Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom was one of the best metroidvanias with a retro flavour and an excellent hand-drawn art style and fantastic music of the current console generation, an entry in the Wonder Boy series of games. While completing the game gives you a sequel teaser, it had since been reported a long time ago that the development team at French studio Game Atelier had decided not to go forward with plans for a sequel, citing the overcrowdedness of the market for (2d?) metroidvanias.

I remembered this recently and decided to look up what the studio is working on now. To my surprise, a new game by them has already been announced, and a demo is live on Steam. The game is called Otherskin and is... a Metroid Prime-like? My jaw dropped to the floor when I heard that - these game devs sure know their ambition!

Otherskin is a 3D action platformer metroidvania. You play as a woman who is stranded on an alien world filled with ruins of a bygone alien civilization and are tasked on eliminating the Corruption™ (yes, that's really what it's called). You progress through the game world by absorbing and copying abilities of enemies you defeat - I'm thinking Kirby or Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Or, well, any other kind of metroidvania game. The major difference between this game and Metroid Prime is the 3rd person perspective.

Grappling hook, wave beam, bombs, your favourites return. It's not all copy-cat though. The very first ability you acquire is a super-jump that makes you fly very high into the air. The movement in the game is great and the environments range from dark, corrupted and gloomy to bright and wonderful. The combat feels dynamic - while you're using your super-jump ability, you can briefly slow down time to shoot at enemies while falling. You can also insta-switch between different weapons with the mouse wheel.

I'm curious to see how the final game will turn out. The demo has you lose your copy abilities after returning to the hub, for you to have to collect them again from the same enemy in the next level - although this likely doesn't apply to weapon upgrades, only copy abilities like the super-jump and grappling beam. I'm also perplexed that it is a metroidvania game without a map system. Maybe we will see one in the full game? It certainly has me intrigued and looking forward to more.

Spurred by this (sub)thread on the topic of 3D Mario All Stars, I thought it would be interesting to discuss different types of 3D platformers, comparing them and perhaps even managing to group the similar ones together.

I hope such a discussion might lead people to try some other games that they haven’t before based on what they have enjoyed before.

Some example topics, to kick-start the discussion:

• how the character feels/controls (e.g. their momentum, jump, move-set)
• audio-visual package
• story and general ambience/feeling
• completionist goals
• specific game mechanics
• any other reason why one is a “must play” and how is it similar or different to others
• …

Has anyone here played both Shantae ½ Genie Hero in its Officer costume and Mighty Switch Force of any classical version?

If so, I would love to hear how the two compare. I have the former and and trying to figure out if I want to later order the latter’s recently announced collection.

I adored Shantae’s main game, but left the DLC/costume modes for a later time, which might be coming ;)

(… but first, finishing Velocity 2X and Wonderboy 3)