Blog Post #4: Why a Metroidvania?
We Made a Metroidvania
[h3]Introduction
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DOOMBLADE is a Metroidvania. This is realized via a large interconnected game world which keeps opening more and more as the player finds new power-ups that allow them to access new areas. But why make a Metroidvania in the first place?
[h3]Kim's Experience
[/h3]I, Kim the Coder, was first introduced to Metroidvanias in an ancient time in which the term was still to be coined. In elementary school I got to experience the most influential Metroidvania ever made: the 8-bit Nintendo Metroid. The game really stuck with me. All the secrets to be found and the atmosphere of the unknown. Something about this combination was absolutely magical.
Naturally, I kept playing Metroidvanias throughout the years with Metroid Dread being the latest of the bunch. My favorites in the old classics are probably Super Metroid and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Of the modern ones, I love Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Yoku's Island Express. This is a genre I just can’t get enough of.
[h3]The Team Coming Together
[/h3]Fortunately, Juha the Artist also loves Metroidvanias and it wasn’t hard for him to convince me to start making our own entry to the genre. We knew that we wanted to do something new related to movement and combat in platformers, so we figured Metroidvania was a great fit for us. A lot of the games of the genre we love have abilities like double jumping that give the player more range in movement as well as more and more powerful attacks that make you feel like nothing can stop you in combat. We felt right at home.
One of the things I love about Ori and the Blind Forest is that it has a bit more focus on the movement part when it comes to power-ups compared to other Metroidvanias. This means that the backtracking you have to constantly do in the genre becomes less tedious and way more fun. With the ideas we had, we knew that we could take a movement-focused approach much further while integrating the movement power-ups fluidly with combat.
[h3]Gameplay
[/h3]We knew we wanted to make the gameplay unique pretty much from the get-go. This is why already in the very first fight the core gameplay mechanic that is introduced has you fighting in a completely new way. Enemies aren’t there just to try to kill you, they are also there for your convenience. They help you move around by being targets for your flight-attacks.
Combining movement and attacking with our mechanics has made backtracking in DOOMBLADE really fluid and fun. Another thing I really like is how we managed to integrate fast traveling into the game in a very organic way simply by using attacking as a way of traversing long distances fast. And we had so much fun designing the game’s bosses since we could do so many new things with them.
So, little did I know when playing the very first Metroid on the 8-bit Nintendo that I was one day going to make a game of the same genre. Or that it would even become a genre in the first place! And while it would be magical to backtrack to those days of childlike wonder, I think the magic of making a Metroidvania myself more than makes up for not being able to do so.
And oh, I almost forgot! There is another aspect in Metroidvanias that is super important to me and Juha. We want the music of the game to accomplish certain things. But that is a story for another blog post…😉
Wishlist DOOMBLADE on Steam and give this blog a thumps up if you liked it, and if you have any questions you would like to see answered in later blogs leave us a comment below.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/922050/DOOMBLADE/
[h3]Stay tuned for next week, where we will dive further into the music in the game and the producer behind it!
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DOOMBLADE Iceberg Interactive