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.

I’ve been playing Bayonetta on and off for a bit of time, and now that I’m near the end of it (just started Requiem), the genre kinda grew on me, which surprised me quite a bit.

I see loads of games being thrown in the same bag:

• Bayonetta
• Devil May Cry
• Darksiders
• Ninja Gaiden
• No More Heroes
• God of War
• several Warriors/Musou games
• etc. etc.

So I was wondering what makes any specific game in the general genre distinct and special, and wanted to discuss in this thread.

My experience with this genre is limited as the Switch is my first ever console, but I will share what little experience I have in a comment.

P.S. I hope this thread will be a bit more lively than my previous try with the Different types of 3D platformers thread.