I know we dont necessarily love omnibus threads, but I feel like we’re at the point where there are all sorts of miscellaneous indie Metroidvanias that may or may not merit their own threads, and getting lost in this thread is a marginal improvement to getting lost in the Switch thread.
But there are so many nowadays. Not just your higher profile Guacamelees and Hollow Knights and Oris, but smaller stuff like Timespinner, or Touhou Luna Nights, or Iconoclasts.
A couple I’ve tried recently: Unsighted: does a top-down action adventure platforming game with unlocking traversal abilities count as a Metroid-vania? People seem to think so. Lots of nice pixel art, but this had too much of the isometric/z axis confusion thing where I had a hard time telling what platform was supposed to be what height, and had trouble generally telling what I was supposed to be able to interact with. Also, it has a day/night cycle which mainly serves to make the game harder to navigate, and I never meshed with the controls which put attacks on the triggers.
The Legend of Tianding: this also isnt really a Metroid Vania, although I’ve seen it referred to as one. it does sort of traverse like one, the structure is really just more of a Mega Man X structure with individual levels that you can revisit with new abilities. The combat and traversal is decent (there are some wonky hotboxes here and there) but the standout thing about it is definitely the setting, which is Japanese controlled colonial Taiwan, which I guarantee is not a game setting you’ve seen before. The collectible tchotchkes are real world period appropriate historical artifacts like cigarette cases and product ads, and the overall milieu is a cool WuXia angle on the more familiar Samurai settings that you might know from anime, etc. It’s a bit slight (it feels like there should be another 40% or so), but worth checking out.
Most of these indies are on Steam. A lot of them cater to longtime fans of the genre, so they’re good but very hard. (E.g. Hollow Knight).
Guacamelee or Ori and the Will o’ the Wisps/Ori and the Blind Forest might be good starting points? Steamworld Dig / Steamworld Dig 2 are pretty accessible and charming.
Steamworld Dig is a solid implementation of many elements, while being a distinct thing. Its also fairly short.
Ori and the Blind Forest is a very artistic take, that is a little longer. Very well made and one of the recent genre stand outs.
Both also have sequels that expand on the original and are often considered improvements on the original. But they are also longer games.
Yokus Island Express has a pinball based movement system in a Metroidvania style game.
Cave Story is a classic indie game thats been around for years. In fact it was initially released as a freeware version that is quite good and worth checking out. If you want the original freeware version, you can find instructions on it from the classic game club thread, or you can find Cave Story+ on Steam, Epic, GoG etc
One other thing to note: most aren‘t terribly long games in general, first time plays tend towards 6-10 hours for most games in the genre, though most are also very friendly to speedrunning and are a staple of that community, often being beatable sub 2 hour for experienced players.
Edit: I would be remiss if I did not suggest the one half of the namesake that is available on PC. Steam has the Castlevania Advanced collection, which is several games from the Castlevania series from the GBA era, that really helped solidify the genre from what Super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night established
How’s your tolerance for pixel art? If you’re ok with it, my top recommendation for sampling the genre would be Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, conveniently available on Steam in the Castlevania Advance Collection.
It’s a great “pure” example of the formula that all these indies are riffing on, from a time when the genre had taken shape and been refined, but not yet become ubiquitous.
Failing that, there are a bunch of good recommendations already. I’ll concur with whichever of Ori, Hollow Knight, or Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night looks most appealing to you, as they’re all very good.
Dead Cells is pretty universally loved. It plays like a dream, has challenge levels for all players, and has tons of enemies, weapons, combos, and strategies to experiment with.
I’m not sure if it counts as an indie Metroidvania though since it is about as high quality as the genre gets.
I wouldn’t consider Dead Cells a Metroidvania since you’re always progressing forward; there’s no backtracking to old zones once you unlock new skills. Plus the permadeath for each run thing.
It’s great, but I wouldn’t call it a metroidvania at all, despite borrowing a lot of genre tropes. The gradual picking apart of a meticulously designed map via upgrades is core to the genre, and Dead Cells’ random building block combat arenas to run through are a different approach altogether
My two favorite ones are Hollow Knight and La Mulana 2. But they are not exactly entry points (though I don’t know that you really care about this).
Hollow Knight is immediate and approachable to start with, but combat and platform ING can get hard. It’s also on the longer side for the genre at 20+ hours. I do think it’s the best, modern “classic” Metroidvania, and it’s really good at conveying the exploration/traversal feel of the early classics (SotN and Super Metroid) while being modern and beautiful. If you want to know what a Metroidvania is understood to be nowadays, you can hardly do better than this if you can manage the difficulty.
La Mulana 2 is super weird, and it’s a throwback to the proto-Metroidvanias, before the genre was codified (games like Maze of Galious). It’s stupidly long and stupidly difficult, and in a very unusual way. While regular Metroidvanias use abilities to gate progress, La Mulana also uses your own knowledge of the game and it’s lore as a gating mechanism. To beat it you need to really understand the game in all its dimensions. Progression is actually quite open after the first couple hours, with several progression options, but it is gated behind puzzles that force you to interact with the whole game (mechanics, lote, map…) in unusual ways. The whole game is a layered set of puzzles from more physical to more abstract and left-field. But it’s something you probably want to stay away from to start with, since it’s almost surely too much (and it’s hard both in combat platforming/combat and it’s puzzles, normal progression late mid-late game involves taking notes and spending a couple of hours traversing to try to figure out something you can do next. It’s not for the faint of heart). I wanted to mention it because I think it’s the best game in the genre at least in a conceptual way (and certainly one of my favorites along Hollow Knight and the two classics), since that it takes the exploration and gating concept normally applies only to traversal into aspects of the game that are normally not mechanized and explored, and can give (after to start to unwrap it) the most intense sense of epiphany in the whole genre. It’s definitely a Metroidvania, but it’s also much more.
Curious. Perhaps its because I’ve only played it that one time in the CGC, but my recollection is that it fits. Maybe I’m incorrect, but wasn’t there exploration, backtracking, equipment and items that unlock new areas, platforming, and upgrades to weapons and equipment? In what way would you say it doesn’t qualify?
Yeah, Dead Cells is a action-roguelite (ugh, now I feel dirty for just typing that) with metroidvania elements. It’s fundamentally more like Hades than it is Super Metroid.
@CraigM I suspect you’d love it. It’s a wonderful game.
Huge recommendation for Steamworld Dig 2. The original Steamworld Dig is fun, but the sequel is a full-blown Metroid-style action/adventure game and one of my favorite games of the past decade.
Really fun abilities, super-satisfying progression, really creative dungeons off the main world, and a soundtrack I still listen to today.
You don’t need to play the original Steamworld Dig to enjoy Steamworld Dig 2, but I’d recommend eventually playing both anyway.
Interesting that you’d mention that specific game: after I finished Hades including 100% cheevo-ing it and still wanting more Hades, someone suggested I play Dead Cells, it being the closest “good” game along those lines.
Ok I did buy it! Will be installing and playing later today! Thanks for all the suggestions. I love learning about new games genres, especially when they are more evolved versions of stuff I played when I was ten.
