the other day someone was reminded of Metroid playing my game. I have no idea what this means, I wasn’t even born! How many times have I read or heard or watched a current indie game being described as either Metroidvania or Rouge-like? My understanding is that comes from Metroid, Castlevania and Rouge. My questions are:
Do you have links to (as much as possible) authentic versions of the original games to play in browser or download? Where it’s safe to assume the PC version is just like the NES (or whatever) original was?
What precisely characterisies Metroid, what Castlevania, why are they taken as one word to characterise new games? What about Rouge?
As for Metroidvania, super metroid on the snes is a good starting off point. As for castlevania, the only one I ever really played was aria of sorrows for the GBA. It had a nice mix of RPG elements to it. I think Symphony of the night on the ps1 is supposed to be good too.
a game similar to rogue, permadeath, procedural level generation, turn based , grid based level and a fantasy setting. I guess roguelike usually has the first two.
If you watch this video the first game seems closer to a rogue but people probably mean something more like binding of issac
Metroidvania a freeroam platformer game where you can roam around the world but there’s parts of the world you can’t access unless you have certain items, which you can’t get to later in the game
castlevania SOTN is the first of the series that mimicked metroid in level layout. You can get that game on XBLA and PSN for cheap. Its a good game too.
Also, most metroid games can be bough on the virtual console.
Do yourself a favor, and play these games. IMO, no newer games that try to replicate the feeling/design of these games do it as well.
What precisely characterisies Metroid, what Castlevania, why are they taken as one word to characterise new games?
Metroidvania games have interesting level design. Instead of opening new parts of a game or loading a new level, they opened the whole game from the start, but the player had to gain new abilities to be able to access those areas. Both games are loved, hence why their names were put together.
What about Rouge?
Rouge-like, from my understanding, is a programmatically generated level design that changes upon death, and death was permanent. There are other aspects, but those seem prominent to me.
If you can’t snack on a troll to gain regeneration, it’s a pretty weak roguelike.
The most awesome classic roguelikes that aren’t Rogue are Moria, NetHack and ADOM (in chronological order). Moria started the player in a town, then went on to randomly generated dungeons. NetHack is like the WikiPedia of roguelikes, where lots of people contribute their strange ideas. ADOM brought some new ideas, including a fancy character system, and expanded the land to a grand scale overland map with plenty of dungeons and a few towns, with some non-linearity to exploration.
The main characteristic of a “Metroidvania” is that it is a side-scrolling maze that requires lots of back and forth to progress through. Imagine a mansion or a base, that has keys spread all over. The keys may be literal keys, but mainly it is an ability that will let you access an area that was previously blocked. The ability to jump higher, climb walls, crawl through small spaces, etc.
Metroid on the original SNES was the first (or one of the first) games to introduce this gameplay. Castlevania: Symphony of The Night on the PS1 perfected it. The genre is called Metroidvania because the two games are considered the most iconic games in that category.
If you have an XBox 360, Shadow Complex is a good and modern Metroidvania game.
Very recently Guacamelee is a very popular game in the category.