Started playing Silksong
I started playing Silksong for the first time yesterday. It really is as good as everyone told me it was!
I think the tiny thing that impresses me most about it was the decision to make rosary beads into physics objects, and to give them QUITE A LOT of physics. There's something really special and strange about making the main currency in the game primarily found on strings hanging from the ceiling - and making them bounce and roll all of the place when you knock them free. Every time I find a bunch of rosary beads hanging in the environemnt, I'm making a plan about how to collect them with minimal scrambling and waste, haha.
I loved playing Ultros last year, and it was similarly unafraid to throw physics objects all over the place. I wasn't a huge fan of the one Ultros zone with the mandatory ball-rolling puzzle, but I did love that I was constantly being asked to throw seeds around and do other 2D physicsy stuff. It was particularly appropriate in a game that ends up asking you to build a lot of your own platforming geometry. Physics futzing really is an unbeatable way of making a player pay close, close attention to the environment.
I am liking Silksong a lot more than I liked Hollow Knight. I think I'm just a bigger fan of high-mobility, fast-paced games in this genre. It feels less like "dark souls metroidvania" to me - an idea that has been a little bit exhausted in the intervening years - and much more traversal-focused.
Anyway, I'm glad to have finally forced myself to pick it up! I've defeated the Fourth Chorus and busted my way into Hunter's March and found my first crest. We'll see how long I stick with it before caving to play some of the other big releases of 2025 that I missed. (I imagine that if I don't play Expedition 33, I'll be executed and/or never hired again.)