Table of Contents
The Importance of Market Research
Nothing exists in a vacuum. The game I’m creating will exist within a context, and whether I like it or not, players will judge my game against other titles in the genre. As much as I like my game idea, I’m biased because of my emotional attachment to the project. It’s my baby! Of course I think it’s good and people should play it! However, most players will look at my game as just another Metroidvania, and it would be beneficial for my game if I can take a step back and critically evaluate what I plan to offer in comparison to the major games in the genre. Plus I get to engage in one of my favorite pastimes and dig through the history of video games! Huzzah!
So for the past month I’ve been doing a bit of research and playing a bunch of Metroidvanias. We’ll look at what innovations those titles added to the genre, and see what lessons I can take away and apply to my game. By the end of this post, I hope to have a good outline of what the characteristics of a successful Metroidvania are, and how my game plans to fit into the genre.
A Brief History of Non-Linear 2D Adventure Games
Metroid was the first game built around the gameplay mechanics that would come to define Metroidvanias. It’s also the game that started my love with the genre. I can still remember my first time playing Metroid. It felt so different than other Nintendo games I had played. The world was massive and sprawling, and I would constantly get lost in it. The game’s feeling of isolation, alien environment, and eerie music set an eerie tone that helped the game stand out.
The designers had two goals that motivated their design and influenced their gameplay decisions. First they wanted to create a non-linear game, where players would be required to retrace their steps throughout a large map. Secondly, they wanted to provide permanent power ups, in contrast to the temporary power ups in most other adventure games at the time. These two goals that motivated their game design has come to define the genre.
At the same time Nintendo was defining a new genre by differentiating themselves in the adventure game market, Konami was finding success by applying gothic art and themes to the standard adventure game template with Castlevania. The sequel, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, followed Metroid’s lead and featured a large, non-linear map. The game is not nearly as accomplished or polished as Metroid. The map, while large and interconnected, doesn’t make any spatial sense, and feels more like a series of mostly linear levels that are arbitrarily tied together, than a cohesive, sprawling, unified world space. While there are “abilities” you acquire by virtue of purchasing items, they don’t have the same type gameplay impact as the abilities in Metroid. More often serve as a sort of key you need in order to unlock your way past a certain obstacle, and doesn’t give the same sense of progression you feel in Metroid.
There’s another key title from that period that isn’t considered a traditional Metroidvania, but I’ve always looked at Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link as a Metroidvania in spirit. Probably just in virtue of it being a side scrolling sequel that departed from the format of the original title in the franchise, just like Castlevania II. There are some elements of Zelda II that definitely challenge my categorization of the game as a Metroidvania. The overworld map you use to navigate throughout Hyrule (complete with semi-random encounters) is unlike most Metroidvanias. But beyond that, many of the game’s other elements are hallmarks of the genre. You fight your way through platforming levels, acquiring abilities that allow you to access previously unreachable areas of the map, and you fight bosses who lurk at the end of temples guarded by lots of monsters. In many ways, Zelda II is a better Metroidvania than Castlevania II.
The Golden Age of Metroidvanias: Super Metroid & Symphony of the Night
Samus Aran returned in Metroid II: Return of Samus for the Game Boy in 1991. While the game is impressive in how far it was able to push the technical capabilities of the Game Boy hardware, it did little to advance the genre. Super Metroid would be the next major title, and is still considered one of the best Metroidvanias, if not one of the greatest videogames ever made. A key advancement made by the developers was the addition of a map system within the game itself. Gone were the days of relying on videogame magazine walkthroughs, or crudely hand drawn diagrams you had to hastily scribble down while playing! Now there was a clean, dynamic, constantly updated in-game map that you could use to backtrack and identify those previously unreachable locations. The designers of Super Metroid understood the value of the map so much, they made the mini-map part of the permanent HUD so that it is always visible to the player.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was the next major game released in the genre. Like Super Metroid, it is an iconic title in the genre. The idea for the structure of Symphony of the Night came from the designer’s desire to appeal to as many gamers as possible. The designers noticed that there were two experiences players had while playing Castlevania games. New, inexperienced players would struggle with the levels and die frequently, while experienced players would be able to draw on their skills and defeat the levels quickly. Designing properly balanced levels that were challenging enough for the experienced players, but easy enough that new players could also enjoy the game and make progress was proving to be nearly impossible. Their solution was to design a map with multiple paths through it. There would be a easier path that offered less challenge and lighter rewards for new players, and a more difficult path that offered bigger rewards and heightened challenged for experienced players. This strategy proved to be a huge success and lead to the design of a map that is one of the best in the genre. And it’s all the more impressive when you factor in one of my favorite twists in the genre, that they can flip the entire map upside down and it is still very playable.
In addition to the great map and solid core gameplay controls, one of the new features that Symphony popularized was the addition of lightweight RPG mechanics to the genre. As Alucard, you gained EXP, leveled up, and improved your stats as you defeated monsters. The game also features an inventory and gear system, with new weapons and armor providing better stats, and some items coming with unique special abilities.
Symphony’s innovation was in changing the player progression loop in a Metroidvania from a straight forward “defeat boss, get ability” style loop, to the sort of more robust progression loop and equipment economy that you find in an RPG. The addition of RPG mechanics to the genre is a natural fit. Both genres have always featured exploration and player progression at the core of their gameplay cycles, so it’s a natural union. An interesting thing to note is that despite the addition of an RPG style player progression system, the abilities that you need to get past obstacles that block you from accessing different areas of the map aren’t gained through leveling up. You can’t just grind enemies to level up, get abilities, and unlock areas of the map. You have to explore the map to find the relics that unlock the abilities that give you access to new areas. Map progression is intrinsically linked to exploration.
The success of both Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night would lead to multiple sequels across various handheld platforms. But gamers who were waiting for AAA studios to release major Metroidvania titles for current generation systems would be disappointed, as the major studios involved didn’t see a market for well designed 2D games in the increasingly 3D heavy game landscape. Fortunately a generation of indie-developers who grew up playing the classics were starting to make their own games, and high quality, independently created Metroidvania’s would fill the gap the major studios were creating, and prove the financial viability of the genre.
Inspired by the Classics: Cave Story & Shadow Complex
If Symphony of the Night proved that there was an appetite for well made Metroidvania games, Cave Story proved that it doesn’t require a massive budget and huge staff to create a well made Metroidvania. You could make a great game with just a single, determined, and very talented developer. Cave Story’s strengths are in its story and retro-inspired art. The shooting based gameplay features a series of guns that you can acquire and swap between. As you defeat enemies, they will sometimes drop experience which can be collected and applied to level up your weapons, increasing their damage and weapon effects. But as you take damage your weapons loose experience and levels. This system adds an interesting fluid “experience economy” to the weapon system.
Like the maker of Cave Story, the developers at Chair Entertainment were also inspired by classic games. The creative director of Chair Entertainment has stated that much of Shadow Complex is inspired by Super Metroid, a game that he considers “the pinnacle of 2D game design”. Unlike Cave Story which took its gameplay and graphical style from the classics, Shadow Complex only drew inspiration from the classics for its 2.5D gameplay, and opted for modern 3D graphics using the Unreal engine.
Early development of Shadow Complex included designing a prototype of the map on grid paper, using tile based metrics to craft out the world. This allowed them to apply a set of ‘gameplay rules’ on the prototyped map to ‘play’ out the game and make sure the map they were designing worked as expected. It allowed them to iterate on the game’s pacing during early prototyping, and allowed them to adjust course when they discovered early in development that their jump height was too high, and did not fit in the game. Shadow Complex’s success using paper map prototyping have convinced me of its usefulness on this project. Going forward, as I design my maps, I’m going to be adhere to a consistent metric so that I can run same types of early prototyping tests and iteration on my designs.
Making it Rain: The Modern Metroidvania Renaissance
Recent years have seen a renaissance of the Metroidvania genre, with a bunch of great games being released in the genre. Rather than try to cover every recent game in the genre, I’m going to highlight the ones I’ve been playing recently. Drink Box Studio’s Guacamelee tells the story of a masked Mexican wrestler attempting to avenge his death and rescue his kidnaped love. The game brings something new to the Metroidvania genre by adding a more robust, beat ’em up style combat system, that emphasizes quick combos of button presses. Like any Metroidvaiana, the abilities you acquire as you progress throughout the game give you the maneuverability to access previously unreachable areas, but most of the abilities also double as special moves that you use in combat. This gives combat in Guacamelee a more frenetic and faster pace than the classic melee based Metroidvanias which tend to rely on more on your ability to hit and move for successful combat.
Another interesting thing the designers in Guacamelee did was bring that same frenetic, button-combo type action to the platforming elements. In later sections of the game, after you have acquired the ability to swap between the world of the living and the world of the dead, a number of the jumping sections require you to quickly combo between swapping between worlds, bouncing off of walls, and using your abilities. It’s like pulling off a great chain combo, only this time your opponent is gravity. This gives a great uniformity to the gameplay experience since both combat and platforming emphasize your button combo skills.
Axiom Verge is another Metroidvania created by a single developer who was inspired by their love of Metroid. Axiom features tight controls and a very strong core gameplay loop, bolstered by the number of different weapon upgrades you can acquire. There are so many weapons in this game, each unique, and each useful. This leads to a satisfying progression, where you are constantly being fed new guns and abilities, allowing you to go back and access previously unreachable areas.
The game’s tone and map layout are a tribute to the classic games that inspired Axiom. The map feels uniformly claustrophobic, with only rare open areas. The majority of your time is spent in cramped halls and vertical shafts. The flora and fauna changes, but all the spaces in Axiom feel a little too similar. The map is mostly a series of rectangular rooms that never evolve, and feels a little dated. A missed opportunity to incorporate some modern map design twists and surprises. The game exploits the map space as much as possible, often forcing you to backtrack through the game’s areas multiple times as you acquire more and more abilities. This is a delicate balance to strike, and I personally felt like Axiom required a little too much backtracking and returning to areas. Late in the game, when I got lost, I found it very hard to find where I needed to go to progress, because I had already been back and forth to most locations multiple times. The in game map is so small that it’s easy to miss the single door you need to find in order to progress the game.
The game’s narrative of a scientist displaced into an alien reality takes its cues from Metroid, and drops you into a strange world with zero explanation. The game’s hero Trace wakes up on an alien world after an explosion, and allows himself to be pulled along in a series of events that he doesn’t completely understand. He acts as a proxy for the player, asking the same questions about who he’s interacting with and what he’s doing here that the player is trying to figure out. While the narrative is serviceable and evocative of the games that inspired Axiom, it feels somewhat divorced from the gameplay and fails to be very emotionally gripping. I never felt like the story was adding to that much to my experience, it was more just something that was there, and I would largely forget about it until a cutscene or some dialogue between Trace and Elsenova would pop up and remind me that there was some vague narrative motivations behind the actions I was taking.
At the other end of the Metroidvania narrative spectrum is Ori and the Blind Forrest, a game which took its narrative inspirations from coming of age stories like Iron Giant and The Lion King. The game’s story tells of Ori, a forrest guardian spirit that fell from the Spirit Tree and is adopted and raised by a creature of the forest. After a cataclysmic event causes the death of Ori’s adopted parent and the withering of the forest, Ori has to step up and go on a journey to restore the forest. Unlike Axiom‘s narrative that feels unnecessary, Ori’s memorable story and dreamlike sensitivity add a lot to the gameplay experience.
Ori and the Blind Forrest was developed over the course of 4 years by Moon Studios, a non-centralized collection of designers and programmers. As with most of the other games on this list, the creators were inspired by early adventure games like Metroid and Rayman. The resulting game they created is a breathtaking world, full of intricate, well crafted levels filled with platforming challenges. The biggest challenges in Ori come from the escape sequences that follow each of the game’s three dungeons. These escapes are filled with surprises and traps that give the player no warning or chance to avoid them outside of trial, error, and memorization. In addition, the ability to save anywhere is disabled during these sequences, so you’re forced to play them over and over until you succeed. As can be expected, the reception of these sequences is somewhat mixed. Some enjoy the challenge, and others cry foul at the level of difficulty.
The New Kids on the Block
My personal favourite of the most recently released Metroidvanias, Hollow Knight is set in the ruins a Hallownest, a once flourishing kingdom of bugs that has fallen into decay after being destroyed by “The Infection”. As The Knight, you must find and kill the three Dreamers who act as locks on a failing seal that was supposed to contain the Infection. Hollow Knight is notable for its hand drawn art style, and gothic tone of a collapsed underground kingdom.
The game’s developers copied their movement system from Mega Man X. Like in Mega Man X, the character has no acceleration or deceleration when moving horizontally. You also have lots of control over the character in the air, as well as the ability to interrupt a jump with an air dash. It was important to the developers that the player felt that any time they got hit, it could have been avoided right up until the last second. That is a super important when you’re creating a challenging game. The player has to feel like their failures are due to their own mistakes, not due to sloppy controls, or unfair situations. You want players frustrated at their own lack of execution, not at your game.
Conclusion: What Am I Gonna Steal?
So after doing a bunch of research, and re-playing a bunch of games, I’ve come away with some strong feelings on what I should and shouldn’t do in my game.
- Like Shadow Complex, I am going to adopt a stricter paper prototyping system so that I can do paper testing and catch design issues earlier.
- Like Hollow Knight, I am going to develop tight character controls that emphasize the player’s skill.
- I need to develop a nice mini-map system that is clean and legible, but at the same time doesn’t give away too much information to the player.
- After being frustrated by Axiom Verge‘s lack of a fast travel system, I will definitely include a fast travel system in my game.
- My original plan was to have a very basic narrative that would mimic the kind of story you would see in an Atari era video game, but inspired by Ori and the Blind Forest, I’m going to re-evaluate this and see if I can’t come up with something a little more complex and emotionally powerful.
- I want to emphasize the distinct spaces in my map, not just visually, but with the spatial design as well.
- The combat in my game will be classic melee Metroidvania combat, and I want to develop an economy around the weapons. Whether this becomes an equipment economy like Symphony of the Night, or something along the lines of the experience economy from Cave Story, is undecided.
Doing this market research has been helpful, and replaying a bunch of great Metroidvanias has been really inspiring. I can’t wait until I have a playable level put together and I can start jumping around and slaying enemies in a world I created. This has helped me start to develop a list of key features that I want for my game. But the one thing I’m still missing that truly unique element that will set my game apart from the other Metroidvanias, and that can’t be found via market research. For that, I’ll have to do some brainstorming and wait for inspiration to strike. Until that inspired idea comes along, I now have a great set of elements to implement and goals to work towards.