Back in February, Elden Ring fans vented their frustration by flooding Twitter with memes. The flurry of tweets briefly propelled the upcoming dark fantasy action RPG to the top of Twitter’s trending.
Now, two months later, From Software’s Elden Ring doesn’t seem any closer to becoming a reality. At least they aren’t suffering alone anymore, after the highly anticipated Metroidvania game Hollow Knight: Silksong was absent from this week’s Nintendo Indie World showcase. As a result, some Elden Ring fans began posting memes about their shared predicament.
While this new trend has yet to get anywhere close to the ocean of Elden Ring memes already in circulation, one can find a few choice images when browsing the Elden Ring subreddit. One of the top posts on Wednesday evening showed a variant of the Predator “epic handshake” meme with Silksong and Elden Ring bonding over their shared nonexistence. The infamous “Press F to Pay Respects” meme from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare also made an appearance. One poster asked Elden Ring fans to press F for fans of Silksong. Another post titled “Lets [sic] suffer together” showed a pair of clowns labeled “Silksong fans” and “Elden Ring fans.” Several commenters also requested additional clowns to represent the fans of other franchises, like Metroid, Castlevania, Silent Hill, Cuphead, and Bayonetta.
There are only a small handful of these memes on Reddit as of Wednesday night. Fans began posting them following the Nintendo Indie World showcase. Many Hollow Knight fans hoped that Silksong would make a showing at the event. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, and there hasn’t been a significant update on the game’s progress since Silksong’s exclusive Edge Magazine cover story last year. And development updates were not frequent before that.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is the highly anticipated follow-up to 2017’s Hollow Knight, a side-scrolling Metroidvania partly inspired by From Software’s Dark Souls. The game follows insectoid protagonist Hornet as she explores the haunted kingdom of Pharloom. Silksong introduces several changes in addition to the new protagonist. Hornet speaks and is much faster and more acrobatic than Knight was in the previous game. Team Cherry also completely reworked the equipment system, and the new game will be much more combat-focused than its predecessor.
Meanwhile, Elden Ring is in development by From Software, the creator of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. The game promises to combine Souls-like combat with open-world exploration and a backstory written by Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin. Like Martin’s next novel, the game seems to exist in the same development limbo as Hollow Knight: Silksong. Hopefully, all of them make an appearance before they force fans to wait too much longer.
Elden Ring is in development for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Hollow Knight: Silksong is in development for PC and Nintendo Switch.