A good metroidvania always hits the spot. It doesn’t need to be groundbreaking, or to reinvent the wheel; just the right balance of mobility, intertwining level design, and upgrades that change how you move around and interact with the game space. Get those fundamentals just right—easier said than done, admittedly—and …
The revamped PlayStation Plus subscription service is here, bringing with it a library of a few hundred games (for the Extra and Deluxe tiers, at any rate). The value is clear—it takes playing just a few games from the list for the subscription to work out cheaper than buying the …
At a glance, Moo Lander bears a striking—and intentional, I’d assume—resemblance to Ori and the Blind Forest. Beautiful hi-def 2D scenery with the use of natural colours, corrupted plant life that feels both organic and slightly alien, and level design built around flow and momentum create a similar atmosphere of …
Between Touhou Luna Nights and Record of Lodoss War -Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-, Team Ladybug is onto something: with the right foundation, just about any property can make a compelling metroidvania. Case in point: I didn’t know a whole lot about Record of Lodoss War going into Wonder Labyrinth, and …
I don’t envy anyone tasked with making a new Metroid game in 2021. Reviving a series that’s so fiercely beloved comes with a heavy burden of expectations that often contradict: to recapture everything that we loved about those classics 20 years ago, but also to carry the series forward into …
Last week, ININ Games announced the western release date for Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World, and it’s not far away: May 28, 2021. Asha in Monster World is a remake of Monster World IV, which originally came out for Sega Mega Drive in Japan in 1994. That version never …
There’s no shortage of metroidvanias these days. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends on your perspective: I know plenty of people who get exasperated at the sheer volume of them, but I still get a flutter of excitement whenever I see the telltale Metroid-style map in a screenshot …
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a spiritual successor to the acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, is coming to mobile thanks to a partnership between ArtPlay and NetEase. The mobile version of Bloodstained will be a premium title (in other words, not reworked into a free-to-play game) that “features all …
If you like exploration-centric platformers (aka metroidvanias) and emotive, story-driven games, you’re going to want to keep an eye out for Reina & Jericho. This “touching metroidvania from Reclamation Games following a woman’s time bending journey to save the love of her life” comes to Switch and PC next year. Reina & …
Last month, indie developer Benny Heller released Arachnowopunk, a single-button, infinite-runner metroidvania. It’s a concept that doesn’t sound like it should work—the defining features of the genre are a variety of different abilities that improve your ability to explore, and the freedom of movement to actually do that exploring. How …
