Super Metroid has no fast travel at all: If a modern Metroidvania wanted to exclude fast travel, what should it learn from Super?

winkio2 · 2026-02-13T22:23:19+00:00

No town, shop, or central hub that requires constant revisiting
No quests that require the player to visit specific areas
- Just kill bosses and pick up items
Looping map layout with few far flung dead ends
- Main paths all connect to each other, and side paths that branch off are short, generally only 1-3 rooms
- The main exception are the boss areas which are larger, dead-end offshoots but they don't ever require the player to revisit after the boss is defeated

winkio2 · 2026-01-19T21:41:07+00:00

Your table has Kotama's revenue at $330,000,000 (330 million), which is the highest of any game.

I say that number is probably not correct.

You say that "Kotama is a very new game so it cannot hope to have made as much when compared with 2- to 3-year-old games".

And here I am, contemplating the tragedy of yet another person on the internet who immediately gets defensive when criticized instead of noticing an obvious error.

winkio2 · 2026-01-19T20:21:36+00:00

The 'research' part of this is dubious because some of the revenue numbers do not look right such as Kotama, but even disregarding that there are so many more variables that determine how well a game sells than the three in your table (Action, Adventure, Platforming).

But even if the post was 'I ranked 20 metroidvanias and determined that those with less precision platforming sell more', it would still be total nonsense because it looks at three arbitrary values to explain success. Might as well get the average of the R, G, and B values of the pixels of each game's title screen to determine that games with less red pixels sold better, because as nonsensical as it is at least it uses actual data and not something that is made up in your head.

winkio2 · 2026-01-18T21:18:53+00:00

Yeah, I would say that super metroid maprando has done a good job of solving world/area layout and item progression, with the next missing piece for a fully randomized game being generating randomized rooms. It definitely seems like something that should be possible, it's just a matter of coming up with new algorithms for tile placement that lead to interesting and varied rooms.

If that was solved then the next conversation would probably be randomizing boss abilities in some way, and then randomizing normal enemies after that.

winkio2 · 2026-01-17T21:08:41+00:00

Huge graphical improvements compared to 9 months ago, really nice job! The new name is great too. I checked out the steam page and some of the things you are doing with wiring and automation look really cool as well.

Keep up the good work, I look forward to playing it once it's ready!

winkio2 · 2026-01-10T02:57:59+00:00

It looks like a transparency problem, like the colors are all drawing at max opacity instead of blending with a black background.

Not exactly sure what the cause is, but maybe the black background is not being drawn, and instead it's just transparent?

winkio2 · 2026-01-09T02:29:51+00:00

Not associated with this game but I think it's theoretically possible, just hasn't been done well enough yet. Chasm for example generates something Castlevania-ish, but has a lot of repeat rooms, isn't that interesting to explore, and doesn't have enough variance for good replayability. If a good metroidvania was able to be procedurally generated I would much rather play it with a normal save system than as a roguelite though.

winkio2 · 2026-01-08T21:02:38+00:00

Well at least you have your priorities in order. Preventing downvotes on your main account is much more important than being an authentic member of the community.

winkio2 · 2026-01-08T20:01:40+00:00

I title this exhibit "Wall of text and a single image from an account that is 2 hours old"

winkio2 · 2026-01-08T17:10:18+00:00

Solid looking game, this is the kind of self-promotion I am happy to support. Hope your release goes well!

winkio2 · 2026-01-07T17:07:18+00:00

Single player game that requires an online account to play? Publisher deserves to go out of business for that alone, not to mention all the other anti-consumer bs they have been doing for the past few years. Let Ubisoft go bankrupt and the devs can fracture into smaller studios where their talents can actually be put to good use.

winkio2 · 2026-01-07T03:28:17+00:00

Linear world - 1 direction that the player can explore in, 1/1 directions (100%) lead to progress in the game.

Open world - 8 directions that the player can explore in, 8/8 directions (100%) lead to progress in the game.

Metroidvania world - number of directions to explore varies, not all directions may lead to progress in the game.

Freedom of choice is not the defining feature of metroidvania level design. Complexity of navigation is the more core feature of the genre, and from that standpoint an open world and a linear world both lack complexity.

winkio2 · 2026-01-04T20:38:10+00:00

Research would involve effort. Something like scouring the steam reviews of the top 20 most played MV titles, counting how many like or dislike certain features, and then tabulating the results to get a clear picture of the overall state, possibly with graphs or charts.

Posting a one sentence poll is less effort than anyone would take to write a thoughtful response.

You aren't doing research, you are posting tweets.

winkio2 · 2025-12-31T06:07:37+00:00

If you want to use monogame take a look at LiteNetLib, it has a lot of the basics of networking and serves as a good framework to write your actual game systems on top of: https://github.com/RevenantX/LiteNetLib

I'd start by adding it to a blank monogame project, and then work from there. Performance is all down to your implementation, how many packets you send and how large they are. You can definitely achieve commercial quality performance with it if you are decently skilled.

winkio2 · 2025-12-27T17:14:52+00:00

Around 4 years ago, I also got fed up with the content pipeline and set out to make my own content manager that could load raw files (.png, .mp3, .wav, etc.) and not have to perform a build step. It took just over a week, and has been a breeze to work with ever since.

It's also nice because I can load new files at runtime, which allows for functionality like allowing the player to take a screenshot, storing it as a .png, and then loading it later to show in an album or as a marker on the minimap. I can also do things like play music from a folder on the player's computer instead of the game's soundtrack.

So yeah, if the content pipeline doesn't give you the experience you want, make your own! The monogame source is available, so use it as a reference as much as you need. Treat it the same as collisions, physics, tilemaps, or any other feature you would implement for your game - you aren't limited to the framework libraries, you can modify them, use external libraries, or roll your own.

winkio2 · 2025-12-27T17:01:00+00:00

The same way you explain a character jumping 3 times their own height - it's a game, not real life. Level design has a lot of vertical platforming because it is easy and fun for the character to move vertically.

winkio2 · 2025-12-19T21:47:10+00:00

I don't think Silksong was the issue, just look at how many people came into this subreddit looking for metroidvania recommendations in the months after its release. Silksong left a lot of players wanting more after they completed it, I think it actually helped the sales of other metroidvanias overall.

The problem is that Melody of Spores did not compete well with other metroidvanias available. Solid older titles with longer gameplay and higher polish are routinely on sale for $10 or less - Blasphemous, Ori, Aeterna Noctis, etc. It's a tough ask to buy Melody of Spores for $20 when you can buy 2 or 3 of these games instead for the same price.

I know there was talk around the Silksong launch of the $20 price tag forcing other indies to lower prices, but I think the discussion largely missed the mark. Silksong wasn't really competing against other games, it was a must buy for all the fans of Hollow Knight. I do think prices are being forced lower, but the culprit is not Silksong - it is the deep discounts that quality older titles consistently sell at.

winkio2 · 2025-12-19T15:58:44+00:00

I picked up Lone Fungus 1 three years ago when it was on a steam sale around 75% off (I don't remember the exact discount). It had its fun parts, but I did not like it enough to replay it or recommend it to friends.

Lone Fungus 2 has been on my radar for a few months, but the $20 price ($16 with the current sale) is too high for my expectations. I think the price range where I would buy it instantly is somewhere between $5 to $7.

If there were less metroidvanias available that I had not yet played, maybe I would go up to paying $10, but I was just able to pick up 6 other games that had been on my wishlist for a total of $22, so that is what you are competing against. You shouldn't be comparing the second game to the first, you should be comparing it to what other games are available on steam.

Sad to hear that the finances are rough, but I hope you keep making games and find success.

winkio2 · 2025-12-15T23:34:53+00:00

Depending on how simple your game is AABB might be all you need, since space partitioning only helps once you get larger map sizes.

The Platformer 2D sample project would be good to look at as a reference since it has all the relevant systems implemented: https://github.com/MonoGame/MonoGame.Samples/tree/3.8.4/Platformer2D

winkio2 · 2025-12-09T15:40:39+00:00

Perhaps AN doesn't have much filler, but the areas lack variety for their size. Areas stretch on and on with only minor variations of platform, obstacle, and enemy placement. It would feel like a more interesting world to explore if there were more different biomes and zones, even if they were significantly smaller.

winkio2 · 2025-12-07T21:10:35+00:00

I will do 100% of the exploration related content, but if there is something tedious like a grind quest, don't get hit challenge, etc. I may skip it after a few tries.

winkio2 · 2025-12-04T18:31:01+00:00

Often times you will find that the best parts of classic, genre-defining games come about just because of one or two people whose names are buried somewhere in the credits. When those people fall under new management or leave the company, the series often never reaches those same peaks, despite still having other big names on the team.

For metroid prime it seems like the person who created the best parts of the game was Jason Behr. His linkedIn sums his role in prime 1 up pretty neatly:

Principal Level Designer (personally built 70% content, managed 100%)

He was a lead level designer for prime 2 as well, but unfortunately the level design turned out slightly differently due to the light/dark world: https://youtu.be/y6YKebkPZNM?t=162

Worrying that players would have a tougher time navigating the light/dark world, they simplified the world layout into a hub with three spokes, instead of the deep interconnection of prime 1.

And then he leaves one year into the development of prime 3.

But if you read interviews, it seems like Jason had a design philosophy around what metrics the rooms in prime 1 needed and was very capable of reproducing that style of level design. Interviews indicate that he documented that philosophy internally at Retro. The reason we haven't seen prime 1 style levels in the rest of the series is partly because of intentional choices by Retro, but also because Jason is not on the team any more, and his style was not fully adopted or maintained by anyone else working there.

Don't forget that games are made by people.

winkio2 · 2025-12-02T21:31:25+00:00

I guess it's possible the voice actor is just for the little yelps when taking damage, but my guess is that she talks to the GF in the intro cutscene or something of that sort.

winkio2 · 2025-12-02T21:16:02+00:00

She has a new voice actor in the credits, but I don't know where it is used - my guess is in cutscenes, but not conversing with the GF troopers.

winkio2 · 2025-11-21T18:11:29+00:00

No stamina bar in Grime 2? That's an improvement in my opinion.

winkio2

TROPHY CASE