Hollow Knight: Silksong is meant to be a difficult game. That is part of the fun of it, right? The fact that the developers are giving the early game bosses a slight nerf suggests that Silksong is actually more difficult than even they intended. However, no one seems to have told speedrunners, who have already beaten Silksong in under 90 minutes, less than a week after the game was released.

We don’t have an official speedrun record just yet, as the leaderboard isn’t due to open up until October 1, but multiple YouTubers have been posting impressive times. The fastest we’ve seen is by BlueSR, who logged a Hollow Knight: Silksong any% run in 1:26:20. That’s significantly faster than our current fastest time, which is still ongoing and probably will be for the next week or two because this game is hard, okay? Don’t judge us.

Team Cherry has clearly anticipated that speedrunners will try to take their game to pieces as they’ve included two achievements for it. One is for completing an any% run in under five hours or for completing a 100% run in under 30 hours. Both feel moderately insurmountable, but aren’t nearly as mind-boggling as the sub-90-minute times we’re seeing posted right now, especially considering they are likely to come down even further as Silksong players discover new and interesting exploits for the game. And remember - these times have been posted before the early game bosses were nerfed in the first patch.

We’ve always held the firm belief that speedrunners are simply a different breed of gamer, and the fact that they are beating Hollow Knight: Silksong in under 90 minutes already only proves that fact.

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