10 Best Metroidvanias Forgotten by Time

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The Metroidvania genre technically dates as far back as the very first Metroid game in 1986, coming into its own more officially with the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 1997. In the couple of decades since, Metroidvania has blossomed into an entire microcosm of adventure games, some staying true to the original Metroid formula and others crossing over with other genres like Soulslikes and roguelikes.

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As you’d probably expect from such a fast-growing genre, there have been more than a few Metroidvanias that have been left in the proverbial dust by the gaming public. Even if the games themselves are good, if they’re not the right kind of good at the right kind of time, they simply don’t make any waves, and the industry moves on. That’s a shame, so in the interest of drumming up support, here are a few Metroidvanias that you may have missed the boat on, some fairly recent, others from a little further back.

10 REDO!

The Last Human Left

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Robson Paiva

August 2019

Despite being a genre that got its start on the NES, Metroidvania games have proven themselves a surprisingly strong genre for telling isolated, moody stories. I guess in a game where your protagonist is solely responsible for carrying themselves through everything, a lonely vibe naturally crops up, and that’s the vibe REDO! is going for. The all-caps and exclamation point are part of the title, if you’re wondering.

REDO! is a snacky Metroidvania in which an unnamed girl, the very last surviving human in the entire world, sets off to find the origin of a mysterious signal and determine if she really is alone. Moody vibes are the soup du jour in this game, with its environment and ambience all set up to really make you feel like you’re the only living being for miles around, mysteriously animate monsters notwithstanding.

The girl does get a small assortment of tools and weapons to choose from, like different guns and melee implements, but she doesn’t get much in the way of superhuman abilities. It’s not a very long game, but the empty atmosphere will definitely leave an impression on you by the time you’re done with it.

9 Ghost Song

Samus Would Be Proud

Speaking of lonely atmospheres, one of the signature stylistic flourishes of the Metroid games is pitting you against inhuman creatures and entities on far-off, alien worlds. It’s one thing to be completely alone on your own planet, but to be isolated on another planet, full of unknown, likely hostile flora and fauna, is another ballgame entirely, one that Ghost Song is bringing you to.

Ghost Song is a more overtly horror-tinged Metroidvania, where your unfortunate space adventurer has found themselves marooned on an alien moon haunted by the souls of every other spacefarer who couldn’t escape its clutches. Your foes include both fungal monsters native to the moon and reanimated metal suits, visors burning with old grudges. It’s not a nice situation, but it’s the one you’ve found yourself in.

As you explore, you’ll receive both helpful traversal abilities and various new weapons to knock the fungal folk out of your way, like superheated swords and massive, crushing hammers. Ghost Song is a fairly straightforward Metroidvania, which is probably why it didn’t make huge waves, but it’s good at what it sets out to do, which is creating a lonely, unsettling vibe and force you to fight your way out of it.

8 Blast Brigade Vs. The Evil Legion Of Dr. Cread

Tag-Team Heroism

Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Cread

As I mentioned, most Metroidvania games are solo affairs. Your protagonist may have the occasional static NPC to help them out, but nine times out of ten, they’re completely on their own. That’s not always the case, though; sometimes, like in Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Cread, you’ve got a whopping four heroes in one.

Blast Brigade is a deliberately campy, comic-esque adventure in which the titular team of globe-trotting heroes takes on the evil, world-conquering Dr. Cread on his secret island lair. The big gimmick here is that you can swap on the fly between all four members of your team, at least once you’ve tracked them down on the map. Each member has the same basic ability to freely aim and shoot their weapon, Metal Slug-style, but they also have their own unique skills, like Jeff’s grenade launcher and Shura’s grappling hook.

Besides the run and gun combat, the game also has its fair share of tricky platforming puzzles, requiring careful timing and aim to navigate corridors of buzzsaws and electrified walls. It’s like several different arcade game archetypes rolled up into a Metroidvania-shaped package.

7 The Mummy Demastered

CGI Dwayne Johnson Not Included

Okay, full disclosure: I know basically nothing about the Mummy film franchise. My knowledge starts and ends at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson being rendered in awkward 2001 CGI in The Mummy Returns. That said, even if you’re equally clueless about this particular franchise, it’s not too hard to wrap your head around horrifying curses from Ancient Egypt, so you can still play and enjoy The Mummy Demastered if you never bothered to see the movies like me.

The Mummy Demastered is a pixel-art Metroidvania set in the Mummy universe, in which an undead Egyptian princess has awoken and plunged the world into sandy, bandage-wrapped chaos. You’re one of a unit of monster-busting soldiers, exploring tombs and sand-choked streets, fighting back the undead hordes with good ol’ lead and flame. I specifically stress a “unit,” because if your soldier is killed in the field, they’ll be revived as a revenant in the princess’s control, requiring a fresh, identical soldier to be sent in their place.

That undead soldier bit gives the game a mild Soulslike tinge, as you’ll have to put your former comrade to rest to retrieve your weapons and upgrades. You’ll want all the firepower you can get to fend off the many giant insects and testy mummies standing in the way of your exploration.

6 Shadow Complex

A Strong Case Against Recreational Spelunking

Shadow Complex Remastered

I don’t like the notion of spelunking, baseline. Caves are scary and deep, and if you fall, you’ll either die or get stuck until you die. Of course, plenty of people are braver than I am and go spelunking just for the fun of it. I respect that, mostly, but if the obvious reasons to avoid the practice are insufficient, here’s another one: you might end up like the protagonist of Shadow Complex and have your girlfriend kidnapped by an evil paramilitary organization if you explore a cave.

Shadow Complex was originally released as an Xbox Live Arcade exclusive in 2009, then it was remastered for current platforms in 2015. You play as unfortunate spelunker Jason who, along with his girlfriend Claire, end up stumbling upon a freaky black ops cult thing while cave diving. To rescue Claire and escape this organization, he’ll need to navigate their base and the surrounding cave systems with nothing but a pistol and a flashlight.

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While Jason starts with nothing but his basic exploring equipment, by uncovering the organization’s various scientific endeavors, he can acquire all kinds of superhuman abilities and weapons, like triple-jump jetpacks and one-hit kill shotguns. The game also has a leveling mechanic, unlocking various perks as you progress, ranging from better gun accuracy all the way up to unlimited ammo.

5 Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

A Free-Flying Vania

The majority of Metroidvania games double as platformers, having you play as a human or human-adjacent being who needs to run and jump in order to get around. A noteworthy exception to this general paradigm can be seen in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet where, rather than a typical biped, you instead play as a little UFO buzzing around within the titular dark-shrouded planet.

As the title implies, the Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is the center of the conflict, as it’s completely enclosed itself around your homeworld’s sun. As a denizen of the rapidly-cooling planet, you take off in your saucer to venture to the planet’s depths in the hopes of making it cough up your planet’s life-giving star. As this UFO, you can fly freely through the planet’s jagged, cavernous makeup, hunting down vital pieces of technology to upgrade and empower yourself.

The entire planet itself is your enemy, not only deploying various shadowy critters to menace you, but frequently manifesting jaws and tentacles out of nowhere to swat your ship out of the air. You have to be quick on the draw with your blaster and grappling arm if you don’t want to be chomped like popcorn.

4 Hell Yeah! Wrath Of The Dead Rabbit

Revels In Ridiculousness

Hell Yeah!: Wrath of the Dead Rabbit

The early 2010s were an… interesting time for indie games, with many cranking the wackiness and irreverence up to eleven to differentiate from the more serious big-box games of the time. I think one of the clearest hallmarks of the overall vibe of this era is Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, a game that revels in over-the-top, cartoony violence like a ten-year-old on a Halloween sugar high.

You play as Ash, the undead rabbit ruler of Hell, who has his scandalous love for his favorite bathtime rubber duck leaked on the infernal internet. Vowing revenge, you rampage across the lower realms in search of the 100 demons who facilitated this insult to brutally muder them. It’s an exceptionally dumb premise for an exceptionally dumb game, and that’s exactly what it’s going for.

Ash’s weapon of choice is his late father’s hybrid jetpack and circular saw, which allows him to buzz all over the place, shredding up foes in front and beneath him. What’s especially amusing is that, every time you defeat a large enemy, you play a little WarioWare-style minigame to finish them off, ranging from just mashing a button to pop them like a grape to conducting an impromptu trivia challenge.

3 Olija

If You Like It, Stick A Harpoon In It

Harpoons are underrated in the pantheon of weaponry. It’s like a spear, but easier to throw and swing, and it’s great for fishing. Also, some harpoons are magic, and let you temporarily defy the laws of physics! Yeah, we don’t have a big sample size for assuming that, but Olija makes it its signature mechanic nonetheless. That’s pronounced “oh-lee-yah,” if you weren’t sure.

In Olija, you play as the shipwrecked Lord Faraday, castaway on the island of Terraphage. It’s an island that’s positively crawling with weird monsters and death traps, but luckily you’ve got an enchanted harpoon in your corner to guide your way. By chucking the harpoon at enemies or wall holds, you can instantly teleport to it or recall it back to you, which allows the game to set up a variety of cleverly tricky exploration and platforming puzzles.

Something I like about this game is its deliberately minimalistic aesthetic. The HUD is relegated solely to the top-left, and there’s fairly little spoken dialogue. Combine that with the pixel art, and you have a game reminiscent of old-school PC titles like Out of this World or Prince of Persia, which helps encourage you to use your imagination a little to interpret the story.

2 F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch

One Radical Rabbit

F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch

Am I nuts, or have rabbits really risen in the animal rankings recently? Rabbit protagonists are nothing new, of course, but I’m specifically thinking of rabbits in action-heavy settings, like Judy Hopps in Zootopia. It’s not a bad thing, especially if it gets us cool rabbits with giant mechanical fists like in F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch.

This 2.5D Metroidvania places you in the fuzzy feet of Rayton, an anthropomorphic rabbit and retired soldier who’s trying his best to lie low in the midst of a neon-soaked city state. When his friend is arrested without cause, though, he takes up his old service weapon, a gigantic robotic fist harness, to bail him out, one super-sized knuckle sandwich at a time. It’s a surprisingly serious story, given its fuzzy little star and his affinity for carrot juice, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the contrast.

In addition to the usual Metroidvania trappings, F.I.S.T. places a big emphasis on melee combat, allowing you to string together long, elaborate combos with not just your huge fist, but other swappable modes like a drill and a whip. If you had to put it on a Venn Diagram, it’d be mostly in Metroidvania territory with toes dipped into character-action and a bit of Soulslike.

1 Headlander

One Head Is Better Than None

Throughout the 2010s, Double Fine dabbled extensively in smaller-scale games, intended primarily for release on online storefronts like the Xbox Live Arcade. There were a few interesting games that came out of these endeavors, such as Costume Quest, Iron Brigade (formerly Trenched), and Stacking. One noteworthy game from the bunch is Headlander, which nobody else I have ever met has played.

Headlander is set aboard a retro-futuristic satellite, whose denizens consist of former humans that uploaded their minds to robotic bodies and fell under the control of a malevolent AI dictator. You’re the only flesh-and-blood human left- or at least, the head of one, but you’ll have to use that head to navigate the station and undo the AI’s control over humanity’s vestiges.

As a disembodied head, you can freely fly around using your little jetpack, but obviously, gates and systems won’t work for you. To explore and fight, you need to knock heads off of robots and plug yourself in, getting access to their respective abilities in the process. It’s a very modular Metroidvania, one that’s more about finding the right body for the job rather than amassing a large quantity of personal upgrades.