Hollow Knight: Silksong is a game that needs no introduction, with its overwhelming popularity crashing storefronts during its release and both the original Hollow Knight and Silksong reaching record player counts this past weekend. As reflected by recent ​​fan criticisms and a handful of negative Steam reviews, Silksong has garnered a reputation of being an incredibly difficult game. However, many fans have only scratched the surface of the title’s maximum difficulty, with one player discovering an easy way to unlock Silksong’s second, exponentially more difficult game mode. 

In addition to the game’s standard difficulty, there is a secondary difficulty option named “Steel Soul” mode. When playing in a save file under the Steel Soul difficulty, there is no option to revive oneself after falling in battle and any deaths will permanently end the play-through. Similarly to the original Hollow Knight, players can unlock Steel Soul mode by beating the game once on normal difficulty. Team Cherry, the developers behind Silksong, also added a secret way to unlock Steel Soul mode for fans who want to dive head-first into the game’s maximum difficulty.

A few days ago, one player on the Silksong subreddit ​​discovered and showed how to unlock this game mode immediately. Players must go to the game’s extras menu and input the first part of the famous Konami cheat code. In other words, the player must input the controls up, down, up, down, left, right, left, and right respectively. After performing these inputs correctly, players will get a visual and auditory cue letting them know their inputs were successful. Players can then enter a new save file and officially begin attempting a Steel Soul play-through without ever needing to beat the game.

Players who are looking for the game to get easier rather than harder are also in luck, as Team Cherry recently released the patch notes for Silksong’s next update. Moorwing and Sister Splinter, two early-game bosses which many players struggled with, are going to be made slightly easier. There are also some incoming quality of life changes, such as a mild reduction in midway bench prices.