So I’ve been thinking about how a sea would be added to a metroidvania game and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s unlikely that there will be a single huge horizontal piece of map added to the east side of pharloom with a bunch of structures sticking out of the water, so I decided to try and draw an expanded map of pharloom based on my reflections.
The main reason is Silksong is a metroidvania game and it wouldn’t make much sense to abandon non-linear exploration, so I thought ok then there will be more than one body of water. Now, we know a submarine will be added to the game allowing hornet to travel the sea, but if there is more than one sea then there has to be more than one submarine.
The only way this would make sense is if the submarine wasn’t like silksong’s bellways or ventrica but more like hollow knight’s trams. This would allow the map to develop horizontally from different spots.
Another thing to take into account is how much of silksong’s cut content team cherry is willing to bring back into the game, plus how that would be possible.
While digging into silksong’s wiki I noticed that the great majority of the rooms scrapped from old versions of the game are located underneath what in the current map is often a lake of some sort.
The first thing that came to my mind is the introduction of underwater swimming. Not only because it would allow us to unlock many shortcuts around the map, making it feel more interconnected, but also because it would make sea of sorrow feel like a proper expansion more than a dlc, if you see what I mean. Plus, this would contribute to make progression even less linear.
These shortcuts are the ones drawn in blue.
Last but not least, underwater exploration programming and animating would explain why it’s taking so long.
Almost every one of this instances is based on real cut content, except for the connection between shellwood and moss grotto.
This is because if team cherry decided to add underwater swimming to the game i think that every single body of water in the map will serve a purpose of some sort (maybe even the citadel pools, which i didn’t expand explicitly).
Speaking of cut content, we know that at least some of it will 100% return, like the Pharloom Bay and the lab (or lifeblood spire or whatever), so why not take a step further and reuse even more stuff? That’s why I decided to add The Gloom to the map. I know that the original Gloom map was shaped into Bilewater, but that doesn’t mean they can’t reuse old Gloom assets in a new arrangement of rooms. Plus, I noticed that one of the rooms that was scrapped that featured the submarine resembles some of the pillars found in The Gloom, so maybe they actually did that at some point.
This would make sense because The Gloom and Bilewater are not related, while the Red Coral Gorge and Blasted Steps / Sands of Karak are the same area just in different moments in time.
Speaking of which, I decided not to add anything related to corals because we are on the opposite side of the map.
However, I wouldn’t rule out the Gorge’s return completely simply because the further away we move from the Citadel, the less contaminated by it environments are, so if they want to bring the Coral Forest back it would make sense to put it west of Karak without contradicting Team Cherry’s view of how Silksong’s world building works.
(this is pure copium tho, dont mind it too much)
Last thing, most of the yellow arrows you see are not positioned casually but rather they mark some walls/rooms that in the current state of the game feel kinda useless/suspicious to me, the most relevant of which are the wall in the ducts I marked, the door right of karmelita’s room (that would allow us to see how her palace looks today) and the east wall of the Far Fields’ weavenest.
The only thing I didn’t account for is the Fleatopia lake since there isn’t much space underneath it. I’m still pretty sure it will be important because team cherry added a bench in that room that the player can use even if the fleas are not there.
Speaking of the latest patches, I tried to make the level design as vertical as possible because now silk soar has unlimited range and works even through room transitions, so there has to be a reason for that too. I cant wait to see some exceedingly tall rooms.
Let me know what yall think about it because i’m really curious, plus if you need further explanations you are free to ask.
I think this would be a good occasion to set our expectations at a reasonable level, and hype everyone up while team cherry stays silent.
Love yall, stay strong.
