Creation of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Pharloom map reveals cut areas & major changes

As part of the Game Worlds exhibition at ACMI in Melbourne, Australia, we got to see the breakdown of Pharloom’s creation for Hollow Knight: Silksong. We learned just how significantly it changed throughout the course of development.

Hornet was originally planned as an additional character to swap to in 2017’s Hollow Knight. As plans changed and ambitions grew, however, Team Cherry morphed the bonus content into a separate, full-fledged game.

Eight years later, that game is finally upon us as Silksong launched to record-shattering, and well, platform-shattering success. Though despite the sales and critical acclaim, many details surrounding its development timeline remain a mystery.

Slowly but surely, select tidbits are now coming to light, and we just got our best look yet at what really went down over the near-decade-long stretch.

Featured in ACMI’s new Game Worlds exhibition in Melbourne, Australia – which Dexerto was invited to attend ahead of its public opening – Silksong is not only playable, but a great deal of behind-the-scenes information is on display too. It’s here that we learned of Pharloom’s twists and turns from 2017 to what we see today.

How Silksong’s map evolved over eight years of development

Next to interactive 3D maps, sprawling charts of boss code, and hand-drawn artwork, one particular feature in the exhibit caught my eye. An interactive timeline charting Pharloom’s evolution from the very first sketch all the way through to the final rendition in today’s 1.0 build.

All the way back in the same year Hollow Knight launched, Team Cherry planned for verticality in its next sprawling adventure. The initial layout seen in that sketch was topped by the ‘City of Song,’ a location housing the final boss chamber. Clearly, this is what we now know as The Citadel. Merely a month later, that name change seemingly came into effect.

By November 2017, many of the map’s bigger spaces were starting to take shape. However, certain areas in this older version didn’t quite make the cut. In particular, we can see an area called the Red Coral Gorge on the left-hand side.

There’s no way of telling what this area may have looked or played like, but based on the name and the vibrant blue visuals, it likely focuses on water-based mechanics and enemies.

After four years in development, the Red Coral Gorge was ultimately removed from the map in September 2021. For what reason? Who’s to say. And there’s no guarantee we’ll ever see what might have come from this unique playspace.

Seven years ahead of Silksong’s release, the first iteration of the Moss Grotto can be seen on the map. Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite, Bilewater, joined the mix in June 2019. Though it wasn’t until August 7, 2025, that the entire map of Pharloom was locked into place.

You can see highlights from the full timeline below.

“So we have a plan…” Team Cherry’s William Pellen told ACMI. “But the plan is never so calcified that it can’t bear a change of course two weeks later, or two months later, or two years later.”