Have you ever had one of those moments in a relationship — with a partner, family member, friend, fictional universe, app, kitchen implement, anything — where you realize you rely on them/it more than might be healthy? Thanks to Hollow Knight: Silksong, I just had one of those, and it was about my relationship with video game maps.
When I started Silksong, the discovery that I had no map to refer to in the early game inspired in me what I can only describe as a mild panic. If I had remembered playing the original Hollow Knight better I would have expected this, but I only played it for a few hours and Hollow Knight was, famously, released seven years ago.
Silksong is a Metroidvania, which means it’s a game of exploration and discovery, of branching routes, hidden entrances, shortcuts, locks and keys, and mysterious points of interest you’ll need to return to later. It is, basically, a maze. All this is hard-coded into its genre and instantly understandable about it, even if you didn’t already play Hollow Knight. To play it is to know how important it is to understand the environment you’re in, see how it all fits together, and figure out when and where you need to backtrack.
That’s why I found starting the game with no map, even in the relatively simple starting areas, so destabilizing. I don’t expect a Metroidvania to hand me its whole geography on a platter — it’s not an open-world game, and I’m not a monster — but having no visual guide to where I had already been threw me for a loop. Without the memory aid of a map, I felt like I couldn’t hold the whole thing in my head. Really, what I was so alarmed about was that the game was expecting me to… use my memory.
This much was underlined when I eventually met Silksong’s map vendor, Shakra. (I say this like I discovered her organically rather than frantically searching for a guide to her location.) Shakra is a wonderful creation: an imposing, fierce warrior with a fine singing voice. She will sell you the game’s map piecemeal, but only once you have discovered her in each new area.
Shakra also parcels out the everyday features of a video game map as individual purchases: icons for benches (save points) and fast-travel spots, for other vendors, and for herself; a quill that can add to the map and distinguish where you’ve already been; markers you can leave at points of interest. Even the compass that allows you to see where on the map you are is a skill that must be purchased and equipped, at the expense of another skill.
Naturally, I spent a while grinding out rosary beads (the game’s currency) to acquire as many of these features as possible. But even so, when I enter a new area I haven’t acquired the map for yet, Silksong is ready to cut my feet out from under me again — to make me feel threatened, cautious, and lost.
By breaking all the convenience of a map down into its constituent parts, and periodically taking them away from me all over again, Shakra and Silksong developer Team Cherry are teaching me what a privilege it is — and what a crutch it can become for players and designers alike. Won’t I engage with the game’s world more fully, and understand it on a deeper level, if I have to try to hold it in my mind as I play?
Perhaps Shakra herself puts it best, in an early exchange with the player character Hornet:
Hornet: Your charts and tools show fine skill, Shakra. I’ve met few who’d match your talent.
Shakra: Cartography! Peh. Bakallo! It is a craft-skill common amongst my tribe. Most important is to keep one’s mind sharp when on a journey.
The charting of caverns, the memory of travel, the knowing of one’s place within the kingdom: an engaging task for a warrior’s mind.
“The knowing of one’s place within the kingdom.” Well, Silksong has definitely taught me mine.
