With Hollow Knight: Silksong now out for nearly a year, players who finished Hornet’s journey may be looking for another difficult, atmospheric adventure. Free DLC titled Sea of Sorrow is due sometime this year, although the series’ history gives no guarantee that the wait will be brief.
These ten games cover the same broad appeals: demanding combat, intricate exploration, melancholy worlds, precise platforming and stories shaped by corruption, faith or family. Some are close metroidvania companions, while others match only one particularly compelling part of the Silksong experience.
Hollow Knight
The obvious starting point is still the best one. Silksong builds on the combat and platforming systems introduced by Hollow Knight, while Hornet first appeared as a recurring boss in the earlier game. Both adventures share a narrative interest in excess, corruption and inevitable ruin.
Played after Silksong, the original can feel much gentler: its combat and platforming are less severe by comparison. That makes it an ideal return trip, offering the same ruined-world atmosphere without quite the same level of punishment.
Blasphemous and Blasphemous 2
The two Blasphemous games are among the closest alternatives to Silksong. Their combat, exploration upgrades and sprawling maps are wrapped in sorrowful religious imagery, and careless players are quickly reminded to respect every enemy.
Both series create a feeling of gilded decay. In Silksong, a despotic holy figure presides over a failing temple; Blasphemous presents a similarly oppressive world. Developed by Spanish studio The Game Kitchen, the first game draws directly on Catholic festivals and Francisco Goya’s painting A Procession of the Flaggellants. Its landscape is spiritually and physically disorienting, with grotesque suffering built into almost every scene.
Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Inferno is very different in gameplay, visual style and perspective, but it shares Silksong’s fascination with corrupted religion. It is also much less interested in restraint. EA’s action game follows a knight returning from the Crusades who travels through Hell to rescue his beloved’s damned soul.
The design is an unmistakable God of War-style action game, complete with glowing prompts for enemy executions. Its attempt to capture the hyper-violent, edgelord vibe of the late aughts becomes so excessive that the result is difficult to take seriously—but still entertaining.
Blippo+
There is no mechanical similarity between Blippo+ and Silksong. Rather than a metroidvania, it is an immersive narrative experience built around channel-surfing through strange late-night television. Its programming includes shows styled after The Joy of Painting, public-access news and Svengoolie, with a story emerging between the broadcasts.
Its connection to this list is timing. The release of Silksong disrupted the late-2025 game calendar, prompting many other titles to move out of its path. Blippo+ had already appeared on Playdate, but kept its 23 September Switch and PC release date, arriving during peak Silksong attention. If it passed you by, this is a good time to investigate Blippo+.
Animal Well
Published by YouTuber videogamedunkey, Animal Well captures the quiet, haunted environmental mood that makes Pharloom so memorable. Its world is broad, varied and mysterious, but there is no conventional combat.
Instead, you play as a small blob and use movement and parkour abilities to solve puzzles, uncover secrets and reach hidden areas. It is a strong choice for players who want the atmosphere and discovery of Silksong without fighting through every room.
1000xResist
Silksong is rich in maternal imagery, from Lace and Grand Mother Silk to the Bell Beast and the wider relationships surrounding them. 1000xResist explores similarly complicated ideas of motherhood and inheritance, though through a very different kind of game.
You play as a clone of your mother, whom you kill at the beginning of the story. From there, you sift through her memories, travelling back to the period before she became the progenitor of a world populated by her clones. The result is an acclaimed narrative game that received numerous nominations and won a Peabody Award for its storytelling.
Super Metroid
Every modern metroidvania owes something to Super Metroid, the game that supplied the “Metroid” half of the genre’s name. Its influence makes it essential for anyone tracing the design lineage that leads to Silksong.
It is a remarkably quiet adventure. Samus and the bosses do not speak, while the game offers few hints or explanations. Progress depends on observation, experimentation and trial and error. Discovering that a power bomb can break a glass wall and open a new route remains a superb example of player-led exploration.
Elden Ring
Elden Ring shares Silksong’s interest in difficult combat and vast, layered worlds. Both games can appear to be reaching a conclusion before revealing another substantial region. In Elden Ring, each area is packed with enough detail and variety to feel almost extravagantly large.
Their enemies also carry tragic symbolism: former people consumed by their occupations, zealots transformed by their faith and other figures warped by the worlds they inhabit. Silksong is especially notorious for its punishing boss approaches, with patently unfair boss runbacks. Elden Ring can be brutal too, but its respawn points are at least positioned directly outside boss arenas.
Mina the Hollower
Mina the Hollower shares the story of an acclaimed indie studio following a major hit with a long-awaited successor that faced delays before achieving massive critical success. Its appeal goes beyond development history, however.
Like Silksong, it has the feel of an ambitious indie production achieving a great deal with fewer resources than a major blockbuster. Where Silksong reflects classic Metroid, Mina the Hollower acts as a love letter to The Legend of Zelda. Its Game Boy-inspired soundtrack completes the retro-minded package.
Celeste
Celeste removes combat entirely, replacing monster encounters with the challenge of climbing its titular mountain. Its central conflict is also internal: whether to continue an increasingly dangerous ascent.
If the platforming sections of Silksong—including Mount Fay, the Sands of Karak and Bilewater—were the highlight for you, Celeste offers a focused alternative. Its story is just as affecting, and optional challenges provide plenty of additional precision-platforming difficulty.
Choose your next arcade-inspired adventure
These games approach the Silksong formula from different directions: Blasphemous delivers religious decay, Animal Well prioritises secrets, Super Metroid demonstrates the genre’s roots and Celeste concentrates on movement. For more gaming and arcade coverage, explore the RETROCADE Arcade Blog, or compare the options in the Arcade Machine Buying Guide before planning a home setup. Players who prefer a compact footprint can also browse bartop arcade machines.
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