One game is defying the Silksong release date but others are running scared

While more and more indie games are eager to avoid sharing space with Silksong, one upcoming indie sequel refuses to budge.

It has felt like forever, but Hollow Knight: Silksong, the sequel to 2017’s indie darling by Team Cherry, finally has a release date. And to the delight of fans, it’s dropping in just over a week.

However, Silksong seems to have become the indie equivalent of GTA 6, because that sudden release date reveal has led to some panicked last minute delays for other indie games.

We already reported on three such examples earlier in the week and even more have been announced today. However, one indie title that happens to be launching the same day as Silksong has no intentions of moving out the way.

Dark Deity 2, a sequel to a crowdfunded Fire Emblem expy from 2021, already launched on PC this past March but had recently settled on a release date of September 4 for the Nintendo Switch version, opening up pre-orders earlier this month.

If an update from developer Sword & Axe on X is anything to go by, the team’s hardly thrilled that Team Cherry’s chosen the exact same date for its sequel.

‘That ‘Hollow Knight: Silksong finally has a release date’ notification was not as fun for me as I had hoped,’ it reads, before assuring fans that the Switch port will not be pushed back and that it will launch as intended.

Judging by the responses, fans are relieved by the news and remain excited to play Dark Deity 2 on Switch. One person even admits the choice not to delay is what alerted them of the game’s existence and hopes that this could garner more attention for the port.

Another believes that Silksong and Dark Deity 2 are distinct enough that despite a shared launch date, there shouldn’t be much overlap that risks hurting the latter’s sales.

Regardless, other indie developers aren’t feeling so confident. Yesterday afternoon, publisher Ysbryd Games announced it would be delaying its tactical role-player Demonschool by an extra two months, to November, since it otherwise would’ve launched the day before Silksong.

‘With 11 years under our belt as an indie publisher, we at Ysbryd Games are reasonably qualified to say that any point of 2025, on balance, has been or will be as brutal as market conditions can get when it comes to releasing a game,’ reads a statement.

‘If the September period is going to be Silksong’s moment, then we need to be elsewhere on the calendar to give Demonschool its own moment to be seen and talked about meaningfully.

Earlier today, Sunny Side Up announced a similar, though much shorter, delay of 11 days for Little Witch In The Woods, since it too was meant to launch on September 4.

While it shared art of the game’s main character on the floor crying while the shadow of Silksong protagonist Hornet looms above, Sunny Side Up says it’s just as excited for its release as everyone else.

Elsewhere, Devolver Digital’s Baby Steps, which was meant to launch on September 8, blamed its delay to September 23 on Silksong in the most unsubtle way: a short trailer of its main character stumbling and falling off a large structure of Hornet.

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