Difficulty and Hollow Knight: Silksong are nearly interchangeable in conversation. The game’s reputation for punishing encounters prompted Team Cherry to push a balancing patch soon after release, and community mods frequently aim to dial the challenge down. Later updates have softened some of the harsher edges, yet Silksong still presents a demanding — and often exasperating — play experience. Surprisingly, one playtester says the version players received at launch was already a toned-down iteration compared with earlier builds.
A recent podcast with game developer Matt Trobbiani — who also provides the voice for a boss named Trobbio — sheds light on the game’s late-stage development. Team Cherry remained mostly silent during production, but reporting has revealed the studio worked in a tight, isolated way, cutting substantial content before release. A sizeable portion of the game was trimmed during production, according to reporting. Additionally, only two playtesters reached the true ending during development, and Trobbiani was one of them. Parts of the game were removed before launch, and the New York Times reported that only a pair of testers completed the full experience.
Trobbiani says his role as a playtester was limited, but that his feedback did prompt adjustments to a few boss encounters. “Most of the changes I suggested were nerfs,” he explains, noting he recommended that some bosses be given extra wind-up frames so players could better read and respond to attacks.
“It was much harder when I first played it,” he adds, saying it took him roughly two weeks to clear the game end-to-end.
Trobbiani became involved quite late in development, when most systems were already settled. Each time he returned to the build it had been tweaked again as Team Cherry applied finishing touches. Amusingly, one of his biggest struggles during that period was with the boss he voiced — Trobbio — meaning he frequently heard his own taunts every time he fell in combat.
Despite the irony, Trobbio was not among the encounters softened before launch, and Trobbiani seems fine with that. “I think he was in a good place by the time I got involved,” he says, though he admits fans sometimes message him on Discord to complain about the fight.
The episode is full of small but revealing details. For instance, while many debated Team Cherry’s sudden public announcement of a release date, Trobbiani claims the studio’s alternative was an even more abrupt surprise drop — a quiet storefront launch with no prior warning — which matches the team’s generally restrained marketing approach.
He also praises Team Cherry’s internal velocity, saying they move faster than people expect. “They’re incredibly efficient at roughing something in and iterating from there,” Trobbiani says. “Ari [Gibson] works unbelievably long hours, draws really fast, and the team has a strong instinct for what the right solution is.”
Trobbiani’s involvement was largely accidental — he worked in the same building as Team Cherry — but it led to him providing voices for a handful of creatures, from a hulking Underworks behemoth to a conductor enemy and even a flea. When asked how it felt to finally defeat Trobbio — his own voiced character — he kept it simple: “Feels amazing. Feels so good. I couldn’t enjoy it more.”
Source: Polygon
