So this is why Hollow Knight: Silksong took 7 years to make?

Team Cherry's Hollow Knight: Silksong is one of the most anticipated games of the year. Seven years in the making, the sequel to the cult Metroidvania finally got a release this month, and it's going down a storm with its hand-drawn aesthetic and intricate animation.

Why does a game take so long to make? Well one developer thinks he's found an the explanation, sharing am epic timelapse of work on his own game (see our interviews with indie game developers for more inspiration).

Shaked Lotan posted a timelapse on X showing him manually place every element in just a small section of Dreamjob Studio's upcoming adventure game Tyto. “It takes SO LONG. But you get an organic feeling world, instead of a tile based one,” he says of the approach, going on to stress that he was careful to save every second to avoid losing work but still lost progress a few times due to git errors.

Tyto is being developed in Godot rather in Unity, the game engine used for Hollow Knight: Silksong (see our guide to the best game development software). Some have suggested his process is unnecessarily inefficient, and that using a shader and spines would make the contouring process faster and easier, but Shaked suggests that calculating a shader for the entire level for every frame also has it costs.

“Silksong's elements are so meticulously placed it's almost unbelievable. No doubt that took a significant amount of time (even though they do use tilemaps),” he writes.

Looking for assets to save you time in your own game? Check out our pick of the best places for free video game assets. We also have a guide to getting started in game design.