Why We Love to Get Lost in Games: The Enduring Appeal of Metroidvanias
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Axiom Verge had a lot of hidden passages through walls and otherwise same-y environments that just made getting back to where I wanted to go a chore. I don't remember a compass, but if it had one, it didn't help.
With Hollow Knight and Symphony of the Night, the maps are so large and contiguous, and they give you so little information as to why you didn't fully explore a corner of the map, that you end up either easily missing a thing that you needed in order to progress or you get there and say to yourself, "oh, that's right, that's why I was stuck", wasting a lot of time traveling there to come to that realization. In most Metroid games, the map is broken up into chunks with lots of entrances and exits connecting to the other chunks, which can keep the map screen small and easier to read. Plus, if there's an ability that the game wants to make sure you get before you leave, they make sure you're trapped in there with no option except to find it and make sure you know how it works first.
EDIT: Some of my favorites in the genre would be Batman: Arkham Asylum, most of the Metroid series, Ori and the Blind Forest, and the roguelike A Robot Named Fight.
Ori and the Will o' the Wisps is an amazing sequel, just as beautiful and just as smooth to play.
Moon Studios also has a new project, No Rest for the Wicked. It is very different from the Ori games but just as well crafted.
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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!
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.
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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 don't recall tbh, I played it ages ago lol
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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.
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Interesting that in the title, stated in absolute terms in the text, and from the designers they interviewed, they cite getting lost as crucial for the genre. Personally, I disagree. Getting lost has tended to be why I didn't care for certain games in this genre, like Axiom Verge, and it soured my otherwise higher opinion of games like Hollow Knight and Symphony of the Night. Still, I think this is a good exploration of the genre and what makes it tick.
umm actually it's metroidvaniae
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Ori and the Will o' the Wisps is an amazing sequel, just as beautiful and just as smooth to play.
Moon Studios also has a new project, No Rest for the Wicked. It is very different from the Ori games but just as well crafted.
Will of the Wisps fell through the cracks for me. It came out at a time after I had switched to Linux and before Proton was a thing. I ought to make time to get around to it someday.
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umm actually it's metroidvaniae
Metroidvanie? Metroidvanii?
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Metroidvanie? Metroidvanii?
if strictly talking about metroid-like games metroidae also works.
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Interesting that in the title, stated in absolute terms in the text, and from the designers they interviewed, they cite getting lost as crucial for the genre. Personally, I disagree. Getting lost has tended to be why I didn't care for certain games in this genre, like Axiom Verge, and it soured my otherwise higher opinion of games like Hollow Knight and Symphony of the Night. Still, I think this is a good exploration of the genre and what makes it tick.
Metroid and Castlevania are two of my favorite series, and I adore the genre. That being said… I just can’t seem to get into Hollow Knight no matter how much I want to. Maybe I’m not putting enough time into it but I just keep getting bored quickly every time I pick it up. I think it’s partly the environment, every room looks very same-y so far. I want to like it but I’m clearly missing something
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Will of the Wisps fell through the cracks for me. It came out at a time after I had switched to Linux and before Proton was a thing. I ought to make time to get around to it someday.
How timely a comment.
I just got pop_os up and running to replace windows 11 on my alienware aurora.
Still working on a sound issue in Helldivers 2 but overall has been a smooth transition. -
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