Draft:Team Cherry (developer)

Team Cherry's earliest known game is Hungry Knight, a Flash game made with Stencyl by William Pellen, Ari Gibson and Rohan Fraser for Ludum Dare 27 in August 2013.^[3][4] Built around the jam's ten-second theme, it required the titular Hungry Knight to eat cherries at least every ten seconds, which is speculated to be the source for the inclusion of the "cherry" in "Team Cherry".^[3] Its protagonist's design was nearly identical to that of the main character of Hollow Knight.^[3]

Pellen and Gibson had known each other for years through mutual friends, in 2013 they began entering various game jams together.^[4] The team missed the deadline for a jam with the theme "Beneath the Surface", but kept developing their idea of an insect knight exploring an underground ruined kingdom of bugs, which soon became the basis of Hollow Knight.^[4][5]

On 19 November 2014, Gibson, Pellen and programmer David Kazi announced Team Cherry and Hollow Knight via a Kickstarter campaign.^[3] The campaign had a minimum funding goal of A$35,000, it surpassed that, raising A$57,138 from it's 2,158 backers.^[4] The funding let the team expand the game's scope and bring on Christopher Larkin as their composer and sound designer, alongside David Kazi as their technical director.^[4][5]

The game was originally planned to release in June 2015, but development ran well past that date, with it releasing in early 2017. The Wii U version that was promised to backers was also cancelled in favor of the Nintendo Switch that released after the development delays.^[4]

Hollow Knight was released for Windows on 24 February 2017, followed by macOS and Linux in April 2017, Nintendo Switch in June 2018 and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in September 2018.^[4] Its PC, Mac and Linux versions passed one million copies sold after 15 months, and the Switch version sold more than 250,000 copies in its first two weeks.^[4] Team Cherry supported the game with free content packs, the fourth and last of which was Godmaster.^[5][1] In February 2026, the game was released for Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.^[6]

A fifth content pack was planned for Hollow Knight, featuring the character Hornet as a second playable character. Although, because no area of Hallownest suited her faster movement and larger size, Team Cherry chose to make it a standalone game with its own world, Hollow Knight: Silksong.^[3] It was released on 4 September 2025 for Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch and Switch 2.^[7]