Four months and 40 hours later: my epic battle with 2025's most difficult video game
Last year, I became intimately familiar with suffering. In March, I started experiencing excruciating pain in my right arm and shoulder – burning, zapping, energy-sapping pain that left me unable to think straight, emanating from a nexus of torment behind my shoulder blade and sometimes stretching all the way up to the base of my skull and all the way down into my fingers. Typing was agony, but everything was painful; even at rest it was horrible.
I'd had episodes of nagging pain from so-called repetitive strain injuries before, the product of long hours hunched over laptops and game controllers over the course of decades, but nothing like this. A few months later, after the initial unrelenting agony had subsided to a permanent hum of more moderate pain, it was diagnosed as brachial neuritis, inflammation of the nerve path that travels from the base of your neck down to your hand.
The good news was that I hadn't lost any function in my right hand. The bad news was that there was nothing much to be done about the pain in the meantime. Traditional pain meds don't really do much for nerve pain, and after trying out the small range of nerve pain medications, I discovered that they all sent me loopy in ways I would rather not ever experience again.
As I lay there, unable to play my guitar or video games, I couldn't help but think about the difficult ones. Video games imbue suffering with meaning: you try and fail, try and fail, until you succeed. Perhaps, I thought, playing a game like Silksong during a period of real-life suffering and disability might help me look at it differently.
Silksong has the appearance of a very beautiful nightmare, and the energy of a horror-tinged European animated TV show you only half-remember from your childhood. Its player character, Hornet, is a masked spider in a red cloak; the other characters are oddly cute but dead-eyed bug creatures, hunched over with their own suffering.
The journey mirrors Dante's in The Divine Comedy from hell through purgatory to heaven, from cursed depths to the home of god. The piteous outpost where Hornet begins the game is little more than a shanty town; rag-clad bugs huddled in a place of temporary safety. The populace of Pharloom accepts their fate, cowering in every settlement with blank stares and sorrowful posture: this is how things are meant to be.
As I navigated the game's twisted world, I encountered an underlying narrative of overcoming the odds – of suffering and redemption. But it wasn't as simple as that. The Citadel, barely the halfway point of the game, felt like a parallel dimension, somewhere I could slip into not just on my Nintendo Switch but in my mind.
Hampered by pain, I had to explore this world very slowly. It takes me months to make my way painstakingly through a game I would have rinsed in three weeks in my previous life. My pilgrimage cannot be rushed. A lot of managing pain involves cultivating a state of safety for your nervous system, minimising stress as much as possible.
But difficult video games are stressful. The frustration of failure causes my hands to grip the controller too hard and my fingers begin to hurt. The adrenaline of victory sends me into a state of exhilarated fight-or-flight that my nerves can't currently handle. Instead of disappearing into Silksong like I have with other games since I was a teenager, I play for 20, 40 minutes at a time, over months.
Unexpectedly, this makes Pharloom begin to feel like a work of obsession. The detail everywhere is extraordinary, even in the writhing maggots that carpet the ground in the aptly named Putrified Ducts. But also, where in most game worlds everything feels oriented towards the player – fun playgrounds laid out for your enjoyment, a daub of yellow paint here and there to show you where to go – Hornet's presence, my presence, feels almost incidental.
This does not apply to pain, however. No amount of effort will persuade nerves to heal any faster, and pain is not something that can be overcome with sheer determination. I've carried plenty of strategies from video games into my real life before: I have applied the same bullheaded tenacity to learning languages, writing books, supporting and caring for my friends and family.
But nothing I've ever learned from video games has helped me deal with pain. Instead I've had to learn how to do things more slowly, stay within my capacity, and admit my limitations without guilt or self-admonishment.
As I have been playing through this game, I have also been reading endlessly about modern pain science. At first, I was doing this rather desperately, in search of a way out, a way to speed things up, to get myself out of suffering. What I learned instead is that acknowledging pain is the first step to learning to live with it, and that learning to live with it is what it actually means to overcome it.
After four months and 40 hours, I have done almost everything there is to do in Pharloom. I am fighting the very final boss, and I have been trying to defeat her since before Christmas. It hasn't worked out quite so elegantly, but Silksong has helped me look at suffering a little differently.
There doesn't need to be a point to it; it doesn't necessarily come with a tidy narrative of perseverance and eventual redemption. But you can learn to work around it. You can make your way through.
Last year, I became intimately familiar with suffering. In March, I started experiencing excruciating pain in my right arm and shoulder – burning, zapping, energy-sapping pain that left me unable to think straight, emanating from a nexus of torment behind my shoulder blade and sometimes stretching all the way up to the base of my skull and all the way down into my fingers. Typing was agony, but everything was painful; even at rest it was horrible.
I'd had episodes of nagging pain from so-called repetitive strain injuries before, the product of long hours hunched over laptops and game controllers over the course of decades, but nothing like this. A few months later, after the initial unrelenting agony had subsided to a permanent hum of more moderate pain, it was diagnosed as brachial neuritis, inflammation of the nerve path that travels from the base of your neck down to your hand.
The good news was that I hadn't lost any function in my right hand. The bad news was that there was nothing much to be done about the pain in the meantime. Traditional pain meds don't really do much for nerve pain, and after trying out the small range of nerve pain medications, I discovered that they all sent me loopy in ways I would rather not ever experience again.
As I lay there, unable to play my guitar or video games, I couldn't help but think about the difficult ones. Video games imbue suffering with meaning: you try and fail, try and fail, until you succeed. Perhaps, I thought, playing a game like Silksong during a period of real-life suffering and disability might help me look at it differently.
Silksong has the appearance of a very beautiful nightmare, and the energy of a horror-tinged European animated TV show you only half-remember from your childhood. Its player character, Hornet, is a masked spider in a red cloak; the other characters are oddly cute but dead-eyed bug creatures, hunched over with their own suffering.
The journey mirrors Dante's in The Divine Comedy from hell through purgatory to heaven, from cursed depths to the home of god. The piteous outpost where Hornet begins the game is little more than a shanty town; rag-clad bugs huddled in a place of temporary safety. The populace of Pharloom accepts their fate, cowering in every settlement with blank stares and sorrowful posture: this is how things are meant to be.
As I navigated the game's twisted world, I encountered an underlying narrative of overcoming the odds – of suffering and redemption. But it wasn't as simple as that. The Citadel, barely the halfway point of the game, felt like a parallel dimension, somewhere I could slip into not just on my Nintendo Switch but in my mind.
Hampered by pain, I had to explore this world very slowly. It takes me months to make my way painstakingly through a game I would have rinsed in three weeks in my previous life. My pilgrimage cannot be rushed. A lot of managing pain involves cultivating a state of safety for your nervous system, minimising stress as much as possible.
But difficult video games are stressful. The frustration of failure causes my hands to grip the controller too hard and my fingers begin to hurt. The adrenaline of victory sends me into a state of exhilarated fight-or-flight that my nerves can't currently handle. Instead of disappearing into Silksong like I have with other games since I was a teenager, I play for 20, 40 minutes at a time, over months.
Unexpectedly, this makes Pharloom begin to feel like a work of obsession. The detail everywhere is extraordinary, even in the writhing maggots that carpet the ground in the aptly named Putrified Ducts. But also, where in most game worlds everything feels oriented towards the player – fun playgrounds laid out for your enjoyment, a daub of yellow paint here and there to show you where to go – Hornet's presence, my presence, feels almost incidental.
This does not apply to pain, however. No amount of effort will persuade nerves to heal any faster, and pain is not something that can be overcome with sheer determination. I've carried plenty of strategies from video games into my real life before: I have applied the same bullheaded tenacity to learning languages, writing books, supporting and caring for my friends and family.
But nothing I've ever learned from video games has helped me deal with pain. Instead I've had to learn how to do things more slowly, stay within my capacity, and admit my limitations without guilt or self-admonishment.
As I have been playing through this game, I have also been reading endlessly about modern pain science. At first, I was doing this rather desperately, in search of a way out, a way to speed things up, to get myself out of suffering. What I learned instead is that acknowledging pain is the first step to learning to live with it, and that learning to live with it is what it actually means to overcome it.
After four months and 40 hours, I have done almost everything there is to do in Pharloom. I am fighting the very final boss, and I have been trying to defeat her since before Christmas. It hasn't worked out quite so elegantly, but Silksong has helped me look at suffering a little differently.
There doesn't need to be a point to it; it doesn't necessarily come with a tidy narrative of perseverance and eventual redemption. But you can learn to work around it. You can make your way through.
4 months and 40 hours is a looong time to be stuck on one game, and I'm glad you were able to learn more about pain science from reading up instead of just waiting for the game to heal your arm 
. It's actually really cool that the game helped you see suffering in a different light, though! The idea that there doesn't need to be a "point" or a narrative of perseverance is kinda beautiful 
.
I feel so bad for the author, going through that kind of pain and disability 
. It's amazing how gaming helped them cope and even find meaning in their suffering 
. The fact that they had to play the game so slowly because of their condition made it a unique experience - like they were observing the world from a different perspective 
.
. It's not about being strong or brave; it's about learning to live with it and finding ways to manage it 
. The author's discovery of modern pain science was super insightful - acknowledging and accepting your limitations is the first step to moving forward 
.
️! The writer's experience with brachial neuritis made me appreciate how different it is from other types of pain. They're not just struggling to beat a game; they're navigating real-life suffering and disability 
. It's about being mindful and managing our limits 
.
. Maybe we don't need a 'win' or 'lose' mentality, but rather a willingness to adapt and find ways to cope 
), but because of the valuable lesson it's teaching me about resilience 
.
I played this game too, and while it's super pretty and sounds like a horror-tinged animated show 
.
! The little details everywhere are so cool 
. And I love how it's not just about victory or failure, but more about managing your energy and stress levels 
.
. It's hard to find ways to cope, especially when meds don't work 
. But reading up on modern pain science has been super helpful for me too 
.
. It's about finding ways to adapt and move forward, even when it feels like you're stuck in a loop 
.
. It's crazy how video games can become an obsession when you're in pain, and it's not just about beating the game - it's about taking care of yourself too 
.
.
!
.
What's crazy is how much pain can affect your perception of gaming, and vice versa. The author's experience makes me wonder if some games are actually good therapy or a way to cope with tough times... Interesting! 