I was, as is my normal way, not on the hype train for Silksong. I wasn't reading updates, I wasn't Silkposting. I wasn't desperately waiting for a release date. I had no emotional stakes in its existence.

I really liked Hollow Knight, but I didn't crave more of it. It genuinely helped remind me what the weird, vibey 'genre' we clumsily call Metroidvanias are actually about. They aren't about color coded doorway and breaking blocks, but exploration. Yet the tools that could be used to create a sense of exploration became the genre in peoples minds. Hollow Knight forwent most of those tools, most of the "Quality of Life", and let players get lost. It rewarded them for getting lost, by making sure there was real, substantial content in every direction. You weren't left struggling to find the golden path, because there was, at least relative to the rest of the genre, little sequence to break.

Hollow Knight... woke me up, in a sense. The first hour or two of playing it, I assumed it wasn't actually that great. The map just seemed wrong... the flow seemed wrong... areas seemed too samey -- how am I going to avoid getting lost, if you're designing like this? Isn't your invisible hand supposed to be guiding me?

... And then I actually got lost.

I didn't particularly care for the art style(I don't get why THIS is the thing every HK inspired game chooses to copy) (Though I respected it). I didn't really dig the whole bug thing(I wasn't a bug mother yet, okay?). I didn't enjoy most of the bosses that people swore were really good. None of that mattered. Playing a game that rejected 10 years of indie metroidvania "common knowledge" revitalized my mind.

Silksong revitalized my heart.