Metroidvania General - An overcrowded genre with recycled themes and muddled mechanics.

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Aeterna Lucis has blinked and delayed their game by at least three months to 2026 to not compete with Silksong.
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Edit: Faeland too.
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Think we'll see any leaks before Sept 4, say from a Switch/PS4/Xbox broken street date? Or is it only digital?
 
Grub said:
Seems a bit dumb. I feel like the people who were going to buy the Aeterna Noctis sequel are going to buy it anyway whether or not Silksong released around the same time. It's only a special set of metroidvania masochists that liked the first one anyway.
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Really sucks. Sucks even harder for Faeland considering it's allegedly a Zelda 2 like and those are already rare enough.
 
BiggestKai said:
Really sucks. Sucks even harder for Faeland considering it's allegedly a Zelda 2 like and those are already rare enough.
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I haven't heard much about Faeland. Is it a sequel to Islets? The logo looks similar. Either way a Zelda 2 like would be cool. Zelda 2's pretty underrated. Especially with the redux patch that fixes a lot of the poor decisions they made. The combat's a lot of fun.
 
Grub said:
I haven't heard much about Faeland. Is it a sequel to Islets? The logo looks similar. Either way a Zelda 2 like would be cool. Zelda 2's pretty underrated. Especially with the redux patch that fixes a lot of the poor decisions they made. The combat's a lot of fun.
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I've been keeping my eye on fayland, it went on early acess for a while and it's very pretty but combat itself looks kinda mediocre and slow. You can find materials and stuff to upgrade your clothes and bow etc. A lot of platforming with traps and swiming too.


If you want a zelda 2 like MV i recommend phoenotopia very high. It got bad reviews on release because the game was too hard but dev updated it altho i recommend playing in the original difficulty that disables all the free advantages like no stamina while attacking or eating food from the menu. Yeah the game has stamina to attack but no invincible roll. You have to eat food during combat and mash to eat faster. You only heal 50% hp on save point (used to be nothing lol) so you have to shoot lizards, rats and scorpions and cook them to survive.

It's fairly challenging and does take a while to get used. Some enemies have contact dmg and others don't, the first boss for example doesn't and punishes you hard if you get too far.


You have a magic instrument like zelda and the puzzles are much better and harder, it's borderline puzzle game that takes al ong time to 100%. A lot of stuff is optional like the crossbow (BUY IT ASAP) and huge secret combat techniques like freaking *dash attack* (this one is some old nes manual shit), if you don't mind spoilers i'd say look a guide for them cause i missed half of them. All subweapon upgrades also require 100% of gemstones of so NOT waste it on something you don't need (i regret taking remote bomb over double crossbow...).

Overall one of my favourite games and mv, i don't think i mentioned it in this thread. Soundtrack fucking rocks too.

 
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Grub said:
Seems a bit dumb. I feel like the people who were going to buy the Aeterna Noctis sequel are going to buy it anyway whether or not Silksong released around the same time. It's only a special set of metroidvania masochists that liked the first one anyway.
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I think the opposite. If you can wiggle your release around, no real sense in dropping in the same month an indie darling will drop like a nuke. Be it good or shit, silksong will dominate discourse and you only get "release hype" once, even if it's for a couple of fringe games followed by small communities.

We are also in the streamer age, and you bet your ass most streamers will fall on silksong like locusts, no matter how indie friendly one or the other may be. Give it some space and suddenly you have some odds of somebody playing your game and giving it visibility.

If Horizon had dodged Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring, it would probably still be an incredibly forgettable game, but it would have lasted more than 5 minutes in the discourse of the time.
 
ShitLurker said:
I think the opposite. If you can wiggle your release around, no real sense in dropping in the same month an indie darling will drop like a nuke. Be it good or shit, silksong will dominate discourse and you only get "release hype" once, even if it's for a couple of fringe games followed by small communities.
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Those games were never going to get hype or discourse just like 90% of the metroidvania games out there. The launch delays are probably the biggest amount of discourse they'll get and they would have gotten bought either way because metroidvania fuckers buy even the shittiest metroidvania games.
ShitLurker said:
We are also in the streamer age, and you bet your ass most streamers will fall on silksong like locusts, no matter how indie friendly one or the other may be. Give it some space and suddenly you have some odds of somebody playing your game and giving it visibility
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I guess you have a point there. I don't tend to think about streamers because I've never really gotten into watching people livestream playing video games. I prefer to just play the games.
ShitLurker said:
If Horizon had dodged Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring, it would probably still be an incredibly forgettable game, but it would have lasted more than 5 minutes in the discourse of the time.
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Was that the open world game where you play as a chick and there's giant robots or something? If so, I remember watching a friend of mine play that game and I remember it gave me a weird uncomfortable feeling watching it. Like I remember being viscerally repulsed by it and I still have no idea why. Like it felt like it was giving off bad energy or some shit like that and I don't normally think about things like that but I don't know how else to describe it. All I know is I just fucking hated it on some deep level for no apparent reason. I couldn't even watch him play it. It was fucking weird.
 
Grub said:
Was that the open world game where you play as a chick and there's giant robots or something? If so, I remember watching a friend of mine play that game and I remember it gave me a weird uncomfortable feeling watching it. Like I remember being viscerally repulsed by it and I still have no idea why. Like it felt like it was giving off bad energy or some shit like that and I don't normally think about things like that but I don't know how else to describe it. All I know is I just fucking hated it on some deep level for no apparent reason. I couldn't even watch him play it. It was fucking weird.
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It was that game yes, and that's such an accurate description for it. I think it was just uncanny valley but that only explains the human characters when they're up close, talking in cutscenes for example. Can the uncanny valley apply to environments as well? The whole game just had a sinister vibe which is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the genre, but definitely a bad thing in that case.
 
Sneedenhagen Chew said:
It was that game yes, and that's such an accurate description for it. I think it was just uncanny valley but that only explains the human characters when they're up close, talking in cutscenes for example. Can the uncanny valley apply to environments as well? The whole game just had a sinister vibe which is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the genre, but definitely a bad thing in that case.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way. That's a pretty good way to describe it. I think it was the music and sound as well. I don't really remember watching any cutscenes. Mostly I just remember him running around shooting giant robots. When I first watched him playing it, it seemed like just another generic far cry/assassin's creed clone. Even the giant robot things didn't seem all that interesting. But it just made me feel stressed and uncomfortable. He played Breath of the Wild some time around then and that mostly just looked boring. I don't mind that uncanny valley thing sometimes. There was a time when I tried to find as many unsettling movies as I could but that game was just unpleasant.
 
Grub said:
That kind of puts me off it a bit. I hate that kind of shit.


That also sounds annoying and kind of awful.
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In the first case it's no different from usual weapon and armor upgrades, you find that stuff in chests and give to the guy in town to make gear +1 strong. Your max hp is your armor so it's more "immersive" than getting a literal heart piece in the wild.

The second is never actually explained and more of a secret thing that is kinda overkill. Most small food is 1.2s (candy is instant) and if you mash it takes less than 1s, while there is larger food you're not supposed to eat mid combat (like canned food and full dishes take 3s~ but heal way more). Almost every animal drops food you can cook, it's the small critters that run away (bunny, bird, lizard, rat etc) that drop unique good food, but i only found out you hunt them by blowing and shooting them by accident.

It's not a survival game or anything (i wish) but there is a minor inventory management there. You explore and eventually fill up with animal meat and loot, so do i carry these frog legs for safety or these ores to sell after the dungeon? You should never be stuck because there is food almost everywhere, berries, fruits etc and at worst you can star a world encounter (the "flying shrimp" encounter can net you 4+ meats) or go fish for a few minutes,with some fishing spots having treasure too. You can buy pocket slots early and it's worth every penny.

If you really hate it, you can just disable it the options and eat infinite food in the menu like breath of the wild. The dev even made it the default normal difficulty now, together with attacks not using stamina. It's a very well made game and i admit some of this shit is not for everyone so the dev had to add these options and anyone who wants should use it. I like it cause i enjoy survival elements.

The main flaw with phonotopia is how on the second major city the game fucking hard stops so you have to help your cousin to get a pass, so you do a bunch of favors like playing hide and seek with kids and it's booooring. Even the dev said on their blog that was their greatest regret and the point most players quit playing, so his next game will try to avoid that as much as possible.

Oh yeah, his next game is star iliad, another MV but in space and with guns.


Man, i really wish there was a real good "Survival (horror) metroidvania". Even primal planet is super basic where you just kill to eat, grab everything on the floor and level up. Lost Ruins is slow and bad and felt like a hentai game without sex. REDO! is slow paced creepy vania but not enough abilities, still an ok game made by one brazilian dude that took my demo feedback seriously lol. Was it mentioned here?


It's currently 80% off on steam for a week too, i recommend. Takes a bit to get used on combat tho, play it safe, stun enemies and bonk them. There is no map but each room is unique, there are many shortcuts and the world is not that large.

 
Sparky Lurker said:
Roguevania Katanaut release:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=A2931LjzLwQ
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This is pretty cool. It was made by a guy tangentially related to rpghq and I bought it just to support his hard work. The guy also explicitly described it as an action platformer (with roguelite elements) and not really a metroidvania.
I'll spend some time with it this weekend/next week and will report back.
 
Releasing next to another game doesnt hurt your sales. Games like silksong put eyes onto the market that would otherwise not even launch steam and makes more people see your game on the new releases and reccomended.
 
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