Are you ready for Hollow Knight: Silksong? Well, by my count, about 22,941 players are desperate for another fix of Team Cherry's work, a number that'll continue to rise over the intervening minutes of me sitting down and writing this article.
Per SteamDB, Hollow Knight: Silksong's release date of September 4 has driven swarms of players to the original game; either to get that sweet, sweet hit of nostalgia, or just to panic-finish it so they have the foggiest clue about what's going on in the sequel.
After all, Hollow Knight takes after metroidvania and souls games -- metroidvanias in that it has a large, sprawling 2D world with a lot of backtracking, and souls games in that it has (alongside bonfire-style benches and an emphasis on difficulty) a kinda obtuse story that's fuelled many-a-video essayist. I can imagine anyone not brushed up on their Hallownest lore might want to cream a study session or two in before the sequel.
I've just refreshed the page after writing that paragraph, by the way. The all-time peak is now 23,129.
Anyway, it's not too surprising -- two weeks is actually the perfect amount of time to knock out a new Hollow Knight playthrough if you've got a 9-5 job. Dipping onto Steam, my playtime reaches around 43 hours, which includes mucking about with its various DLCs. Who knows, I might knock out another 40 -- I'm hankering for some bug action myself.
As are 23,503 people, now, by the way. Just refreshed the page, it's showing no signs of stopping.
If a substantial number of those players are new, and not just nostalgia-hounds, this'll be a nice windfall for Team Cherry -- giving its devs another big ol' window with which to have a great time drawing bugs and not bothering anybody. And based on our impressions, whatever the studio's cooking up next will be well worth the wait, too. Also, the all-time peak's now 23,819. We're going to the moon, baby.