Guardian writer plays Hollow Knight: Silksong while managing brachial neuritis

A Guardian writer described playing Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight: Silksong while coping with severe right-arm and shoulder pain diagnosed as brachial neuritis. She said the pain began in March, described as burning and energy-sapping and sometimes reaching from behind her shoulder blade to her skull and fingers.

A neurologist told her the condition is inflammation of the nerve path from the base of the neck to the hand, that nobody knows what causes it though it sometimes follows infection or injury, and that it usually improves in about one to three years; she was also told there was little to be done for the pain in the meantime.

Traditional pain medicines barely helped, and nerve-pain drugs she tried made her feel loopy, leaving her unable to type, play guitar or play video games for a time. Silksong, the long-awaited follow-up to Hollow Knight announced in August, arrived as she was learning to live with the pain.

She described the game’s world, Pharloom, and its player character Hornet, and recounted repeatedly dying to punishing encounters — from Moorwing and the silk-wreathed Widow to the Last Judge and the Cogwork Dancers — often returning to checkpoints dozens of times. Because failure and frustration aggravated her symptoms, she limited sessions to 20–40 minutes and spread play over months, sometimes continuing the game in her head between sessions.

Key Topics

Culture, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Team Cherry, Hornet, Pharloom, Brachial Neuritis