bruno

"mr storylets"

writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.

http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain


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Bluesky
brunodias.bsky.social

bruno
@bruno

It's honestly surprising to me that nobody seems to have successfully released a metroidvania roguelike yet... as in, a game where there's a randomly generated map with a randomly generated solvable network of locks and keys, but the locks and keys are affordances you can collect.

Or, if you prefer, a metroidvania where the 'randomizer mod' is both built-in and the default way to play the game.


bruno
@bruno

I'm not insane, right? Randomizer mods are popular, and have been popular for years. Especially with streamers. It feels like a game designed around this style of play should be a niche someone was trying to occupy!


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in reply to @bruno's post:

in reply to @bruno's post:

I actually just started a second playthrough of Chasm, and I think the particular itch it scratches is wanting to replay a metroidvania without the muscle memory of knowing a map, keeping that novel sense of exploration and “fuck am overextending myself”. Which for a person who likes to replay the same metroidvanias over and over again, is really nice. But it really is just shuffling the corridors around and not making it a Roguelike progression-wise.

I think those things are a bit at odds with each other - a lot of what makes the metroidvania formula work well is the familiarity of the space and the a random map diminishes that. There's something to "I can pick this place clean of puzzles" that falls apart when the puzzles and places are infinite instead of singular and shared.

You'd also need a really really good generator that was able to not just make compelling maps, but also set up challenges for tools that make the gates more interesting than just "collect the red key to open red doors" if you want to really hit that good metroidvania feeling.

Edit: I keep thinking of how I'd try and solve those issues, and I keep coming up with Spelunky.

This was the idea behind Chasm, but it didn't really turn out very good. They had rock-solid platforming mechanics, but the design never really came together. Playing it was just like... playing a somewhat mediocre metroidvania, there was no reason to come back again, so the randomized element didn't really matter.

Every game that's tried like Chasm, Sundered, A Robot Named Fight, Dead Cells, Rouge Legacy, etc. has done so by randomizing hand-made map chunks into a vague slurry of platforming. Because it's randomized maps, it lacks the cohesive flow and memorable structure that's key to making a good metroidvania. It's not just about traversal but about recontextualization and discovery as your toolset expands.

I've yet to see a game that had a dense static map with the intent of being played as a randomizer, but I think that it may end up being overcooked. It's hard to make a game that's modular and rewards sequence breaking without feeling like a series of really generic checkboxes, especially if you go the Super Metroid route and have some of that versatility be gated by a combination of both current inventory and also raw player skill.

Seconding a lot of people's notes that Chasm tried this and mostly succeeded at proving that randomizing the part of Metroidvanias that causes non roguelike devs to spend 10 years making a single game almost always results in a bad game

I think if you wanted to do this well it'd genuinely look more like lttp randomizer where the world is always the same and it's the order you go thru it that changes, but doing that interestingly would probably require it to be a game with multiple playthroughs. The fundamental issue is that randomization needs to be visible to be interesting. Otherwise it's just mush for no reason

Just to add - randomisers aren't made for new players, they're made to allow players who know the game well to explore the mechanics in new and interesting ways. If you made a roguelike metroidvania with the same variability and expected knowledge floor as a randomizer, it'd hold very little appeal.

To be a bit glib - randomizers aren't necessarily popular, popular games get randomizers.

Hollow Knight was originally (very early, pre-kickstarter) supposed to be this! I know there's a longer quote about this floating around, but here's the only one I could find right now:

The [developers] point out that while they initially conceived of the game (born from a game jam) as being short and replayable, with a map structure that was somewhat randomly generated, they wound up shying away ("it was a headache") in favor of a more deliberate, planned map...

As other commenters have noted, it seems Hard.