3d ago

Why We Love to Get Lost in Games: The Enduring Appeal of Metroidvanias

www.nytimes.com Metroidvanias: The Video Games You Can Get Lost In

The cryptically named genre famed for its labyrinthine 2-D settings is nearly 40 years old and still going strong.

Interesting that in the title, stated in absolute terms in the text, and from the designers they interviewed, they cite getting lost as crucial for the genre. Personally, I disagree. Getting lost has tended to be why I didn't care for certain games in this genre, like Axiom Verge, and it soured my otherwise higher opinion of games like Hollow Knight and Symphony of the Night. Still, I think this is a good exploration of the genre and what makes it tick.

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Getting lost is definitely a love it or hate it kind of thing. I love getting lost in games. I wish more games had it as a feature. It’s extremely rare these days. Most games hold your hand like a toddler at Disneyland.
It’s okay to hate getting lost. There are loads and loads of games out there for you. I just cross my fingers for a few more games for me!
- I think I'd put it this way - I like adventuring, exploring, and finding my way through an immersive world. I don't like when I can't seem to stumble into the exact right clue or secret passage or interactable and waste up to possibly hours scouring the same locations over and over.
  That said, metroidvanias are my favorite videogame genre. I just had to accept that it's okay to look up a guide or wiki before I get fully tilted.
  
  Yeah I don’t like banging my head into a wall either. What I mean by enjoying getting lost is being in a dangerous area where I don’t know how to get back to safety. It’s a mini adventure within an adventure to figure out how to escape without dying.
  One game I play, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, has a built in mechanism to create situations like that: shafts you can fall down that put you into an unexplored level that’s deeper and more difficult than the one you were on. It’s pretty effective at creating these mini adventures though fans of the game complain about them all the time.
- Have you played Chasm? It's a metroidvania, nothing outside of the ordinary, but map is randomly generated, so you're guaranteed to get lost lol
  
  Does it have an auto-map feature? That’s the biggest difference for me. I enjoy the newer MVs but the auto-map feature makes it impossible (for me) to get lost. I’m used to games without any kind of auto-map.
  Edit: I checked it out on steam. Looks really cool!
  
  I don't recall tbh, I played it ages ago lol

38 comments