Hollow Knight: Silksong has been in development for so long that fans have started requesting a fishing minigame.
Silksong has endured a famously long and difficult development process. To make a long story short, TeamCherry dropped the first Silksong trailer in 2019, hyping up the fanbase, but the developers gave no further updates for years. TeamCherry eventually revealed new footage in June 2022, getting players excited again, and provided a community update in May 2023—but the past few months have been radio silence as usual.
That hasn’t stopped fans from keeping busy, though. Strangely enough, on the bustling r/silksong Subreddit, a community with nearly 20,000 members, many of the top posts for the month of August had a similar theme—fishing.
How the Silksong fishing meme got started
The origins of the fishing minigame meme are unclear. The earliest mention I found was a 2021 Steam Community forum post that simply reads:
The user’s (apparently) original wish for a fishing minigame seems to be tongue-in-cheek. This is further emphasized by the “meme status” of fishing minigames. For the uninitiated, due to a cultural barrier between the West and Japan, fishing minigames seemingly have a disproportionate representation in Japanese games.
Many action adventure games, platformers, and especially RPGs give players the option to take a break from their quest, drop a line and see what they catch. To western audiences who don’t understand the cultural context, this can be baffling—of all the activities out there, why does it feel like every single game has fishing as an option?
Some fans really want Silksong to have fishing
Of course, on the internet, this is the sort of joke that doesn’t just make people laugh: It’s a community rallying point. Years later, likely spurred on by the dearth of updates, this joke has been revived, and expanding upon it has become a new favorite pastime for weary Silksong fans.
The jokes range from silly and simple, to absurd and over-the-top, and even high-effort artwork showing what a fishing minigame might look like in Hollow Knight.
Some posts make you wonder if it’s a joke at all. Though the original post was in jest, some have speculated how the concept might actually work. There’s enough community interest to raise the question: Would TeamCherry actually consider adding a fishing minigame?
Could Silksong really have a fishing minigame?
We’re far from the days of vast gaps between consumer and product. Hollow Knight was an indie, internet-friendly hit, and it’s very likely that TeamCherry is aware of the meme by now.
We also live in an age where consumer feedback can lead to developers changing a video game directly—like what famously happened with Hello Games’ updates to No Man’s Sky, and the heartwarming tale of the Secret Garden from Shadow of the Colossus.
It’s stories like these that give us hope that maybe, just maybe, these dedicated Reddit posters can will a Silksong minigame into existence. Sure, it might make it take the game even longer to launch, but dedicated fans might be so happy that they just won’t care.
Whether you consider the Hollow Knight fishing minigame meme a funny joke, a chance to make some cool art, or an opportunity to make a real change to an upcoming game, you have to give it to the community: They’re making the best of a bad situation.
