last share was interesting to read because.... well, i make small-scope exploration platformers all the time, but they're almost never "metroidvanias" the way the author of the post describes. i'm interested in exploration games that are very open-ended and lightly gated and it seems like that kinda dodges the scope explosion problem a little. in that context, you don't really need to "add optional content" to encourage exploration because the premise is already that the game is highly nonlinear and people will have to pick some paths and ignore others until later. you don't need to make the map bigger, you just need to make sure every part of your small map is dense and interesting, no matter what path you take across it. (okay, that's easier said than done but the scope is smaller in the sense of map size at least)
sylvie lime is a good example because i literally decided the entire map size and total number of items somewhat arbitrarily near the start of development, and just kinda filled it in, and never felt any compulsion to extend it. the scope creep in that game came up when i decided to add a complicated storyline instead of just making it only about platforming around a world
i don't mean to come across as like "haha i am better because i dodge scope creep" because that's not it, it's a matter of different goals, but it's interesting to me that changing your goals has such a strong effect. "metroidvania" devs are also trying to make games where exploration is interesting, but the genre conventions mean "interesting" corresponds to bigger worlds with more items and more systems and i'm not kidding. my design goals lead me to try to make exploration interesting by densely packing a small world using a small number of systems (which i'm not saying is necessarily "better" or suitable for every game, but makes it easier to avoid scope creep).
(the shared post also helps me understand why hollow knight is so freaking huge, to the point where i bounced off it when i tried it, because it felt like a lot of rooms didn't excite me and were just there to make the map bigger. it's probably not that "they wanted a big map" but that "their other design goals drove them to keep making the map bigger"....)
