Is this just Silksong with mushrooms? Heart of Mycelium announced

Hollow Knight: Silksong only landed in September 2025, and already the genre is filling up with titles chasing its shadow. The latest is Heart of Mycelium, a 2D action-platformer from solo developer Melvin Bentinger — a fungal take on the metroidvania formula that wears its inspirations very visibly on its sleeve.

The pitch

You play as an anthropomorphic mushroom tasked with keeping nature in balance, hunted by the kings and queens of a decaying world. The pixel art pulls from the 8- and 16-bit era, giving the game a nostalgic look. The developer describes the setup this way:

> Your role as a fungus is to maintain balance in nature. You must not allow anyone to stand in your way, even if all the kings and queens of these lands are hunting you. So be sure to rest from time to time and make allies where possible — and then you might just have a chance at victory.

On paper, the feature list is solid: 45+ unique enemies, powerful boss encounters, 10+ atmospheric locations, and distinct abilities tied to different fungal species. The problem is that nearly every mechanical beat — dashing, wall-climbing, aerial combat, secret-hunting — maps almost directly onto Silksong's design. Whether that reads as homage or imitation depends on your tolerance for genre familiarity.

The reality check

Heart of Mycelium is available to wishlist on Steam right now, PC only. No release date has been announced. No price has been set. Bentinger appears to be a solo developer with no publicly traceable track record, which means the usual caveats apply: single-person projects routinely slip by a year or more, and some never ship at all.

The 2025 metroidvania market is genuinely crowded — Nine Sols, Animal Well, and Blasphemous 2 have already raised the bar for what the genre can do. For Heart of Mycelium to stand out, it will need more than a mushroom skin on familiar mechanics. That said, if Bentinger can nail the feel and get it out the door, there's clearly an audience hungry for more games in this space.