The elegance of movement in Silksong • Hacker News Board

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#41

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

kevinwang wrote: post #34

I remember reading an essay (probably from here?) about how a great way to build a game is to build it around a "toy" -- something that is pleasurable to simply interact with, even without objectives. I can't find it anymore -- the closest I can find is https://medium.com/@keerthiko/toys-to-games-25d35b40425d but I don't think it was that, although it's based on the book "The Art Of Game Design" which may have been a…

Sounds like Tynan Sylvester’s game design book (Tynan Sylvester created Rimworld)

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#42

Post by mindwok » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

hujun wrote: post #5

fishtoaster wrote: post #4

> 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…

yes, and I think one big reason enterprise might not buy your product even if it is guaranteed to make/save $X is $ is often NOT most important thing to the people make buying decision, specially when it is not your own money to save or gain

This is very true. Look no farther than the perennial problem of department heads spending all their budget to keep their budget. Decision makers rarely care about saving money in isolation.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#43

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#44

Post by harimau777 » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #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 an…

If you haven't triend Sundered yet I recommend it. If you go with the unlock path that specializes in movement abilities then the game gets really wild by the end.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#45

Post by mrinterweb » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

I've played a couple hours of silksong. I don't get the hype. Its a fine game, but I really think people are over hyping it. The internet hype loop on this game is turning me off on it. It's a nice metroidvania game.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#46

Post by rpdillon » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

singhrac wrote: post #36

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #25

Fluid & fun movement feels great and a lot of my favorite games have it - Doom, Hades, Ori, Celeste, Apex Legends, The Finals and more. To me it's an ingredient in a great game, not something necessarily unique to Silksong though.

Surprisingly overlapping set with games I’ve played and enjoyed a lot! Dead Cells was another that has a lot in common.

Yeah, agreed on all counts. I know it's divisive, but the movement in Doom Eternal was incredible. Double dash creating some amazing levels that would have been unthinkable in Doom 2016.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#47

Post by Agingcoder » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

the_af wrote: 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…

No I strongly dislike this game too. It’s too hard, I don’t like the movement which feels ‘rigid’ , and it’s super gloomy and depressing.

I enjoyed Ori, Monster Boy, or Prince of Persia the lost crown a lot more.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#48

Post by akavel » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:48 PM UTC

the_af wrote: 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…

In the same boat here - I played it for a while, but was (and am) sincerely super confused what people find so amazing in it. I mean, it's an ok game, and I get that some people may like it, why not; but the repeated claims of it being the best of all time, to me totally baffling. Already the respawning of the critters, and the grind to get some coins to get such a basic game feature as a map, two early aspects that I definitely don't like, and personally find somewhat disrespectful to my time.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#49

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:52 PM UTC

> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun [...]

I haven't actually played HK yet, and I don't normally play Souls-likes, but I did finally start playing Elden Ring about two months ago.

Yes, I've had times where I'm cursing out loud because I've been trying to beat a boss for three hours without success, sometimes dying with the boss only needing one more hit to die, and I'm frustrated with myself because knowing he only needed to get hit one more time started making me greedy with my attacks, and so I take big hits to the face and don't back off to heal.

But what makes them fun is the dopamine rush when I finally succeed. A couple times, it felt damn near orgasmic. I've been playing video games for probably around 35 years and nothing felt as good as when I finally downed Morgott.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#50

Post by egypturnash » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 10:55 PM UTC

the_af wrote: 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.

So much praise but Hollow Knight mostly just felt like a dreary slog to me. So dark. So depressing. So gloomy. It just kept on going on and on and on and wore out its welcome for me long before I made it to the end. I have played a lot of great platformers and metroidvanias and I just did not really have a good time with Hollow Knight. I had also possibly played entirely too many games where your role is "wander around a pretty, decaying, dying world and turn out the lights" before this one and just did not need another one of those stories in the form of yet another a brutally difficult game that demands absolute obsessive precision. I have suffered enough soulslikes.

The idea of even more Hollow Knight is the exact opposite of appealing to me. Maybe after it's on sale for five bucks and has added an easy mode as well as a double-easy mode. I enjoy a good platform traversal but I want the game to work with me to make me look awesome, I am no longer "motivated by mastery" or interested in feeling like "Sisyphus finally rolling his boulder up the mountain and resting while gazing at the view… only to then encounter the next boss and do it all again."