Animation Lead on Wanderstop! She/Her & Transgenderrific! Past: Radial Games, Gaslamp Games



thinking about the "I See You", which IMO is secretly one of the most powerful tools of a metroidvania

people say metroidvanias are about backtracking but IMO what metroidvanias are about is building a relationship with a space - all the greats play with not just seeing the same space again and again but a developing relationship with that space; the moment of revelation when you finally come back to the beginning of super metroid and those long vertical corridors and realize that the screw attack and space jump just let you blast right through the center, deleting all the terrain and hopping straight to the top, unimpeded, is CORE metroidvania philosophy to me

but the other tool, the counterpoint to the gradual or empowering change, is the sudden, UNEXPECTED change; the moment when you point at the player and say "stop feeling safe; even familiar areas can suddenly be different"

Super metroid pulls this a few times - esp by having space pirates invade previously safe zones - but the true king of this trope is Batman: Arkham Asylum, a game that pulls it nearly every time you re-enter ANY area but which is often narrative and strategic about it; building the constant sense of a cat and mouse game between batman and the joker.

These changes take a lot of forms, by my favourite is absolutely the deadpan moment of "I see you" - you exit a room you had just solved a puzzle in, ready to go back to the bit that had previously blocked you. This moment is when the player is most vulnerable; their mind is occupied thinking about where they're heading next. And this is known territory. What's safer than going right back out the door you just entered?

You exit the door. There's a present outside. Before you can react, it explodes and a bunch of chattering teeth come out and flail around on the floor.

This moment is impossibly effective at disarming the player emotionally. The teeth don't attack you. The box doesn't damage you. It is purely a moment of the joker knowing exactly where you are and what you're doing and deciding to harmlessly fuck with you. The promise is implicit; you think you're sneaky? You think I don't know where you are? The threat that, soon, something way worse will follow enters the player's mind almost unbidden.

In a game where the player has nearly all the power, nearly all the time - batman is an unstoppable force - it's the times like this that really reinforce the game's story moments that want to show batman as someone who's as much hunted as hunter. It's wonderful, and it's one of the things I love most about that game.

IMO it's also an art that we see so much less in the modern era of "soulslikevanias", which are way more about control and combat in a way that IMO is far more mechanical and far less psychological. I'm always hoping other indies have found a love of this style of design too, because I constantly ache to see more of it.


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