Silksong Xbox Showcase Footage Analysis Script

Going into the Xbox Showcase for Summer Games Fest 2025, many Silksong fans, myself included, were hoping against hope that we might finally get news about a Microsoft handheld Xbox gaming console. In a world full of Steam Decks and Nintendo Switches, it seemed ridiculous that the greatest console of all time, Xbox, didn’t have a portable option in the year 2025. But luckily, our prayers were finally answered. Hollow Knight Silksong fans can finally rest easy knowing that the ROG Xbox Ally X will be available for purchase later this year.

Not only that, but Microsoft also confirmed that Hollow Knight Silksong will be playable when the ROG Xbox Ally X launches, confirming a 2025 release window for the game. Leth himself even made it clear that Team Cherry is planning to release Silksong before Christmas 2025. The 2025 release window was already announced during the Switch 2 direct, but it’s nice to see further confirmation of this release window from Microsoft and from Leth’s own words. So it seems 2025 really is the year of Silksong. Of course, anything can happen in the next 6 months, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

In addition to all that, we also got some brand new footage of Silksong. So in this video we’re going to dive deep into the new Silksong goodness. After that, I want to talk a bit about the Hornet sprite sheet that was released back in May.

We got around fifteen new seconds of footage from this trailer. Unfortunately, a lot of it is featured in these fancy animations where the screen is skewed in different ways, making the footage difficult to see. It’s also apparent that the Silksong footage has been cut up and rearranged a bit. But thankfully, a user by the name of Min went through the video and both stabilized the footage as well as recut the footage in chronological order. So a huge thanks to Min for suffering in DaVinci Resolve for hours to get us this footage.  There appear to be three separate clips used here.

The first clip features Hornet in the Far Fields, an area we’ve seen quite a few times in various screenshots and trailers. She starts by leaping off a ledge and landing on a long stretch of flat ground overrun with tall grass. Waiting for Hornet in the tall grass are some new enemies we haven’t seen before as well as some familiar hunter ants.

The second clip shows Hornet maneuvering through a vertical climbing section of the Cogworks area, utilizing wall jumps, air dashes and her Harpoon Dash to move from wall to wall avoiding hazardous cogs and spikes.

The final clip takes place in a room we haven’t seen before. Hornet is fighting against some moss covered enemies in what appears to be a forced combat encounter with limited platforming.

Let’s start off with the Far Fields. The clip starts with Hornet jumping from some ledge. In the spot where Hornet lands, we can see little red spikes on the ground. They also appear to be blanketing the surface of this area in the background. Given the vines they appear next to, these might be thorns. We’ve seen thorns elsewhere in Pharloom, but nothing that looks like this. The region below Hornet here might be some kind of sub area similar to where the Thorns of Agony are found in Hollow Knight.

The rest of the clips in the Far Fields show Hornet running through tall grass while avoiding these quadrupedal bugs and hunter ants. One of the ants even gets killed by one of these new bugs. I’m not sure if it was trying to kill the ant, or if it was trying to attack us and the ant was just in the way. Regardless, it seems like enemies will be able to hurt one another, something we sorta saw back in the 2019 reveal trailer. But we’ve also seen other enemies overlap their attacks in the past and not hurt each other, so this might only apply to certain moves, or between certain enemies.

When the hunter ant dies here, three long lines are briefly visible over its corpse. We’ve seen this effect quite a few times in trailers and the E3 demo. But the lines are usually straight up and down, whereas here, the lines are at an angle. One theory I’ve shared multiple times on this channel is that these are puppet strings coming down from the Citadel. Basically, the Citadel is using these threads to control the bugs. So I wonder if these lines are angled because the Citadel is actually up and to the left of the Far Fields in the game world. In other words, this effect always points towards the Citadel. That would be a cool little attention to detail on Team Cherry’s part.

Above the long stretch of flat ground here are occasional rings suspended on poles, which I suspect are objects Hornet can hit with her needle to gain height.

The second clip showcases Hornet in the Cogworks area doing some platforming very reminiscent of a certain fan favorite section of the original Hollow Knight. As much as I enjoyed the White Palace, and maybe this is just me, I don’t know if anyone else has ever pointed this out, the existence of all those buzzsaws always felt a bit nonsensical, even if this area is set in the dream realm. To some extent, it matched the Pale King’s characterization: cold, industrious, antisocial. But at the same time it felt very video game-y in a way.

These cogs feel a bit more like they actually belong in this setting. Even if the way these cogs are set up still doesn’t make sense. Speaking of which, we don’t even know what the greater function of the Cogworks area is.

One theory, which I think I first heard from the Silksong YouTuber Primacon, is that the area is some kind of giant music box. There are cylinders in the background with pips on them, similar to what you’d see in a music box. After all, a giant music box would certainly fit within the theme of Silksong. Or at least the song part of it, anyway.

At one point we can see Hornet perform a wall run move, giving her additional height before launching herself out from the wall. I have to admit, a wall run like this is pretty bad ass, but it might seem a bit redundant given how easy it is to wall jump in these games. But there’s one big difference between Silksong and Hollow Knight that I think makes this wall run move a lot more relevant. And that’s Hornet’s ledge grab ability. Basically, if Hornet hits a wall just short of the ledge, she’ll probably be able to do a quick wall run to reach the top more easily. In this clip we even see Hornet perform a second wall run that gets canceled by an automatic ledge grab that then goes into a ledge jump. So between ledge clinging, wall running, pogoing and her Harpoon Dash, Hornet has quite the stacked toolkit for platforming traversal in this game.

There’s a new icon on the HUD in this footage. This new icon appears to be a tool. It’s most likely a yellow or blue tool which applies some kind of passive effect. From looking at the icon, it kinda looks like a yellow ring filled with… baked beans. This must be a late game item.

Finally, there’s one small detail about the footage in this area I wanted to mention. Hornet is passively gaining silk in this clip. But this isn’t like the Kingsoul, which passively gives you soul until your Soul Vessel is completely full. Hornet only gains a single notch of silk when her silk reserve is depleted, meaning she only ever goes from 0 to 1. There might be some sort of upgrade that lets Hornet always regain at least one notch of silk when empty. An upgrade like that would be quite useful for sections like this, since Hornet’s Harpoon Dash move costs exactly one notch of silk to use.

Honestly, Cogworks is the one area I’m most excited to explore once the game finally comes out. It’s got a beautiful aesthetic and the platforming looks both challenging and satisfying. It also reminds me of my boyhood days, climbing dangerous clocktowers and automatically regaining silk as needed.

The location of this last clip is a little bit harder to place. There appear to be small fly particle effects in this room. My first instinct was that a redditor must live here. But now that I’ve noticed the room’s green-ish lighting and moss-covered enemies, I think this area is somewhat close to this mysterious stone building. But we don’t really know what this area is either so I can’t really put a name to this location. So for the rest of this video, I’m just going to call it the moist stinky moss room.

The weirdest thing about this room are these writhing creatures floating on the top of the water beneath the play area. My immediate thought was that these are maggots, which would make sense given that there are also a bunch of flies here. The maggots look quite a bit different from the maggots from Hollow Knight. They kinda look like actual maggots, for better or worse.

There are some strange shells in the background here too. We’ve seen vaguely similar objects used by other bugs in Pharloom. They appear to be containers of some kind, so perhaps this is a dilapidated storage room.

Hornet is fighting a few enemies in this clip, one of whom she hits with her Harpoon Dash. What’s funny here is that her needle has actually passed the enemy before she makes contact with him, and her needle moves back so she can finish her attack. Kinda silly. The enemy then falls into the water and dies in classic Hollow Knight fashion. The first enemy throws stakes down from above while the second enemy seems to blow darts from its mouth. They don’t seem to have the most sophisticated tools at their disposal, adding to the sense that this area isn’t the most developed region of Pharloom.

Finally, there’s another new icon on the HUD. This tool appears to be a green vine with white petals growing on it. We’ve seen these white petals and flowers quite a few times already, including in the room where we fight Lace. So these flowers seem especially important for Silksong’s story. As for what this tool does though, I couldn’t tell you.

That’s it for new footage. Funnily enough, they show more footage on the Xbox website, but it’s actually just the original reveal trailer with the text removed from it. It’s also zoomed in slightly to hide the HUD. Is Silksong the only game this thing can run? You’d think they could come up with at least one other game to advertise.

Let’s move on to this spritesheet. There are hundreds of unique Hornet sprites on display here, including sprites of her doing things we’ve never seen before. If you haven’t been plugged into the fast-paced, constantly evolving Silksong news cycle, you might be wondering where this spritesheet even came from. Back in April, it was announced that Silksong would be shown off at the Australian Center for Moving Image through a special exhibit known as Game Worlds running from September to February of next year. Silksong is even going to be playable there as well, although we don’t really know what that means.

In the live chat of a Primacon stream, Leth mentioned that he doesn’t think Team Cherry would make a new Silksong demo just for this exhibit. But he also mentioned that the E3 2019 demo was outdated. Some people have speculated for a while that the release build of Silksong will be playable at the event, meaning that Silksong has to release before the exhibit starts on September 18th. But it’s also possible that Team Cherry will just give the museum a near release build of Silksong, so basically the complete game, just not quite ready for official release on consoles or Steam. But maybe Silksong will be released before September 18th. Everyone involved is being pretty tight lipped and vague about it, so we really can’t know for sure.

Either way, as part of this exhibit, Team Cherry also gave ACMI some of Hornet’s sprites. We can see a few of these sheets in a short promo video, but the museum also gave one of the spritesheets to IGN on May 1st, giving us a much better look at them.

These sprites are tightly packed together in order to save on resources. Basically, Unity, the game engine Silksong is developed in, can take sprites and pack them into something called a sprite atlas. Instead of having to load each image into memory individually as it is needed, an entire sheet can be loaded in just once and the associated metadata will tell the game which exact image on the sheet is needed so it can be drawn onto the screen.

While this process is great for the game, if you don’t happen to have the data on how to cut up this image, extracting individual sprites can be a huge pain. Luckily, just a few weeks after this image was released, Dazz, one of the admins over at the Spriters Resource, released an online tool capable of automatically cutting up sprites sheets just like this. There were a few hiccups with the Hornet sprite sheet, but this tool made the job a whole lot easier. So a huge thank you to Dazz for making this tool. If you work with sprites, I highly recommend these tools. There’s a link in the description if you want to check it out.

There are 402 unique Hornet sprites here along with about 50 miscellaneous sprites for various silk and needle effects. And while I tried my best to organize them by what animations I think they're related to, this really isn’t my area of expertise. If anyone wants to try and organize these sprites better, or make animations out of them, I’ve included them in a google drive link down below.

There are a few interesting sprites and animations I want to talk about, but first I’m just going to show a few of the less interesting animations on screen so you can look at them. You’ve got some standard animations like Hornet looking at her map or making different poses. Cool stuff, for sure, but I don’t really have anything to say about them. Also keep in mind a lot of these animations are incomplete since we only have one of Hornet’s sprite sheets.

The first animation I want to talk about is this amazing piece. Hornet appears to be using her cloak as a parachute, allowing her to fall more slowly. We’ve seen her use a similar airstall move in the past, also by using her cloak. So it seems Hornet will be able to augment her cloak in some way. In fact, we even have a new sprite of Hornet completely naked, holding her cloak up to her chest. I’m guessing she just had the cloak modified by someone and has yet to put it back on in this frame. So it’s clear there’s some sort of cloak ability system. Also, is it just me or does Hornet look a lot different than her fan art?

Another upgrade Hornet seems to unlock is a pair of wings. This might also be a cloak upgrade, similar to how the Monarch Wings merge with the Knight’s cloak. With how many different cloak abilities there seem to be, I’m guessing Hornet can only have one of them active at a time. Otherwise I have no idea what buttons all these abilities would be set to.

There’s also a sprite of Hornet using some supercharged dash move. We’ve actually seen a near identical sprite of this already. This skill uses a version of this sprite without the charged electricity effect. So it seems Team Cherry either decided to change how this move looks, the move itself can be upgraded, or there is some tool that makes Hornet’s skills super charged. I think the last option here is the most likely, since I don’t think Hornet’s base abilities, even in their most upgraded form, would include electric attacks. I know Hornet is half god or whatever, but I feel like that would be a bit out of left field.

We also have sprites of Hornet’s scuttle ability, which we haven’t seen since the 2019 reveal trailer. As some of you might know, the Knight in Hollow Knight had a similar backstep ability early on in development, but the move was ultimately cut. So it was a bit surprising to see this move given to Hornet in Silksong. Given their appearance here, it seems the move is going to make it into the final game this time around. Although, just because sprites appear on a sprite sheet, that doesn’t mean the sprites are actually used. So we’ll still have to wait and see on this one.

There appears to be some sort of enemy attack on this sprite sheet too. We can see these strange tentacles bind Hornet up, presumably dealing damage to her or triggering some special event or attack. I’m guessing this is used by an enemy or boss in an area like Greymoor or the bay area.

Next I wanted to show off this sprite. Because I think it’s funny.

There’s also this animation, where Hornet’s just kinda sticking her ass out. I don’t know what this is about but whatever.

Then there’s this sprite of Hornet throwing her needle straight up into the air. This is probably the same move we see her use in this screenshot. So Hornet will be able to throw her needle way up into the ceiling and ride the silk up to the top of the room. I’ll be curious to see what kind of shenanigans players might be able to get into with an ability like this. There are quite a few sections in Hollow Knight where you’re not expected to be able to reach the ceiling. So I wonder how Silksong will handle this.

Here we can see Hornet falling through the air head first. Outside of abilities like desolate dive and downward dash, I don’t think the Knight ever had a falling animation like this. It demonstrates just how many unique sprites Hornet has while airborne.

We also have some sprites of Hornet’s head by itself. I think these sprites are used to show Hornet talking without having to animate her whole body. We see this technique used for some NPCs in Hollow Knight.

There’s also an animation of Hornet using rings similar in appearance to the rings Shakra uses. We see her strike the rings together at one point, seemingly to make a loud noise. We also see another NPC character, Sherma, use a bell to open a door. So perhaps these rings will let Hornet unlock certain doors or interact with certain objects.

Finally I wanted to talk about Hornet’s needle strumming. We’ve seen it a couple times already, but there are some peculiarities with these sprites I think are worth mentioning. First of all, it appears Hornet can play her needle while sitting. Given how far down the needle goes, it seems like these animations might be used when Hornet is sitting on a bench. In addition to that, we can also see that Hornet has animations for holding her needle at different angles.

So what does this all mean? Well, at the very least it means Hornet will probably use her needle as an instrument a lot during the game. Which makes sense. The game’s called Silksong, in case you forgot. But what I really hope this means is that you will be able to freely play Hornet’s needle to create music of your own. All of the best video games let you play musical instruments. Ocarina of Time. Last of Us 2. It would be so cool if Team Cherry followed in the footsteps of these titans of gaming and let Hornet grind out Freebird on her one string needle cello.

And that’s it for this video. So will you be picking up the ROG Xbox Ally X when it releases later this year? If so, please unsubscribe now.

Songs used:

Dung Defender - Hollow Knight OST

Fungal Wastes - Hollow Knight

Kingdom’s Edge - Hollow Knight

Hornet - Hollow Knight

Queen’s Garden (Main Loop) - Hollow Knight

Dirtmouth - Hollow Knight OST

City of Tears (Inside Loop) - Hollow Knight

Reflections - Hollow Knight OST

Dream - Hollow Knight

Zelda’s Lullaby - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time OST

Free Bird (MIDI Arrangement) - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Enter Hallownest - Hollow Knight OST