The artistic director of Hell is Us has opened up about the way it felt to unexpectedly share a launch date with Hollow Knight: Silksong, calling Crew Cherry’s last-minute launch “just a little callous.”
The shadow-dropped announcement of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s launch date of September 4, 2025, was a less-than-celebratory day for the builders of round 10 different video video games with present advertising and marketing plans to launch round that very same time.
As we summarized on the time, it impacted the discharge of quite a few video games like Demonschool, Aeterna Lucis, Little Witch within the Woods, CloverPit, Megabonk, Child Steps, Faeland, Starbirds, and Moros Protocol. Even Stomp and the Sword of Miracles, an indie sport with no launch date plans wherever in sight, elected to delay its Kickstarter launch and demo launch because of Silksong.
Now, in an episode of Friends Per Second, as noticed by This Week in Videogames, Hell is Us’ Jonathan Jacques-Belletête stated of Crew Cherry: “When you recognize you are that massive, I believe a shadow drop is a bit like… wow.”
“Because the ‘GTA 6 of indie’… to shadow drop one thing like this is just a little callous,” Jacques-Belletête added, however whereas he admitted there was a flurry of “emails and texts and messages forwards and backwards between lots of people, between us and our writer — it was an actual factor — we determined to maintain the date, and I’m blissful that we did.”
“We’re nonetheless a lot larger than among the smaller ones who would have gotten much more affected and who determined to vary their dates — altering the date of Hell Is Us would have been a fairly large endeavour,” he defined.
“The true ache within the ass is that you need to refund your pre-orders whenever you try this, proper? That’s the actual, ‘The way you gonna do that?’ — now it’s worthwhile to rebuild them. We didn’t say, ‘Oh my god, now we have to do it, however we are able to’t due to that.’ We have been like, ‘No, I believe we are able to get by means of the storm’.
“Truthfully, it’s not simply Silksong, there was Cronos [The New Dawn], it was a busy time. That’s the factor these days, truthfully — getting a window the place you’re just about alone is nearly inconceivable. 15 years in the past, the mid-end of the summer season was at all times a lifeless interval. However there’s no such factor anymore. It’s simply fixed insanity.”
Curiously, some builders who’re additionally altering their launch home windows are going out of the best way to say the change of their schedules is not something to do with Silksong, too. For instance, Slay the Spire 2 was lately delayed to March 2026, however the crew proactively refuted any suggestion it was due to Silksong.
Hell is Us is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Sequence X and S. We awarded it 7/10, writing: “Hell is Us has a mix of exploration, puzzles, and fight that, whereas acquainted, pushes you to essentially take note of the world round you in a means that’s each compelling and sometimes irritating.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, in addition to a critic, columnist, and marketing consultant with 15+ years expertise working with among the world’s greatest gaming websites and publications. She’s additionally a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually Excessive Chaos. Discover her at BlueSky.