The hero of Hollow Knight started out small. For the Ludum Dare 27 game jam in 2013, William Pellen, Ari Gibson and Rohan Fraser made Hungry Knight, a small Flash game in which a horned, cloaked knight with a nail strapped to its back kills enemies “to eat the berries on their backs”. A later three-day jam, on the theme “Beneath the surface”, gave them what Pellen and Gibson call “the very beginning of Hollow Knight”. That game, released in 2017 by a studio of a handful of people in Adelaide, became, in Wireframe’s words, “an instant modern classic”.
Fast facts
- First announced: 19 November 2014, with the Hollow Knight Kickstarter; the founders had been making jam games together since 2013.
- Base: Adelaide, South Australia.
- Directors: Ari Gibson and William Pellen.
- Core team on Hollow Knight: Gibson, Pellen and the technical director David Kazi, with Christopher Larkin on music and sound.
- Kickstarter: A$57,138, more than one and a half times its target.
- Games: Hollow Knight (2017) and Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025).
Two friends and a game jam
Gibson was working in animation; on Team Cherry’s own page he is described as having run an animation studio, Mechanical Apple, and worked across film, games and music videos. Pellen “was actually doing web development and then in his spare time he was developing games,” Gibson told MCV in 2018. “I played that and then contacted him about a game jam, just as a fun thing.”
The jams gave them a character and a world, and in November 2014 Pellen, Gibson and the programmer David Kazi announced Team Cherry and Hollow Knight together, on Kickstarter. The campaign closed with A$57,138. The stretch goal at $56,000 promised a second playable character, Hornet, to be added after release as downloadable content.
Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight came out for Windows on 24 February 2017, published by Team Cherry itself. It is a Metroidvania, a game in which new abilities open up parts of a large connected map, set in Hallownest, a ruined kingdom of insects. The look is hand-drawn. Team Cherry’s store page promises “over 130 enemies” and “30 epic bosses”; Wireframe thought it a game of “30 or so hours”, “part Soulslike and part Metroidvania”.
Its makers have been modest about the size of the team. “The core team for the vast bulk of the project was me, Ari and Dave developing the game and Chris on sound and music,” Pellen told MCV. They also pointed to older influences than the Dark Souls series the press compared it with: Pellen said he “hadn’t actually played much of Dark Souls” while making it, and the team named Zelda II, Faxanadu, A Link to the Past and Majora’s Mask.
They kept working on the game after release and gave the results away. Four free content packs, Hidden Dreams, The Grimm Troupe, Lifeblood and Godmaster, added bosses, quests and abilities. The Nintendo Switch version came out during E3 in June 2018, and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions followed. Team Cherry later added a coder, Jasmine Vine, who worked on the console versions and on Godmaster. In February 2026 the studio released new versions for the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, free to existing owners.
Silksong
Hornet’s stretch goal grew into something larger. Making room for her movement abilities needed a world of its own, and Team Cherry chose to make a standalone game. In 2019 Team Cherry showed Hollow Knight: Silksong as a full sequel rather than an add-on, with Hornet as its heroine, in a new kingdom, Pharloom. Wireframe reported that year that, according to the developer, it would be “much larger than Hollow Knight’s”. Its development was long and quiet. In 2022 Wireframe noted that players had been “pining after” it “ever since Hollow Knight was released back in 2017”. Silksong came out on 4 September 2025.
Sources
- Jini Maxwell, “From Ludum Dare to Pharloom”, ACMI, 5 September 2025 (web, secondary): Hungry Knight at Ludum Dare 27 in 2013 by Pellen, Gibson and Rohan Fraser; the Kickstarter announcement of 19 November 2014 by Pellen, Gibson and David Kazi; Hornet as the $56,000 stretch goal and the decision to make Silksong a standalone game, confirmed six years before 2025; Pharloom. https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/from-ludum-dare-to-pharloom/
- Marie Dealessandri, “When We Made… Hollow Knight”, MCV/Develop, 31 July 2018 (web, secondary): Gibson on meeting Pellen; the game jams and “Beneath the surface”; Pellen on the core team; A$57,138 on Kickstarter at the end of 2014; the influences and Pellen’s Dark Souls quotation; the Switch release at E3 2018; Hornet as a stretch goal. https://mcvuk.com/when-we-made-hollow-knight/
- Team Cherry, “About” page (web): Adelaide, South Australia; Ari Gibson and William Pellen as co-directors; Gibson’s animation studio Mechanical Apple; Jasmine Vine. https://www.teamcherry.com.au/about
- Team Cherry, “Hollow Knight arrives on Nintendo Switch 2, PS5 & Xbox Series X|S”, 5 February 2026 (web). https://www.teamcherry.com.au/blog/hollowknightupgraded
- Steam store page, Hollow Knight (web): release on 24 February 2017; Team Cherry as developer and publisher; the four free content packs; “over 130 enemies” and “30 epic bosses”. https://store.steampowered.com/app/367520/Hollow_Knight/
- Wireframe issue 25, October 2019, p. 16: Silksong, Hornet, and a new setting “much larger than Hollow Knight’s”. Issue 61, March 2022, p. 40: “an instant modern classic”, “30 or so hours”, “part Soulslike and part Metroidvania”, players “pining after” Silksong.
- Team Cherry, announcement on X, 31 August 2025 (web, secondary): Hollow Knight: Silksong “will be available on 4th September”. https://x.com/TeamCherryGames/status/1962330350681735642