Demonschool delayed to get out of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s way

On Monday, publisher Ysbryd Games delayed the upcoming tactics RPG Demonschool, making it the latest game to get some distance between it and Hollow Knight: Silksong.

After years of anticipation, on Aug. 21 Team Cherry finally revealed a Sept. 4 release date for Hollow Knight: Silksong. It immediately blew up release plans for other indie publishers and their games, a trend that has continued into a second week. Demonschool, developed by Necrosoft Games, was originally planned for a Sept. 3 launch, but will now come out Nov. 19.

“After much anguished consideration on our part, we’ve made the decision to move the game’s release,” Ysbryd Games’ Brian Kwek said in a news release.

Kwek wasted no time in attributing this delay to the impending release of Silksong, the most anticipated game in some time not named Grand Theft Auto 6.

“With 11 years under our belt as an indie publisher, we at Ysbryd Games are reasonably qualified to say that any point of 2025, on balance, has been or will be as brutal as market conditions can get when it comes to releasing a game. Crueler still, that we should find out with such short notice that Hollow Knight: Silksong will launch just one day after our planned release for Demonschool,” Kwek said. “If the September period is going to be Silksong’s moment, then we need to be elsewhere on the calendar to give Demonschool its own moment to be seen and talked about meaningfully.”

Kwek affirmed this will be Demonschool‘s final delay, and that the publisher “had every intention to proudly release on Sept 3. We hope fans who anticipated the game will forgive us for one final delay.”

As a silver lining, delaying Demonschool is giving developer Necrosoft Games the chance to stuff the base game with content. “For example, there will be more endings and minigames that the developers originally planned to patch in post-release, rather than leave them on the cutting floor; now it’ll all be part of the game’s release in November.”

Demonschool is a “school-life” tactical RPG that takes inspiration from the Persona series from and Italian horror films. When Demonschool does release — well and clear of Hollow Knight: Silksong — it’ll land on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.