Hollow Knight: Silksong Needs Boss Health Bars — Make Those Fights Actually Heart‑Pounding
Hollow Knight: Silksong does not show on-screen boss health bars, and that UI choice affects how players track damage during longer fights. The game keeps enemy health hidden for major encounters, while some bosses still change phases or visuals as they take damage. At the same time, other action games use visible indicators or visual cracking to show progress during battles.
Silksong’s boss UI
Silksong presents many boss encounters without a traditional on-screen health bar. Instead, fights rely on animation changes, phase shifts, and other visual cues to indicate damage states and progress.
For example, some bosses enter different phases as they lose health, which signals that the fight has moved forward. However, the game does not display a persistent numeric or bar-based health indicator for those bosses.
How other games show enemy damage
Other action and action‑RPG titles use visible enemy health indicators to track progress. Many Soulslike games display red health bars for bosses, which let players see remaining health at a glance.
Separately, some developers use visual damage states instead of bars. For instance, Death’s Door shows purple cracks on enemies that increase as they take damage, rather than a traditional health bar.
Examples and player feedback
Elden Ring and Lies of P use visible boss health bars in their UI. Conversely, Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight and Silksong do not show boss health bars on screen.
Some outlets and players have discussed how visual indicators or health bars affect the pace and feel of boss fights, noting differences between games that show enemy HP and those that do not.
Recent patches and current state
Team Cherry has released post-launch patches for Silksong. Recent updates have included bug fixes and other technical adjustments.
As of the latest publicly available patches, the game has not added a persistent on-screen boss health bar.
What that means now
Players who want visible boss health information currently rely on in-fight visual cues and phase changes in Silksong. Other games provide different UI approaches, such as bars or progressive visual cracking, to show enemy damage during combat.
