Metroidvania

What needs to be done to push the metroidvania genre forward? It seems like they're creatively bankrupt these days.

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Realize they're not a genre but an oddly specific derivative of action-adventure games. The reason the concept was independently arrived at by two gaming franchises at the same time is because it wasn't even that big a jump considered where games were already at. Text-based and top-down 2d adventure games already constructed themselves as a maze of interconnected rooms with key items to unlock passages. What Metroid and Castlevania added was noting how action side scrollers were a whole lot more fun to play on a moment-to-moment basis and weaving those elements into the level design and unlocks.

>Blasphemous, Metroid Dread, Astalon, The Messenger, Dandara, Axiom Verge, Aggelos, Ori, Ori 2
doesn't seem creatively bankrupt to me. there's a lot of shit but that's true of every popular genre

Move into 3D. Not all of them have to be 2D sidescrollers.

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How do we go back to good Metroidvanias that don't rely on warps to get around?

make backtracking more interesting.

I feel like most of them already do a good job of this by unlocking new passage ways and giving you abilities that trivialize traversal.

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mix and match them with other genres, make them in 3D with first person perspectives, implement 6 degrees of freedom (6dof) and open worlds, ect

do more metroidvania
more metroid
more vania
smash 'em together and lick lick licky 'em

Is it wrong to say that they should just "go back to basics"? Metroidvanias have gone through "Souls-like" and "procedurally-generated roguelike" phases within recent memory, and you're right I think those avenues have creatively burnt out and reached a dead end already.
At this point, I think the market is ripe for a game that just gets the basics right with semi-open exploration, weapon variety, unlockable abilities that are enjoyable as well as progress-essential, with good variety to the enemy types and area themes. Something that takes all the good ideas of previous titles and executes on them. Basically like Bloodstained with more polish and better design.
I know that doesn't sound very creative, but maybe Metroidvania as a genre is like Metroidvania gameplay: you have to go back before you can progress.

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Move The Mssenger into Not Metroidvania tier

What said, it's amazing to me that some of the best of the genre (Prime 1 and Prime 2) made such massive innovations in 3D metroidvanias but no game has ever taken up that torch.

How is Journey to the Savage Planet?

Batman Arkham Asylum was a really good 3D metroidvania. Its just that the series inmediately went open world afterwards

Does unsighted have a metroidvania style world? It was one of the things I bought specifically to play on my deck but I still haven't got around to it yet.

Honestly I think we should semi-ditch the term metroidvania and all the baggage that comes with it for a name like exploration platformer.
Games like Iconoclasts, Phoenotopia, Deadcells, Shantae, Blasphemous, Monsterboy and such keep getting called games with "metroidvania elements" or "metroidvania adjacent" because things like lack of backtracking or ability gating or a fully interconnected world.
Because it's convenient at the time it got the term metroidvania in the same way Doom-clone was, it got treated as the genre name and has been constraining game design or making it awkward to move in different directions. It should instead be viewed as a subgenre of a wider more well known 2D open world genre.

>Honestly I think we should semi-ditch the term metroidvania and all the baggage that comes with it for a name like exploration platformer.
So you're basically saying, let's embrace the ignorance and just call everything a metroidvania?
So super Mario is a metroidvania?

>So you're basically saying,
I bet it's going to be miles from what I was saying, it always is when they start with this phrase.
>let's embrace the ignorance and just call everything a metroidvania?
>So super Mario is a metroidvania?
Yup. Zero connection to anything I said.

>Games like Iconoclasts, Phoenotopia, Deadcells, Shantae, Blasphemous, Monsterboy and such keep getting called games with "metroidvania elements" or "metroidvania adjacent" because things like lack of backtracking or ability gating or a fully interconnected world.
>Yup. Zero connection to anything I said.
Your mom probably used to mistreat you as a child

Did anyone else feel like this game's metroidvania elements were so bad that they almost seemed like a parody? Like "how can we make a metroidvania style progression in the worst, laziest, cliched way possible". Every unlockable (most of which are coloured keys) just unlocks the door/obstacle in the current area, there's no reason to ever revisit areas which your new abilities, one of the power ups is used to break a single crate blocking the way and that's it, most rooms are just copy paste and filled with enemies, most shit can be bypassed by stopping time, all of the shit in the store is useless (and you're even discouraged from using it). It's honestly hilarious.

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>Dandara
>sheboonvania
No fucking thanks. Take that woke shit and shove it.

It's pretty shit as a metroidvania, yeah.
Still a great action game and the length is perfect.

Add a lot of shortcuts that can be opened with later powers, or the classic, doors that can only be unlocked from one side.

Have fighting game combat mechanics, or something close to a 2D DMC/Ninja Gaiden.
My ideal Metroidvania would use the air combos on top of double jumps and dashes to reach higher platforms and get through enviromental hazards.
Also, as far as 2D games are concerned, anime fighting games have the coolest characters and aesthetics.
I would love to see that in a metroidvania.

where the fuck is dread you cocksucker

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The Castlevania Lord's of Shadow DS game needs to be added in for the Meh tier.