so what else can we call metroidvanias

King of Posters
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leavestlevania

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Poor Simon’s Quest

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I feel like there’s something we can use with regards to how every room is a cross-section, or something in that vein… like, layer cakes? Vertical slices?

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metroidvania is the genre name given to free-roaming 2d platformers that progressively unlock areas by giving the player more tools for navigating the mazes that make up the game world, sometimes literal keys but also sometimes double jumps

the rpg aspects introduced by the igavania games are kind of not really as important to this formula as the exploration aspect; they can exist but they’re not what people are there for or expect when they hear the term ‘metroidvania.’ if the game were pure lock and key nobody’d have thought twice, but they indicate a certain style of navigational method.

the thing is… this term’s fine? it references two classic games which are in the category of “you either played these when they were out or when emulation hit and you wanted to see what all the buzz was about” and you will immediately know what kind of game it is and what sort of gameplay you will expect to encounter if you’d ever played either or literally anything else that the genre tag has been applied to. that’s a good genre name, not a bad one.

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Castlecruft.
Eschertectural games.
Bionicles

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I thought we had settled on metrovania :stampstampstamp:

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Gated ROMmunities

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I was never satisfied with this so-called ‘conclusion’!

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i refuse to use “metrovania” to describe anything other than my boyfriend

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Alright then back to square one it is!

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“Haley’s boyfriend”

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british 8-bit platformers

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okay so now that this topic of metrovanias is done I'm sorry but can I yet again instinctually ramble on about roguelikes due to sleep deprivation
  • almost nobody's played Rogue, a single ancient reference for a canonized quintet influences that serves as references instead. those five all fall into some of the same design philosophies so hard there's an extremely typified Berlin document locking shit in instead of sparing any thought to other ways to realize procgen-permadeath besides console fantasy-sink maximalist-mystique spoiler-traps murder-mazes
  • a related term of "roguelite" exists with no quantifications beyond "only somewhat like a genre we named after being like a game" (non-turn-based? permadeath subversion? unlockables? just stealing procedural generation for other set-ups?) and what gets lost in that has tried to actually proceed forward in the genre (see: Shiren, Necrodancer). it's so unconsciously compartmentalizing compared to genre portmanteau action that "elite" is literally in the term
  • this isn't directly related to definitions but despite decades of practice of genre fundamentals with procgen permadeath it's taken decades to get good examples of weaving together handmade and randomized content with sufficiently + purposefully broad possibility spaces and minimized excess / interface burden for permanent deaths to be justified in procedural generation. tons of melanges having lost this lesson and warping expectations of both are splattered across the landscape, making the term "roguelike" a dead joke instead of an ugly reference-point like "metrovania"

    • genres and labels and words are innately just reference points anyway because nothing fully encapsulates an experience. we group matters together for comfort and knowledge but I don’t know what there is to learn from roguelikes as a whole when everything is so trapped in themselves

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Can we just call then platform Zeldas?

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There are days I wish we could call the Assassin Creeds, Mass Effects and Dragon Ages Alpha Protocol-likes. Then devs would have a good starting point of how to do talky-shooty games right.

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I dunno, Zelda 2 seems too different but admittedly I don’t remember it with perfect clarity.

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Call them Beta Protocols

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“Doom clone” was a better genre name than “FPS”

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It’s the overworld/underworld split and the micro-caves and dungeons and encounter zones that makes it different. Metrovanias have to pack everything into a single map.

That definition implies Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia aren’t Metrovanias, but… that feels OK to me. They aren’t, especially Ecclesia. (As for Ceres Station and Chaotic Realm, those are minor enough to be ignored for the purposes of genre definition.)

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Already claimed as the unofficial name for Byrgenwerth

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