Getting lost is definitely a love it or hate it kind of thing. I love getting lost in games. I wish more games had it as a feature. It’s extremely rare these days. Most games hold your hand like a toddler at Disneyland.
It’s okay to hate getting lost. There are loads and loads of games out there for you. I just cross my fingers for a few more games for me!
Does it have an auto-map feature? That’s the biggest difference for me. I enjoy the newer MVs but the auto-map feature makes it impossible (for me) to get lost. I’m used to games without any kind of auto-map.
Edit: I checked it out on steam. Looks really cool!
I think I’d put it this way - I like adventuring, exploring, and finding my way through an immersive world. I don’t like when I can’t seem to stumble into the exact right clue or secret passage or interactable and waste up to possibly hours scouring the same locations over and over.
That said, metroidvanias are my favorite videogame genre. I just had to accept that it’s okay to look up a guide or wiki before I get fully tilted.
Yeah I don’t like banging my head into a wall either. What I mean by enjoying getting lost is being in a dangerous area where I don’t know how to get back to safety. It’s a mini adventure within an adventure to figure out how to escape without dying.
One game I play, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, has a built in mechanism to create situations like that: shafts you can fall down that put you into an unexplored level that’s deeper and more difficult than the one you were on. It’s pretty effective at creating these mini adventures though fans of the game complain about them all the time.
I’m bookmarking this link so I can read it when I have the time. Having said that, it should be clear that I haven’t read the article, yet.
For me personally, 80’s and 90’s 2D Metroid and Castlevania games were fun, but for me, something transcendental happened with the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I’m 100% certain that I am incapable of truly putting it into words, but I’m sure a myriad of people have done it, and done it far better than I ever could. I bought the game on a whim because I enjoyed Castlevania 3 on the NES so much. Other than fighting games, 2D games were basically blasé for 90’s 32-bit systems like the original PlayStation. Truthfully, I’m having a hard time recalling at the moment why I decided to buy the game. But I’m absolutely 10010% sure it was a good idea and I’m honestly thankful to my teenage self for that decision.
Modern Metroidvanias are fun, too. Truth be told, I gave up on Hollow Knight. I’m a patient, older gamer, so maybe that comes into play. But it eventually got to a point where it simply wasn’t fun anymore. I was confused about what I needed to do next and I wasn’t making any progress in the game. And then I had to set it aside for almost a year. When I tried to return, my memory had faded to the point where I really struggled to play it and make progress. That made me immensely sad. Once I realized that, I simply set it aside.
On the other hand, I played all the Nintendo DS Castlevania Metroidvania games back in the day and even still own the original cartridges. Via Steam, I also played the Gameboy Advanced Castlevanias. They are so much fun for me. So much fun that I purchased the Dominus collection on Steam, which is essentially all the DS games that I already own.
I also played Bloodstained: ROTN. I know there’s a lot of criticism about the game, but I’ll be honest, I loved every freakin’ minute of it. I wasn’t a huge fan of the graphics, but the game play was exactly what I needed at the time and I don’t regret that purchase one bit.
And to finalize things, nice to meet other Metroidvania lovers. We might not all agree on the nitty-gritty details, but it’s still neat to hear from others. Back in the 90s when I was absolutely in love with SOTN despite the fact that everybody else was hating on it entirely because it’s a “2D platformer”, it was hard to imagine that ~30 years later there would be entire communities of people who love these types of games.
Man…I had the same experiences as you with Castlevania games and loved the hell outta Bloodstained. Wish I had more to add but wanted to at least high five lol
I count Dark Souls as a Metroidvania in my head, honestly.
But I think the actual defining feature is unlocking new abilities to reach new locations.
DS1 has you unlocking new areas that are interconnected with ones previously explored, but you don’t really unlock new moves to get to a new place, it usually just happens after you beat a boss or buy an item.
It’s a good point, they all have item or ability gated progression with backtracking and alternate routes. The more I think about the question, the less of an answer I have…
The line I personally draw between Metroidvania and Zelda like is the ability to sequence break without glitches and a focus on platforming as the core of movement.
I fundamentally dissagree with the term “metroidvania” because Metroid and Castlevania are different. Both are what I call a “side-scrolling action platformer,” but Metroid gives the player powerups to encourage them to explore their environment, while Castlevanias powerups focus almost entirely on combat. Therefore Metroid includes “adventure” in its genre, but Castlevania does not.
I never got lost in a Metroid game, but I also have a pretty good ability to remember how I got somewhere. Metroid does a generally pretty good job making nearly every room memorable and unique to help players not get lost, and Metroid has mostly included a map to help players as well. If players are still getting lost, IMO that’s just a skill issue.
But I understand what the author is trying to say, and they are right. Actually getting lost is not what they mean, they mean level and game design that lends itself to encouraging exploration by trial and error. Level design and game design that shows the player some impassable wall early and then when they get the ability to pass it later on, leaving it entirely up to the player to remember. Backtracking is a mandatory staple, if a Metroid game has no backtracking, especially for item expansions, then it is not a real Metroid game. Making the player be the one to do the exploring and not holding their hand is crucial to a good Metroid experience. This is why I consider Metroid Fusion, Other M, and Dread to be among the weaker Metroid titles. All three have an obvious, forced always on hand-holding mechanic that you don’t find in other Metroid games. Like the developers don’t trust the player to actually be smart enough to figure the game out.
The “metroids” and the “vanias” do definitely feel different, but the cross section in that Venn diagram is pretty obvious, and that’s what the genre is named for. I prefer the “metroids” to the “vanias”, but even the “vanias” have tons of non-combat upgrades.
while Castlevanias powerups focus almost entirely on combat.
Castlevania has always (edit: I mean since SotN) had a pretty heavy emphasis on movement abilities to access new areas. Looking at SotN, we have double jump, high jump, swimming, mist form, bat form, wolf form, as well as good ol' keys to literally unlock the environment.
This is why I consider Metroid Fusion, Other M, and Dread to be among the weaker Metroid titles. All three have an obvious, forced always on hand-holding mechanic that you don't find in other Metroid games.
I'll give you Fusion and Other M, but I'm going to have to disagree on Dread here. The game does sort of guide you along an intended first playthrough route, but so does Super! It's a delicate balance to give the player room for exploration while still ensuring they don't get stuck not knowing where to go. That balancing act should not be seen as disqualifying, or else we're throwing out the genre's foundational text too. If anything, the biggest difference between Dread and Super here is that Dread actually has more developer-intended sequence breaks. If you play Super as intended without utilizing any speedrunning tech, you almost always follow the same route in the end.
Castlevania has always had a pretty heavy emphasis on movement abilities to access new areas
The -vania part always seemed a bit odd to me as well because of the history of the games, but it makes sense based on when the term became popularized. If someone had tried to coin a term for the genre earlier I think it would’ve been Metroid-like alone, specifically because the early entries of Castlevania didn’t really have any movement-based mechanics upgrades until SotN. Even things being locked behind item progression was only in Simon’s Quest before that (although it looks like Vampire Killer had some more open levels where you had to find keys). I’m not familiar with Rondo of Blood, which looks like it had some exploration of levels with the secondary character, but again without upgrading movement mechanics.
So you basically had Metroid ('86) and Super Metroid ('94) being quintessential examples of the modern metroidvania genre, whereas there were almost a dozen Castlevanias before SotN ('97) that were mostly linear.
But that’s exactly why we have the word metroidvania.
The term Metroidvania initially referred to entries in Konami’s gothic 2-D action Castlevania series whose mazey maps closely evoked the Metroid games
It was sometimes used derisively in forums, but it was to tell apart the likes of Symphony of the Night from the likes of the linear ones. And then as we got more Castlevanias like Symphony of the Night in the GBA era, it became part of the definition of what this genre is.
I suppose I should've been clearer there, I really just meant the Koji Igarashi-era games, not Classicvania. As the other comment mentions, the term Metroidvania was actually originally coined to separate the two eras of Castlevania, before the genre exploded in popularity and it became repurposed.
The game gained controversy when it was discovered that the homosexual designer Jacques Servin inserted an Easter egg that generated shirtless men in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other and appear in great numbers on certain dates, such as Friday the 13th. The egg was caught shortly after release and removed from future copies of the game. He cited his actions as a response to the intolerable working conditions he allegedly suffered at Maxis, particularly working 60-hour weeks and being denied time off. He also reported that he added the “studs”, as he called them, after a heterosexual programmer programmed “bimbo” female characters into the game, and that he wanted to highlight the “implicit heterosexuality” of many games. Although he had initially planned for the characters to appear only occasionally, the random number generator he had created malfunctioned, leading them to appear frequently. Servin was fired as a result, with Maxis reporting that his dismissal was due only to his addition of unauthorized content. This caused a member of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), a gay AIDS organization, to call for a boycott of all of Maxis’ products, a measure which Servin rejected. Some months later, a group named RTMark announced its existence and claimed responsibility for the Easter egg being inserted into the game, along with 16 other acts of “creative subversion.” Servin stated that he had received a money order of $5,000 from RTMark for the prank. It was revealed later on that Servin was a cofounder of RTMark.
Servin would go on to be one of the founders of The Yes Men.
Balatro is 1) a fluke, an exception, a rarity and 2) not something big studios could even possibly replicate. What would be the point of a big studio trying to make a game that one developer can pull off? The closest the likes of Ubisoft in particular are getting to games like Baltro are their Indie-esque side projects that parts of their bigger studios engage in on the side, like Valiant Hearts. Those can never be enough to finance a big operation though.
You’re missing my point and arguing against a strawman here. All I’m arguing is that the things AAA studios focus on (like hyper-realism) are not the things that make a game fun, and AAA studios sound be putting fun as the focus.
I’m not arguing against a strawman, but against someone who might want to look into this topic a bit more closely. Balatro sold two million copies less than Star Wars Outlaws. People obviously want flashy spectacle more than tight mechanics - it’s just that even those higher sales figures weren’t enough to compensate for the bloated development budgets. That’s the real lesson. The old method of spending more and more money to make more and more money isn’t quite working anymore - not that people don’t want pretty graphics anymore (because they still do want those more than basic Indie art).
Because Balatro is a single developer’s vision realized without compromise, without producers, writers, tech people, art directors, etc. all meddling with the production in the usual “design by committee” approach that large studios are using. This kind of game can only exist as a solo or very small team project.
…money?
The mantra of big studios and publishers is to spend lots of money to make lots of money. Balatro sold a mere 3.5 million copies over the course of a year, for a price of $14. That’s just $34.3 million taking Steam’s 30% cut into account. Huge money for a solo dev (especially given that the budget was just $125,000), but both the sales figure and the sales revenue are in serious flop territory by big studio standards. Star Wars outlaws underperformed at 5.5 million copies sold, since it cost hundreds of millions to develop and market, including having the highest marketing budget of any game ever made. To put this into perspective, this means they spent significantly more than $150 million (the usual figure for a top of the line AAA game these days) on marketing alone.
You can not generate the kind of money that large publishers and studios need to survive with little Indie games.
Okay, I’ll bite: Since I’m very clearly wrong about everything, show me a large studio that doesn’t use the design by committee approach, makes small games on Indie budgets and survives on that.
Ulrich, mate, you’re more German about this than I am - and that’s not meant as a compliment. Allow me to take the scepter as the most anal German user in this discussion back with another pedantic, probably too condescending reply.
I don’t remember if I explained this to you directly or someone else in this discussion, but the thing with large studios is that they are incredibly art-heavy (lots of texture artists, 3D modelers, animators, etc.), because you can compartmentalize art and have many little worker bees work on their little flowers (both figuratively and literally) in parallel and then assemble it all together into one big mess of an open world game with a billion map markers for you to ignore. For many years now, ever since the seventh console generation, this has been the ticket, this brought in the big bucks in the gaming industry.
The Western studios that pioneered this approach are now being threatened on two fronts: 1) Eastern (non-Japanese) studios that use the same art-heavy approach (but with different organization, which doesn’t matter here, because they too are spending lots on many worker bees) on F2P and Gacha games, which offer spectacle and impressive vistas and a billion trillion map markers (but for free*) and 2) a tiny handful of absolutely ginormously successful Western titles - Indies, former Indies and AAA - that don’t care one bit about the presentation, spectacle and artist-driven content beyond the most basic of necessities (see: Minecraft’s blocky blocks and unfiltered textures) or a litany of tie-ins simulating variety and freshness (e.g. Fortnite, Rocket League), but instead shine through organic player interaction and user-generated content.
It’s not Indie darlings like Balatro and Stardew Valley that threaten these publishers. Like I explained before, the revenue those games are generating is not sufficient to sustain large enterprises and because their success is incredibly random and unpredictable, big studios can’t just divide their armies of worker bees into smaller teams that each work on a little game, with all those little games then in bulk creating the same revenue as a large titles. Since it’s possible to find 500 people that can draw horse testicle textures, but not possible to find 500 people on the job market that can write a good script for a game or design a fun gameplay loop (seriously, those are the rarest talents in the entire industry) and finish the damn thing in time too, the idea you’re proposing simply isn’t realistic. The most you can hope for is that Ubisoft and others find a few people in their large studios and allow them to work on little artistic high-concept side projects every now and again (like for example Grow Up/Home), as an image boost for the company, a treat for fans, but not to make money, because these projects really don’t.
The unfortunate thing is that the likely reaction to the success of Chinese and Korean F2P/Gacha games is that Western studios will try to emulate those. It’s not even a thing for the future - this has already started. The whole loot box nightmare we’ve all been moaning and groaning about is a direct copy of South Korean MMO mechanics - and Ubisoft’s AAAA(AAAAA) pirate MMO disaster was a blatant attempt at going after the kind of audience, but they wanted to have the cake and eat it too, release it as a full-price game and keep people busy with busywork loot boxes. Same thing with Bioware’s Anthem. One of few successful Western games of this type is Destiny. Ubisoft, EA, ActiBliBethMic (and Japanese publishers) are likely going to bet hard on the large Gacha game idea (at least that’s what I’m expecting), because they can use their existing experience with managing large art departments in those games as well, only having adapt mechanics, monetization and marketing accordingly. I doubt they’ll be successful, but maybe this can save them. Our hope as players who aren’t enjoy game mechanics and monetization that are optimized to drive up the credit card debt of whales [players who spend a fortune on F2P games] is that these projects end up making enough money so that some of the profits will get spent on games that aren’t thinly disguised Skinner boxes.
Feel free to tell me whether or not this makes sense to you. I have a love/hate relationship with this discussion and topic. They are both equally frustrating and interesting.
It feels like very few progress was made graphically in the last eight years. We’ve reached a plateau. I mean, STAR WARS: Battlefront (2015) to me is as good as it gets and that was almost ten years ago. We used to have massive leaps in graphics all the time, but that’s no longer the case.
The big difference is that, that game ran at 60 fps on the Xbox One and the PS4. Games barely look better or as good as this, but are atrociously harder to run. That’s the big difference. The death of optimization and the “just throw more hardware at it” era.
Most executives at large publishers aren’t gamers. Pretty pictures are more likely to entice them than deep mechanics. They could assign 5 people to make a game like Balatro or Stardew Valley, but they never would because they don’t work like that, they came up through the MBA route and think in terms of enterprise software development lifecycles. Also, “making money” isn’t good enough for them, they want to make so much money that they can pay themselves millions of dollars despite never actually contributing to the game.
The problem isn't detailed graphics, the problem is shit performance. The new generation of UE games look average, and require ridiculous hardware + upscaling to run smoothly
Guess I’m alone, I really do love good graphics, I love getting lost in the digital world… I’m just not going to pay $100 per game for that experience. It’s the endlessly growing list of shit they want you to buy on top of buying the game itself that’s destroying the video game market. Every new game that comes out has DLCs and expansions and season passes and skins and bullshit bullshit bullshit. Piracy is back in the rise because all the corporations forgot and got too greedy again.
nytimes.com
Aktywne