Metroidvania Design

[Candescence]

I'm gonna post my own brief analysis of certain design aspects of Metroidvanias and what should be used and avoided, which should hopefully be a springboard for some good discussion on the topic.

For a while, now, I've been contemplating how to design a good Metroidvania-style game. I have attempted before with Aria of Destiny, but that was much more rudimentary and, well, crude, in my honest opinion. I could do so much better.

In my examinations, I've come across this particular article examining the ins and outs of Super Metroid's design, which I think does a marvelous job of demonstrating why the game is a pinnacle of its genre. Super Metroid, followed by the Metroid Prime games, are, in my opinion, the pinnacle of "Metroidvania" design. The Castlevania games in this style, in my opinion, while they can be fun, they do have some things that fundamentally hold them back in some respects.

I also think Sonic could easily be adapted to a 'metroidvania' style. Hell, there's already a game of this style in the series, Tails' Adventure, which provides its own spin on the 'genre', utilizing a structure of self-contained areas that act as levels on their own, but can be explored with new items to uncover hidden goodies later on, but I'll get to that later. Firstly, let's explore the distinction between Metroid and its Castlevania 'cousins'.

Metroid and Castlevania

Castlevania's first foray into more open-ended level design started with Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, was an intriguing experiment that, much like Link's Adventure, was rife with issues, from the more perplexing (even in Japanese, the NPCs were incomprehensible, and the bosses could be SKIPPED, and even if you chose to fight them they were piss easy) to the simply annoying, such as grinding for hearts to get cool stuff, and the lack of a map to see where the hell you were going.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night tried again, this time with more level heads and another incredibly good game to work off of - Super Metroid. It pretty much avoided nearly all of CV2's problems, and a couple of its own issues would be fixed in sequels (such as being forced to equip consumable items to one of Alucard's arm slots to actually use it, which was silly). It was one of the most beautiful and atmospheric games on the PSX, and with good reason. Alucard's animations were fantastic, the game was packed with detail, the music was amazing (which is the standard for Castlevania, really), and there was a ton of enemy variety. You had several subweapons to utilize, dozens of swords and other weapons, spells, familiars, all that jazz.

Now, where it fell short? A couple of things - firstly, it didn't nail that sense of loneliness that Super Metroid excelled at, and its atmosphere, while haunting and gothic, wasn't quite up to that level either - the (amusingly) bad dialogue was probably a factor in that, as well. And, as well, it inherited a problem from Simon's Quest - grinding. No, I'm not talking about level grinding, the "Castleroids" are actually generally decent in that respect (Dawn of Sorrow in particular has a perfect leveling curve), but grinding for anything else? Hoo, boy. The most broken sword in the game, in particular, is dropped (with a very small chance, I might add) by a rather small and weak enemy only encountered in the inverted library.

And that got me thinking - did the Castleroids NEED RPG stats and items? Honestly, I think not. Those games generally allow you to play as a normally unplayable character after you've beaten it, and these alternate characters only had the stuff you start with, and some of them don't even have levels. And these alternate modes are very fun in spite of the lack of leveling and whatnot that the main game has, if not moreso in some respects. I think the main issue is, Metroid hides its upgrades and hidden goodies across the world, and relies on that for 100% completion. Problem is, Castlevania doesn't go to such lengths - you don't have anything like the morph ball, bombs, or missiles to uncover hidden items. The 100% completion is mainly reliant on filling out every part of the map. And then Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia made things worse by adding in fetch quests.

While some of the games after Symphony had some inventive mechanics, many of them have relied on grinding. The card system in Circle of the Moon is especially frustrating. It's a rather unfortunate result of trying to stand out from the thing it's inspired by. I believe that the Castleroids would be able to stand on their own without the need for such RPG elements.

Tails' Adventure

Tails' Adventure isn't strictly a 'Metroivania' - key word here being 'strictly'. The game is structured into several self-contained areas linked by an overworld, that are structured like linear levels but feature hidden items that the game encourages you to find by returning with other new items to access them. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia uses a similar overworld style, but sadly doesn't feature nearly as much hidden goodies. Tails can utilize a whole assortment of various equipment and items to progress on his quest, and even acquires Chaos Emeralds, which act as health/energy upgrades, a staple of the genre.

In one respect, it succeeded where Simon's Quest failed - providing structure to levels that provide challenge and can be carefully designed without having to compensate for the player having to go both left and right, one of Egoraptor's main complaints about the game. That's not to say it's designed like a 'traditional' Castlevania game, but you get my point, though TA can be rather difficult at times. And it even did it while allowing multiple routes - Polly Mt. 1 has two routes, one of them being a difficult route that only exists to find the Knuckles item.

The way Tails goes about solving his problems is very "Metroidvaniac". There are often conspicuous details that the player will notice and will want to use items on later. Small spaces can be navigated with the remote-controlled robot, much like the Morph Ball. It's like playing with Samus as a gageteer genius rather than a futuristic bounty hunter (granted, such a game would suit Agatha Heterodyne of the Girl Genius fame much better, who happens to be have been using a rather excessively large powered armor with a death ray, lately).

Tails' Adventure wasn't perfect (it had some issues, mainly with the interface and inventory) but it was one of the better Game Gear Sonic games.

How to potentially apply that to Sonic?

The Adventure games had upgrades that characters could acquire. "Classic Sonic" already places an emphasis on branching paths and exploration, as well. Use rings as a measure of health like in Tails' Adventure, and we're in business. It's not rocket surgery. After that, you need atmosphere and careful planning in your design. The Super Metroid article provides a potent example of how it goes about doing things, try and see how you can apply certain methods to your design and how well they work in the context of a Sonic game. There are some fantastic design choices that Super Metroid utilizes.

All things considered, I think there's so much in the way of opportunity. The key is figuring out what works.

[AldenT]

So there WAS a Metroidvania-style Sonic game! I never tried the Game Gear, didn't even see the thing myself. But having played through most of the Metroid and Castlevania games, I can agree that Super Metroid nailed the formula just right. The 2 games before it were just getting used to the format, and Fusion railroaded players instead.

I also started the Castlevania series with Simon's Quest and, though I only pulled through it by remembering info from guides I read years ago, I can definitely agree that it set some bases it didn't quite know how to use, like those RPG elements and the grinding. I've played the DS games and I can say that at this point, the grinding works best as a progressive goal rather than an intended one like in Simon's Quest.

More than that, the grinding really only becomes frustrating when you're fetching specific abilities from enemies, something that got worse as they went along. The only exception I saw was Harmony of Dissonance, since the main weapons (whip tips and spell books) are found in the castle, while the enemies just give you armor pieces and consumables. Great to have, but not a real must due to the shops they have there.

Order of Ecclesia had a great idea in its self-contained areas and I was hoping to see more of that. But that game also botched the weapon system (the glyphs are okay to use, it's finding them that's annoying) and it also complicated the stats, something that really shouldn't need to factor into the experience. I agree that the genre could do with less RPG stuff.

For examples of that, I recommend the Shaman King: Master of Spirits games for GameBoy Advance. They do away with the grinding entirely and compact the inventory a lot. Granted, its spirit system is kinda primitive, but it gets the job done and the sequel tweaks a lot of stuff. They also tried something different with the map (connected dots, each road is a OoE-style self-connected area), but it may be hit and miss.

I can also recommend Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions for DS. It's a very short game but it still manages to hide tons of secrets, including new attacks and abilities. It beats pretty much all Metroidvania games in terms of combat too, since there are lots of options and Spider-Man flows very well from one action to the next. For that matter, web-slinging and crawling make tight areas very easy to explore.

As for how to apply all this to Sonic, well, the Advance games expanded on the Genesis games's habit of hiding special rings and other items in its stages, so there's a start. It would have to be a VERY open world with a ton of roads, though... backtracking isn't what the series is known for.

[lone8643]

Interesting concept. Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Great Maze felt MetroidVania-ish. A factor of speed and powerups could easily make this work. What's needed is a programmer with patience and enough tenacity to see the project through to completion. I'm in a big words mood today

[AldenT]

Yeah, I remember that much was one of the appealing things about Shattered Dimensions DS. Movement was very fast and effective for something normally complex, and as you find the upgrades, combat itself becomes just as effective. It really is a joy to play through it. :3

And if it's a Metroidvania fan game you want, how about a Megaman twist? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNoG8kJfUAo It hasn't been updated for a while, but it's still pretty cool.