to like? In practice, it felt too difficult, too much work, too repetitive, and simply unfun to me. edit: interesting, downvotes for expressing an opinion directly related to sentences in the article (how difficult games are enjoyable somehow to some people; the article is…

Different strokes for different folks. You don't need to please everyone, but it helps if you can move 15 million units with three developers. I don't play Candy Crush but yet somehow this little cash cow keeps getting updated and I'm not one of the 2.7 billion downloads!

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#16

There are probably a bunch of videos in this genre, but I found [0] to be a particularly good explanation of why Hollow Knight felt so good. If you’re experienced at game design none of this is probably news to you, but if you’re unfamiliar with terms like “coyote time”, “jump buffering” etc., this video is a great introduction to how video games break physical realism to provide a better-feeling experience, and how…

> Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. But Silksong feels terrible. Its movement is awful and difficult to control. Hollow Knight felt smooth. Silksong is the opposite of that. This very post is mixing its message: >> The secret to why this game is like crack is the movement. The movement is so buttery smooth that simply getting back to the boss that just ripped you to shreds is a complex, skillful,…

> Falling into lava seventeen times because you keep missing the same jump is not an experience of smooth movement with player affordances.

I would describe that as a skill issue. And I think Silksong feels great. I'm enjoying the crap out of it. Regarding coyote time I haven't noticed it myself but what you describe just seems like the margins are thin. You wish they were wider ie you wish the game was easier but there's lots of people who enjoy it for what it is.

To me it's an amazing game, absolutely incredible.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#17
I think Hollow Knight and Silksong are mostly special for their art style, the movement feel is pretty average.

Among 2D platformers in general, I think the medal for best movement feel goes to the Fancy Pants Adventure series. (You can still play it online on sites that have Flash replacements, start with the 4th game because it has everything.) But that's a deliberately easy game, you just run through the levels and have fun.

Among difficult precision platformers, I'd say the N/N+/N++ series has the best movement. (The first game is also still playable online.) Be careful, this one is like a drug, it has a huge number of levels and it's really hard to stop playing.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#18
post #7

Am I the only one who didn't like Hollow Knight? In theory, it's just the game for me: indie, charming graphics, technically well done. What's not to like? In practice, it felt too difficult, too much work, too repetitive, and simply unfun to me. edit: interesting, downvotes for expressing an opinion directly related to sentences in the article (how difficult games are enjoyable somehow to some people; the article is…

There are at least two of us :) I like exploration and I like bloodborne, elden ring, dark souls 3, demon’s souls, dark souls - in that order. Thus, I don’t mind difficult bosses and obscure storytelling.

I’ve clocked 10h in HK but I can’t get over these fuzzy hitboxes (I say it as souls veteran!), shallow fighting system and difficult platforming.

It is ok, just not a game for me.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#19

> Selling to businesses is very easy. You go to a business and you say "hey, you like making money?" And the business will say "why yes, I do like making money" and you will say "great, I can help you make more money. This is so wrong it hurts. You'd be amazed at how often "I will save you $X, guaranteed, or your money back" is a non-starter when selling to companies. I've spent a career very slowly gaining respect f…

> going from "Ugh, sales people are all snakeoil salesmen" to "I can't believe what they do is even possible, much less regularly done" over about 20 years.

I mean, it still sounds like snake oil salesmen. It's just that that's what it takes these days to even get noticed (let alone make a pitch). rubbing hands trumps a quality product 99% of the time.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#20
post #7

Am I the only one who didn't like Hollow Knight? In theory, it's just the game for me: indie, charming graphics, technically well done. What's not to like? In practice, it felt too difficult, too much work, too repetitive, and simply unfun to me. edit: interesting, downvotes for expressing an opinion directly related to sentences in the article (how difficult games are enjoyable somehow to some people; the article is…

Same! But it all boils down to what kind of player you are and what you seek in games.

Even though the context is/was online multiplayer games, I still think Bartle's player types are a great starting point to better understand why you play games. And people do not necessarily have one and that's it but you can figure out which one is the main one.

For instance, I've got friends who play to feel mastery over a game: they'll grind it, suffer, put the time, just to then be really good at it. For others that's an absolute waste of time.

Other friends just absolutely like to spend hours competing with others and being better than them, from playing CoD, WoW battlegrounds and such. They study the changelogs to know what changed to get the edge over an opponent who didn't. It's fun to win for them.

Others think that games are mainly to be shared, they do coop, spend more time chatting than actually playing but still love the time. They don't necessarily finish games as that's not the point.

Then you have people who love exploring, both the world and the game content, so these are the ones playing the story completely, going to do sidequests and such. The extreme of this is the completionist, who's mainly drawn to do everything and anything, regardless whether it actually unlocks anything interesting new.

And more but the point of my long comment is that it's ok if you don't enjoy HK, or Dark Souls, etc. While I appreciate the craft, I personally don't enjoy dying a million times just to beat a silly digital thing. I want the just right amount of difficulty so that I can escape death a few times, defeat it and move on with my exploration.

And games go at waves, you had tons of competitive games a few years ago, now it's a lot of skill-based souls-like bastard games who hate you for even picking them up.

So, don't feel bad and go play Clair Obscure with enemy mods on and enjoy the sublime storyline, world and soundtrack. It's your game, you bought it, so enjoy it as you please.

Post reply on HN