As the one-year anniversary of Hollow Knight: Silksongâs release approaches, some players, having now beaten the game long ago, might be left with a Hornet-shaped hole in their hearts. While thereâs a free DLC, Sea of Sorrow, due sometime this year, given the seriesâ history, itâs possible we may not see it for some time yet. Silksong is a singular metroidvania flavored with difficult bosses and unforgiving areas that would inspire a serious case of professional envy in the developers at FromSoftware. However, Iâve assembled here 10 games that I think can scratch the same itches Silksong does.

Hollow Knight

Letâs get the âduhâ choice out of the way first. Silksong is a sequel, improving on a lot of the combat and platforming systems its predecessor, Hollow Knight, established. Hornet, the protagonist of Silksong, was also originally a boss that showed up several times throughout Hollow Knight, and the two games are connected by a shared narrative thread of excess, corruption, and eventual doom. Playing Hollow Knight after Silksong kinda feels like that moment in a shonen anime when the protagonist sheds their weighted armor. The sequel’s combat is so much harder and the platforming so much more unforgiving that Hollow Knight feels like a quaint walk in the park in comparison, but one definitely worth taking.

Blasphemous/Blasphemous 2

Of all the games on this list that donât have Hollow Knight in its title, Blasphemous and its sequel are the games most like Silksong. Iâm talking combat, exploration power-ups, and an expansive world suffused with sorrowful religious imagery. Much like Silksong, Blasphemous demands that you respect your enemies lest they easily kill you in your carelessness. The two games share an air of gilded rot. In Silksong the world is crushed under the weight of a despotic yet holy figure worshiped in a crumbling temple. The same is true of Blasphemous. Made by Spanish game studio The Game Kitchen, the game pulls its inspiration directly from Catholic religious festivals and painter Francisco Goyaâs work A Procession of the Flaggellants. The result is a game in which you feel lost, both physically and spiritually, while pain drips quite literally from every orifice. 

Danteâs Inferno

While wholly different in terms of gameplay, art style, and even graphical dimensions, Danteâs Inferno is what you play when you want to continue to explore Silksongâs vibe of rotten religionâbut also want to have way more goofy-ass fun with it. Danteâs Inferno is EAâs straight-up God of War clone, right down to the big glowy buttons that hover over an enemyâs head when itâs time to perform a finishing move. Itâs supposed to be an action game riff on Dante Alighieriâs epic poem in which a knight returning from the Crusades ventures to hell to save his belovedâs damned soul. But the whole game tries so hard to tap into that hyper-violent, edgelord vibe of the late aughts that it wheels back around into a Divine Comedy that I cannot take seriously, but nevertheless enjoy playing.

Blippo+

Youâre not gonna find a single thing Blippo+ has in common with Silksong. Instead of a metroidvania, itâs aâhow to put thisâan immersive narrative experience where the main gameplay mechanic is channel-surfing through late-night TV shows? As you flip between programs styled after The Joy of Painting, public access news broadcasts, and Svengoolie, a story starts to emerge that also has nothing to do with any of the narratives present in Silksong. So why does this game make the list? When Silksong finally announced its release date, it essentially blew a hole in late 2025âs video game calendar. Tons of games shifted their own release dates to get out of the gameâs way, much like everyoneâs doing this year with GTA VI now. Blippo+, which had an earlier release on the PlayDate, kept its Switch and PC launch date of September 23rd, when we were all smack-dab in the middle of Silksong fever. Chances are you missed this game. Now that the Silksong haze has cleared, you can check it out.

Animal Well

Animal Well, the puzzle platformer published by YouTuber videogamedunkey, mimics the environmental moodiness of Silksong. Much like Pharloom, the world of Animal Well is vast, diverse, quiet, and often feels haunted. This is a puzzle platformer with no combat but there are a ton of secrets you, as a blobby lil guy, can use your parkour skills to unlock, revealing hidden areas to explore.

1000xResist

While there’s an overabundance of so-called âdad games,â there are relatively few examples of âmom games.” (Imagine that.) Silksong, with its narrative themes and characters like Lace, Grand Mother Silk, Bell Beast, and more, is what Iâd call a mom game. So too is 1000xResist. In it, you play as a clone of your mother, who you kill in the gameâs opening moments. People whoâve dug into the lore of Silksong and finished the game might now understand why Iâve chosen to compare the two. Your task is to filter through the memories of mother, going back to a time before she became the progenitor responsible for a world filled with her clones. 1000xResist is an incredible narrative game thatâs accumulated numerous nominations and won a Peabody Award for its excellent storytelling.

Super Metroid

Super Metroid is Silksongâs great-great-great genre grandmommyâfor it, too, is a mom game. It is the source from which we derive the âMetroidâ part in âmetroidvania,â and a Silksong recommendation list, indeed any list of âthings you should play if you enjoyed this metroidvania-type game,â would be incomplete without it. Super Metroid is a quiet game. Neither Samus nor any of the gameâs bosses speak, and the game itself doesnât speak to you through dialogue or hints either, forcing you, in your solitude, to figure shit out for yourself. And the trial-and-error way in which you do figure it out is glorious. The moment when a curious player decides to set off a power bomb in a room made of glass, only to have that glass shatter, revealing a new area: sublime. There is a reason thereâs a whole genre named after it.

Elden Ring

Elden Ring and Silksong are kin not only because they have similar soulsborne mechanics but also because of the sheer scale of their respective worlds. Just when you think youâve reached the edge of Pharloom, Silksong‘s second act opens up a whole new world that could be a game unto itself. Thatâs what it felt like exploring Elden Ring, too. There is so much depth and variety to each location that it feels decadent, like thereâs no way the developers gave us this much. Every enemy is dripping with tragic symbolismâmindless zombies once human but now consumed by their vocation, zealots whoâve turned piety into monstrousness, and so much more. Silksong also contains some of the most egregious, infuriating, and patently unfair boss runbacks to ever exist in a game, ones that would put even the hardest encounters in Elden Ring to shame. At least that game was kind enough to put its respawn points right in front of the boss arenas.

Mina The Hollower

Stop me if youâve heard this one before. An indie studio releases a major hit, then takes a long time to develop a follow-up, is forced to delay the new game, but finally releases it to massive critical success. While not quite following the exact story of Silksongâs development, Mina the Hollower certainly comes close. The two games share a vibe of âindie prestige,â doing so much with far smaller budgets than their AAA cousins. And where Silksong feels like a love letter to classic Nintendo games like Metroid, Mina the Hollower is just that for The Legend of Zelda, with a Game Boy-inspired soundtrack thatâs nothing but absolute bangers.

Celeste

Celeste has no combat, unless you count the fights you have with yourself on whether or not to continue the dangerous ascent up the titular Mount Celeste. If you enjoyed the puzzle platforming bits of Silksong including Mount Fay, the Sands of Karak, and (shudders) Bilewater, but donât have the patience to fight monsters in-between, Celeste is your game. Celeste is just as narratively beautiful as Silksong, and features a ton of optional challenges that increase the platforming difficulty.