Sea of Sorrows has a 2026 release window, according to Team Cherry. Four months of 2026 remain.
Run those numbers and the restlessness among Hollow Knight: Silksong players makes sense. Team Cherry revealed the DLC expansion only a handful of months after Silksong itself arrived, and attached little to the announcement beyond that window.
History suggests patience is warranted. Silksong, after all, began as a DLC add-on for Hollow Knight before ballooning into a full standalone sequel — one that was in no hurry to show up. Your wait could be measured in months. It could also be measured in seven years.
Whichever it is, you need a game in the meantime. Seven of them, spread across genres, hit similar nerves.
The one everybody calls “Hollow Knight but 3D”
Blue Fire is a 3D metroidvania platformer that demands exactly the sort of precision Silksong drilled into you. That nickname is earned, too. Umbra, the tiny masked sword-wielder you control without ever hearing speak, could pass for a relative of Hollow Knight’s protagonist.
Expect quick platforming built on dashes and wall climbs, alongside a spirit system that behaves much like the crests and charms you’re already fluent in. The real difference comes from mechanics that can only happen in three dimensions — Z-targeting and blocking, both of which will click immediately for anyone who has played 3D Zelda.
Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
The Zelda that punished you before Team Cherry did
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link belongs to the same group of NES influences on Hollow Knight as Metroid, Faxanandu and Mega Man. Across 40 years of Zelda, this is the entry that left its fingerprints on Team Cherry — no surprise, given it resembles nothing else in the franchise.
The game is a side-scroller with RPG trappings, sharing more DNA with certain Castlevania titles than with anything featuring a top-down overworld. It is also, by a comfortable distance, the toughest Zelda. Enemies are quick, your lives run out, and death dumps you right back at the very start.
Talk about a runback.
Where to play: Nintendo Switch (via Nintendo Switch Online NES library)
Different genre, same bruises
Line them up on paper and Cuphead and Silksong have nothing in common. One is a run-and-gun boss rusher dressed in 1920s rubber hose animation. The other is a metroidvania built around open-world exploration and platforming.
The overlap is that both are punishingly, relentlessly difficult. In each, learning attack patterns and slipping past them is the entire job. Cuphead has you running, jumping and ducking through waves of enemy projectiles, with a platform showing up here and there.
Anyone whose favorite stretch of Silksong was its most nerve-wracking boss fights — long runbacks and all — will click with Cuphead’s multi-phase encounters.
Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
The one where you find the instruction manual
Tunic is an isometric action-adventure metroidvania with a clever narrative hook: playing it means collecting pages of the game’s own instruction manual. Piecing the thing together gradually unspools the story, even though large chunks of it are printed in a made-up script. (Fan translations are out there. Loads of them.)
Your avatar is an extremely cute fox in a green tunic, armed with a sword and shield, who comes to on a shoreline. Much like Silksong, Tunic rewards prodding at walls. Secret passages are tucked throughout the overworld, and fresh abilities or items crack open still more of it.
Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
A Game Boy Color tribute with teeth
Anyone who liked Hollow Knight enough to enjoy its more brutal sequel is someone who wants a fight. Mina the Hollower provides one.
Its difficulty curve is front-loaded, so give yourself time to settle into the rigid combat limitations and brutal enemies. One departure from Silksong: optional modifiers are available if you’d rather dial back the suffering.
Silksong and Hollow Knight look to the NES for inspiration; Mina looks to the Game Boy Color instead, with Link’s Awakening as its clearest reference point. Secrets are stuffed into both the story and the map.
Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
No upgrades, no mercy
Rain World deposits an odd little creature with enormous dark eyes into a world it never explains. Ring any bells?
Your character is a “slugcat” — precisely what the name suggests — trying to stay alive in a hostile post-apocalypse. Hostile is doing real work in that sentence. If what you loved about Silksong was steadily powering up Hornet via needle upgrades, mask shards and new gear, look elsewhere.
The game is preoccupied instead with a believable ecosystem, something no other survival platformer seriously attempts. Between predators hunting you, you’re scrounging for food and ducking into shelter when the intermittent rainstorms roll in.
Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
Metroidvania pinball
That’s it. That’s the description.
All right, a little more. Yoku’s Island Express casts you as a dung beetle postman on a mission to save Mokumana Island. If Hornet’s diagonal pogo tripped you up, prepare for a platformer that doesn’t include a jump button whatsoever.
Instead, Yoku is strapped to a ball that pinball paddles launch, flinging him down chutes and along tracks throughout the map. As a metroidvania with no real comparison point, it’s a reliable pick.
Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
That’s seven games — and Sea of Sorrows is still sitting on a 2026 release window with four months to make good on it. Here we go again.