However hard you may find Silksong, the Hollow Knight sequel could've been even harder. A voice artist and playtester on Team Cherry's long-awaited sequel reveals that when he got his hands on the roguelike, some encounters were trickier than when it shipped.
Speaking on Dan Allen Gaming, Matt Trobbiani discusses his distinct position as a contributor to voice lines for the boss Trobbio, and getting to test out Silksong as it was in development. He faced a number of enemies on the QA side of things, and mentions quite a few debuffs went around after his time playing.
"It was almost entirely nerfs to bosses that I got put in," Trobbiani says. "It was much harder when I did it." Trobbio was among those he got to square up against, but he doesn’t believe there were any substantial changes to that fight compared to the version he played. "His fight was pretty much the same by the time I got to it," he adds.
For a game like Silksong, where the difficulty curve is part of the appeal since many players come not only expecting but hoping for a challenge, getting the balance right is crucial. Nerfs and bug fixes have been regular parts of Team Cherry's updates thus far, as the devs use community feedback to massage Hornet’s quest into being the game everyone wants it to be.
As for how he got to be both a tester and a voice artist, Trobbiani recalls it was a short conversation: "They said they had a character, and were thinking about naming it Trobbio, and asked if I could do the voice. I'm obviously like, 'Yeah, of course! That sounds like a lot of fun.'"
Bit easier than facing Sister Splinter or Groal the Great, then. Where's the fun in that?
