I like a wide mix of environments in my MVs, regardless of if they’re tropey or not — lava zone, ice zone, water zone, whatever; doesn’t bother me unless they’re not fun to explore. That's kind of the point of the "search" in "search action" — not that you'll see me use that term anywhere.

Metroid games still rank as a gold standard for biomes, interactivity, and gating in terms of how Samus behaves in different environments. Super Metroid is iconic, with a wonderful interconnected world and great music that complements each area. They managed to make lava-filled caverns and sunken depths not cliché through a mixture of art, atmosphere, and music — which many games still struggle to match today. Metroid Dread, while being a stunning game with beautiful environments and animations, suffers a little in how broken up it is by elevators and teleporters.

Afterimage and Souldiers are also fine examples of games with a massive variety of rather trope-heavy zones that nevertheless keep them all distinctive and visually interesting.

Special mention, too, must be made of Biogun for its absolute masterclass at making cartoony, organic environments — I have no idea how accurate they are to the actual insides of a dog, but it doesn't matter. They look and feel completely unlike almost anything else in the genre, and it made the game stand out in a very saturated space.

For a genre where exploration is key, tracking through multiple samey areas gets dull. As much as I like the pixel art in Primal Planet, it showed that there’s only so much jungle I can really deal with. I was very glad of the patch that added in an additional, much more alien biome, as it provided a bit of late game balance to the spread of areas.

It should be noted that, as a high percentage of metroidvania games tend to skew towards Fantasy settings, the ones that do head in a more SciFi direction tend to stand out to me more. While not a traditional scifi fan in many ways, I do love how creative scifi metroidvanias tend to be with the worldsSomber Echoes and various scifi technology types Axiom Verge they present. Even something as generally middle-of-the-road as The Devil Within: Satgat tries to create an interesting world with its scifi elements.

Generally speaking, I prefer multiple weapon optionsCastlevania: Order of Ecclesia, not being forced down a specific path. Give me choices to make — well-balanced ones, not ones where there's a clear and obvious superior choice.

(This is especially true in Soulsvania titles, where I prefer everything to be sidegrades throughout the game — something Orange Popcorn titles like HunterX and Maid of Salvation struggle with.)

To govern how often you can attack, I generally like stamina/resource management systems for weapons, but not for evasion or movement abilities — though I confess I rather like the push-pull balance of Constance's paint gauge, and GRIME II's new take on Force looks to be more interesting than the original game's system.

Games with single weapon options need to be snappy, tight, and have a solid feeling of impactHollow Knight. If you’re stuck with the same weapon for the whole game, it needs to feel amazing.

Games with multiple weapon options would preferably not include a weapon type that is clearly better than others — ie. the “crissaegrimCastlevania: Symphony of the Night was a stupid weapon” argument.

That all being said, I’m probably always gonna choose a kickass greatswordClaimh Solais over dual daggers.

Examples of games that I feel did combat particularly well or interestingly include the huge variety of body horror weapons available in GRIME, the various morphs in Biomorph, the weapon switching in Blasphemous 2, the lucha libre of Guacamelee 2 (which I confess I don't talk about enough), and the tight parry-based gameplay of Nine Sols.

2D metroidvanias are limited in ways that the player can move at the start of the game. Having no way of avoiding enemy attacks kinda sucks. In my opinion, the best metroidvanias start the player out with some kind of defensive ability.

Examples include the excellent Absorb mechanic in GRIME, the backstep for Alucard in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and the Dash in Afterimage (though you only start the game with that because the devs changed their minds due to feedback on their demo; originally you got the Dash in the second area. People disliked this.)

Having some — any, really — way of providing defensive options on a 2D plane is preferable when starting a game. Some games with simpler starting enemies can get away with just having you jump attacks, but others — especially those with contact damage and taller enemies — are less likely to impress, and in some cases prove utterly frustratingFatal Claw (Early Access).

Metroidvania powers that have uses both in and out of combat, including surprising uses or diverse uses for traversal.

I love a double jump as much as the next person, but give me more unusual things like a lot of the powers in Dragonloop that have multiple uses tied into a single power gain.

Good examples include Ground Smash-style abilities that can break through floors but also hurt enemies (and can even be upgraded to do more damage to the latter), or Grapple Hooks that not only help with getting around but can also help control space in combat. The Screw Attack's capacity for destroying enemies as easily as blocks — especially when combined with the Space Jump — is a classic ability I'm surprised more games haven't copied. (Only one I can think of is Super Roboy, and that's heavily Metroid-coded throughout.)

One of the reasons Mandragora was so disappointing was because it had a fairly expansive world but barely anything truly Metroidvania power-wise to find. It takes a special kind of design philosophy to turn the iconic "ground smash" ability into a fancy key that can only be used in a handful of places and has no use or impact in combat...

Notable mentions include the Shadow of the Simurgh and Dimensional Claw powers in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the iconic Bash in Ori and the Blind Forest, the Screw Attack in Metroid games, the InfiniSlide in HAAK and MindSeize, and of course the wonderful bellyflop dodge in Ender Lilies.

Okay, I'm obviously joking with that last one.

Or am I...?

Writing is hard. As someone who has written multiple novellas and short stories, has spent his entire adult life teaching English and Creative Writing, and has a Masters Degree in Creative Writing, I know how damned hard writing compelling narratives and stories can be.

And because I know how hard writing a start-to-finish read like a novel or playscript is, I can also extrapolate how difficult it can be to write a story for a videogame — especially a nonlinear one like a metroidvania.

It is difficult to make a game with emotive stakes when told in a piecemeal way, yet some few metroidvania titles have managed it — or at least tried it!

For me, Nine Sols and Constance did it well, while Tales of Kenzera: Zau and Possessors struggled.

I think one of the biggest risks you can take when writing for a videogame is trying to start with a generally unlikeable character and trying to show progression to make them more likeable as the game goes on — especially in a game where you can skip cutscenes/dialogue altogether.

It's far easier to start with a character who is generally likeable, or perhaps somewhat mysterious, and have them go through ups and downs.

I think this is the problem the devs of Zau and Possessors had, where as well as dealing with generally sensitive themes and subject matter, they also have rather unlikeable or inconsistent characters, and the vehicle that has been chosen to tell their stories and show their growth — that of a metroidvania game, an inherently nonlinear experience for the most part — does these types of stories few favours.

(Plus a lot of us have to deal with unlikeable individuals in day-to-day life; engaging with them in a videogame as part of our fun/relaxation time doesn't always appeal.)

And, to be honest, it doesn't help that the characters in both these games weren't particularly well written, with far too much focus on predictable story beats and melodrama as an attempt to create basic tensions and conflict to try and engage the player in something.

I get lost easily. I like having a little overview of my surroundings in the corner of the screen so I don’t have to keep bringing up the map menu constantly.

I understand that this isn't for everyone, and am pleased to see more games implementing an option (or button press) to toggle these on or off per user desires.

(Note that a minimap is not the same as a quickmap. I find holding a button down to bring up a map almost as disruptive as bringing up a map screen, though arguably it is better than nothing.)

I love a good relic system. Having grown up on the GameBoy igavanias, anything that I can equip to modify or add powers that don't always classify as a full-on "metroidvania ability" are fine by me.

Some examples are the Faerie Scroll that let you see enemy names when you hit them, or amulets or charms that modify your powers, weapons, or abilities in other ways. Even a simple magnet power/item is something I look forward to finding (if it isn't on by default, which is actually my preferred way of doing currency collection — give me back my currency, damned spike pits!).

I am a sucker for good artistry. I love beautiful art and imaginative worlds, and games that showcase both of these things automatically get a bit of a boost in terms of their appeal, even if actually the gameplay isn't quite as varied, exciting, or just plain good as I'd like.

The problem, as with many things on the "Things I Like" side of this list, is that it is harder to talk about more subjective things like art and music than it is to talk about concrete things like gameplay systems. A lot of times, while I do talk about liking the look and aesthetic of a videogame, it doesn't tend to be something I dwell on for long.

In fact, in some cases, it can be hard to even really put my finger on the specifics of what I like — despite generally having the capacity and general language skills to explain further.

(Or, of course — because this is the internet — if I do try and explain further and use appropriate technical terms and the like, I get called pretentious. Can't win.)

Games like Silksong, MIO: Memories in Orbit, and Constance in the metroidvania space, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dead Space (Remake & Series) and Bloodborne across other genres, are notable for their distinctive visual style that immerses me in the worlds the developers have created.

While (almost) never a dealbreaker, there is something very distracting about inconsistent or incoherent visuals in a videogame, especially when the game is created using pixel art.

This can be something as simple as a game having that "Unity Asset Store" piecemeal look, where tilesets for different biomes are clearly by different artists, and pixel sizes or shading styles don't match across the various game objects — which I understand, by the way! I do appreciate that not everyone can either draw or afford to pay for an artist to create art for them!

It can also be something like "all the lineart is consistently thick across the game" — something Voidwrought did well in my opinion, while Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus was inconsistent with.

It's a tiny thing, but I really love it when everything in a world looks like it belongs in that world. While I may have my critiques of Silksong and MIO: Memories in Orbit I have absolutely zero notes about their aesthetic.

A more generic one for across videogames, but I love when a game's soundscape is appropriate and well-balanced for the type of game being created.

I have a hefty collection of videogame music (I'm literally listening to metal/rock remixes of Hollow Knight tracks and once again listening to the Stellar Blade soundtrack — which I absolutely adore — as I write this section) and like nothing more than when a game inspires me to go to YouTube to find its OST.

A solid musical score and sound design goes a long way to making games memorable, enjoyable, and stand apart for me — and the lack of a memorable score is one of the reasons Metroid Dread didn't get into my S-tier, while Alex Roe's absolutely superlative work on tracks like Misbegotten Amalgam and Sean Secca's ambient works on tracks such as Pale Sky in GRIME absolutely elevate the game for me.

While many of my favourite games have it, in my opinion most of them would be even better games without it.

Of particular note, however, are games that for whatever crazy reason insist on using contact damage but don't give you a decent way of dealing with it. A short-ranged Dash with no iframes, for example, is not a suitable defensive tool in a game with contact damage, especially if the action is fast-paced. Older Castlevania games could get away with something like Alucard's back dash move because combat was generally very slow in comparison to games today.

That said, the most egregious cases are when contact damage is added to enemies in games with already clearly defined attack animations.

In my opinion, the only enemies that should have contact damage are enemies that look like they would actually hurt you if you touch them. Electrified enemies, acidic slimes, sea urchin things covered in massive torso-piercing spikes, etc.

Of a case so special that it gets an extra section, contact damage when combined with uninterruptable/uncontrollable knockback is one of my least favourite things ever.

Remember how much you enjoyed getting hit in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and falling all the way down a long shaft before you hit solid ground and could recover? Yeah, I think that sucks. Badly.

Air Recovery is great. Add it, devs. Please. Pretty please.

I’ve seen a lot of people claim that “rules that govern the player should govern the enemies too” and I disagree entirely.

While I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of a massive combo chain in a souls game and said offhandedly “Well, they clearly have an unlimited stamina bar; wish we had that!” there are certain things that in a singleplayer game I feel should remain one-sided, and stunlocking is a case in point.

Taking control from the player with a status effect is fine — getting frozen or paralysed or petrified or whatever: yeah, fair does (as long as there is a way of avoiding it or breaking out of it quickly) — but if the recovery time from getting hit is too long and you can get hit again as you are recovering but before you are able to act, leading to a stunlocked state, that is not fine. God of War: Sons of Sparta epitomises my frustrations with a badly-tuned stunlocking system.

Not in an MV; not in any videogame.

In 2D metroidvanias, we are already limited in terms of defensive options by way of only having two dimensions to operate in — you can't dodge side to side when you can't move on the z-axis at all — so being locked in place for an animation when enemies have much faster attacks is an additional limitation that can add up to a miserable time.

Curse of the Sea Rats was clearly very proud of its attack animations — rightly so; they were beautiful — but they made for an awful feeling game, to the extent that the devs eventually caved under the weight of negative feedback on combat feel and changed it all.

Possessors is much the same, but is somehow even worse as you cannot change direction mid-combo, and for a game that totes platform-fighter stylings, the aimation locking actually interrupts the fluidity of the game experience.

Games with heavy animation locks often lead me to believe that the developers value their fancy animations more than the experience of the user — which for me equates to a "style over substance" argument. Animation locks, in my opinion, should be a tool to enhance the weight of certain things; be used sparingly, not for everything in combat.

(And please note, I'm not talking about the kind of locks that mean you have to be methodical and precise with your inputs, like in a souls game. I'm talking when animations simply go on too long and you feel like, for example, your attack is over and you still cannot dodge or block or whatever.)

Balance is difficult in any game with combat. I’m generally of the opinion that the more hits any given enemy takes to kill, the fewer enemies should appear together. (And for me, being swarmed is never really very fun — this is something Anima Flux got wrong imho.)

Power progression is important in games. If you get an upgrade but most enemies still take the same number of hits to kill, you don’t feel like you have any progression, even if by the numbers you obviously do.

This was a real problem for me in Hollow Knight: Silksong where enemies have their own resistance values as well as weapons not scaling as you might expect, so the first needle upgrade really didn't feel like it actually made much of a difference as you were likely going straight into harder content with healthier enemies. That desperate "I need something to make me more powerful!" feeling from Act 1 of the game wasn't resolved by getting what I'd been searching for, and this led to a feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration.

It wasn't until two upgrades later, where I picked up two Pale Oil almost back-to-back, that I started actually feeling like enemies were taking the appropriate amount of hits in the Citadel. It was the most fun part of the game for me, but short-lived as it was mostly negated in Act 3 until I did a bunch of ropey minigames with bad hitboxes.

Anyways, in my utterly blunt opinion, just massively increasing enemy health is not a fun way of balancing progression; giving them more complex attack patterns you have to navigate is.

Enemy Variety is important and, for me, should be directly proportional to the length of your game.

While I’m not necessarily of the opinion that every biome should have unique enemies and there should never be crossover, I do tend to prefer zones where the enemies look like part of the zone.

Even something as simple as Bread Adventure has different enemies themed to each zone, even if they’re basically all variations of the same archetype.

Blade Chimera and many of the Castlevania titles simply go with a grabbag of enemies and throw them in wherever, and the lack of thematic stuff doesn’t sit well with me. (Though the random flag-waving American enemies in Blade Chimera did amuse me.)

Souldiers, on the other hand, did enemy variety really well, with scorpions and mummies in the pyramid level, and birds and goblins out on the plains, and spiders and bats and stuff in the caves etc etc.

There’s no hard and fast rule for this, of course; just a rough rule of thumb that I’ll probably revisit in the future. But I’d say that you should probably have at least 5 or 6 unique enemies for each biome in your game. Bare minimum. Add any crossovers that exist in multiple zones on top of this.

I notice when the same enemies keep showing up — especially when its enemies that I don't like that show up again and again!

One of my pet peeves is when bosses (or enemies in general) can flip their direction mid attack. If I'm standing on their left, they lift their sword to smash us, but at the last second we dodge through them, their attack should NOT flip to follow us as it strikes.

The Neo/Orange Popcorn games have often been rather guilty of this, to the extent that in 3000th Duel they responded specifically to my (somewhat harsh) feedback on it and fixed it. Mostly.

Weird that in future games it cropped up again...

I like fighting bosses. I'm not always very good at it, but I like fighting bosses and getting better at them — or getting lucky, which is what tends to happen more often.

What I don't like is having to sit in an elevator for 45 seconds, or do a platforming gauntlet through a poison swamp, to get back to what I actually want to do, which is try and fight the boss again..

I've seen a few people that argue that boss runbacks are a good thing; that they give you time to reassess what you did; that they inspire you to do better. Bullshit. They pad out game length, extend runtime, and do absolutely nothing for inspiring me to do better against the boss. You know what does? Losing to the boss and wanting to kick their ass ASAP.

One of the many things that Kotama & Academy Citadel does so well is have great bosses with absolutely zero runbacks to them. There are checkpoints outside each boss room. They get you back in the action and retrying bosses instantly.

Does this make for a shorter game? Yeah, arguably! But in some cases it leads to a player feeling their time is valued and not being wasted.

It should come as no surprise to you if you're on this website that I've looked at a lot of metroidvania maps. Some are great, setting a gold standard for quality of life (like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown's memory screenshot system, now being integrated into games from other devs) or useful features (like the way Ender Magnolia iterated on the one — potentially only? — feature that people liked about Ender Lilies' map — the changing room border colour when you've found everything in that room).

Some people have taken this to mean that I dislike grid-based map systems which is not true. I find grid-based map systems very cathartic, ticking off square after square, but they only work for very specific styles of game world — generally if there’s only one thing to find in any grid square they work fine, but if they try and represent more complex rooms with multiple things to find, they aren’t as good.

If a game has multiple pathways and nooks and crannies, I find that simplifying any given room into a rectangular blob generally does the explorative side of the genre a disservice, making it harder to navigate (which is the exact opposite of what a map should do) as well as adding the wrong kind of friction to backtracking, finding secrets, and collecting items.

A particularly good example of a bad map is Constance, which does so many things wrong. Not only does it feature rectangular blob rooms — which I've already established make it harder for you to visualise your location at a macro level — but there's also no way of telling whereabouts in a room you are! There is just an indicator telling you which room you are in. Not very helpful.

Adding to Constance's map woes is the fact there are no custom markers (though we do have limited Memory Screenshots), no way of telling whether a room or area is complete short of an overall game %, and no way of zooming out to get a greater view of the surrounding rooms and their relationship to each other. It adds up to a navigation aid that doesn't actually aid navigation particularly well.

It has been a long time since I have been so uninspired to continue exploring based purely on the game's map alone...

I truly dislike the Hollow Knight style of doing things. Having to sit at a bench to fill out the map annoys me, and I've constantly mentioned my otherwise poor sense of direction — it's why I started making maps in the first place!

I much prefer the Super Metroid style of doing things, where you find a map station, or pick up a map, and it fills out the background of an area with limited detail, but it still tracks everything in real time. This is something I really hoped they’d change for Silksong but they did not. Fortunately, many modders felt the same way so did something about it.

It is also one of my few critiques of GRIME, in case anyone wants to point out that I'm always saying how "perfect" that game is. (Which I haven't, by the way. I've been openly critical of many things in GRIME.) I dislike the Beacons system — where you have to find a stone monolith to unlock the map for an area — and I'm somewhat disappointed it is coming back for the sequel (though at least they're also tying Fast Travel to it from the start this time).

Custom map markers/pins are one of those things that, even now, devs aren't including — or aren't including well — in their metroidvania games.

With the success of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown's screenshot map pins, I was expecting way more developers to include it in their games, but I've only seen like 1 or 2 devs implement it. I'd argue that Lone Fungus: Melody of Spores actually did it slightly better by not giving away map screenshot pins as exploration rewards.

Beyond this functionality, though, having decent custom map pins — both in number and variety — is important, I think, and so many games stick with "generic symbol you're likely to forget why you used it".

Guns of Fury was a game that didn't do this very well at launch, limiting the amount of custom markers you could use to far less than you'd actually probably need to use at the start of the game, while games like Constance eschew custom markers entirely.

HAAK, in my opinion, continues to be the gold standard for custom placeable marker designs. Souldiers' automarkers were good, but they mysteriously didn't work consistently for the whole game, whereas HAAK just had different icons for "you need to break the ground here" or "you need to smash the ceiling there" or "here's a barrier you can't get past yet". I wish more devs followed their example.

One of the fun things about MVs for me is collecting all the things.

Games that don’t accommodate this aren’t particularly good MVs as far as I’m concerned. Give me guidance as to whether I’ve gotten all the things in a specific area. Give me a % counter for world and area completion, or a box that tells me I have X of Y like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown did, or change the room border colour if I’ve got everything as Ender Magnolia did, or have an item that tells me if a secret is hidden in a room when I enter.

Something, anything to facilitate not running around completely blindly.

Having a huge map where you know you’ve missed something but have no idea where to start looking is the absolute worst feeling and in my eyes shows you have failed as a metroidvania developer, regardless of how good the rest of your game is.

As a sidenote, this philosophy gets applied inconsistently to soulsvania titles. Part of their deal is generally making do with what you do find, rather than going out of your way to find everything, and there is usually more than enough of what you need. I’d still prefer they have trackers, though.

For me, Metroidvanias are the one genre where I will try and 100% the game in a single playthrough, thus missable items, quests, and the like are anathema to me.

This is especially egregious where there are achievements for collecting every X, and you missed one because you hit an unknown/arbitrary trigger and a quest moved on or an NPC died and you missed out on something through no fault of your own. The original Blasphemous screwed this up and the community feedback for The Game Kitchen was vocal enough that they patched it with apologies.

In a short game — say 6-8 hours — this isn't so bad, but in games that are any longer than that, feeling you have to play the game over again because you "did it wrong" when you don't know exactly how or why is frustrating.

It's the wrong genre for that. Keep it to Souls games.

(And that includes you, Soulsvania titles...)

I loathe these things, both in terms of gameplay and just in principle. They always feel like padding, which is rather ironic since the first one I did was in Hollow Knight, a game that needed no padding.

I've never seen one I've enjoyed, and the ones I have done have always felt they don't respect your time. Give me a Path of Pain platforming section over these any day.

Especially egregious are where they're tied to the 100% completion. Lone Fungus: Melody of Spores unfortunately chose to do this, which is (one of several reasons) why I'll never get the achievement for 100%ing that game.

There are still metroidvania games out there, would you believe it, that incorporate zero fast travel?

In a genre where the maps are getting bigger as more developers try and keep up with the titans, inadequate fast travel locations can be a killer for myself and many others as a player. (Plus it's an odd choice to have no fast travel of any kind considering Castlevania: Symphony of the Night included it back in 1997).

The availablility of fast travel should, in my opinion, be directly proportionate to the size of both your zones and your game.

Ideally for me, fast travel should be an option at save points. Ender Magnolia did it well. Lone Fungus and its spinoff also do it well.

Silksong does it pretty well too, though Hollow Knight did not really until the Hidden Dreams DLC added the Dreamgate functionality. Not quite as good as save point warping, but still very accessible, and being able to save and quit back to the last bench is always useful.

If devs want players to not have that kind of freedom for most of the game, that is — begrudgingly — fine, but I always appreciate when it is at least unlocked towards the end of the game, when the Cleanup Phase is in full swing.

God of War: Sons of Sparta added in campsite fast travel towards the end of the game and it really highlighted how much it had been missing beforehand. I got to that stage after 16 hours in my initial playthrough, playing the game as I would any other metroidvania, BUT if you know it is an option and you beeline to it, you can unlock it after 7 or 8 hours by rushing the main story (and, admittedly, skipping all the dialogue).

For me, games where just moving around feels slow — either due to general movement speed, amount of enemies/obstacles, or some other factor — doubly suffer with too few checkpoints and fast travel points.

I love exploration in metroidvanias, but I don’t love retreading the same steps to pick up the same things. That does not entertain me. I do not think that it is fun.

I prefer metroidvanias where progress is stored, not reset, regardless of if some of my favourite older games use this system. They are some of my favourites despite their use of this system, not because of it.

I dislike realising two hours later that I no longer have that Important Item that I picked up because I must have died after getting it and I didn't retrace my steps properly, but now I need it and can't remember where it was is. That's a pretty cruddy feeling, but a lot of people like this style of play for reasons that confound me.

This is a minor peeve, and not related specifically to metroidvanias but all games in general: when there is text/dialogue, allow the player to skip the whole cutscene or advance it chunk by chunk with a press of a button.

Do not make us wait; do make it obvious with an on-screen prompt.

I can read far faster than the speed a lot of devs set their text to scroll onto the screen, or the voice actors speak their lines at. Sometimes I just want to play, especially on repeat playthroughs.

So you've died to a boss and run all the way back to it — including potentially taking a long-ass elevator ride (looking at you, Sol & Vin) — but then you have to sit through the same conversation you already saw once, or the bosses swooping down and roaring and there's a title card with their name on which you've seen once already...

It adds up. The dialogue, the intro, both great the first time you see them — but do I really need to watch it EACH TIME?!

And add boss runbacks to this... Ugh... THIS is one of the things *I* personally talk about when I refer to a game not respecting my time.