Constance is a tremendous Metroidvania from Berlin that released two months after Hollow Knight: Silksong. What did that do with the reception and marketing of the game? We talked to Robert May, CEO of Blue Backpack, about metroidvanias post-Silksong and working with Japanese publisher Parco.
Making a metroidvania title with obvious inspiration from hits like Hollow Knight can be a difficult business since the market for these games is so saturated. Some games last year had an even more difficult position, because when Silksong, the Hollow Knight successor, shadow-announced their release date, a lot of developers felt they had to move their own release date, for fear of players being too saturated by the massively successful Silksong.
Obviously we very much like the idea of having tiny Constance figurines being sold right next to the biggest Pokémon Center in Tokyo. - Robert May
Not part of this movement was Constance, the fight-focused metroidvania from Berlin, which released two months after Silksong. Instead, the marketing team of Blue Backpack used the similarities of the two games to their advantage, drawing comparisons as well as openly talking about the difficulties a small indie studio has in the face of genre behemoths like Hollow Knight. Now that Constance is also announced for release on consoles, we talked to Blue Backpack CEO Robert May about the woes of marketing indie games today, the situation of Constance and what Silksong did for the game.
