There Are Way Too Many Metroid-Style Games Coming Out Next Month

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I’ve spent the last few weeks devouring Hollow Knight, a game I’m already prepared to call one of my all-time favorites. There was a time when fans of Metroid-style games were starved for something new, but we do not live in those times. There are countless such games available. Some great, some terrible, and lots of them in-between.

But sheesh, I hope you’re ready to play a lot of them in the next few weeks. For whatever reason, the industry decided to stuff one of its slower months with a bunch of games where you will slowly unlock a map by acquiring new gameplay tools!

A lot of them look really good? I still haven’t finished Hollow Knight’s true ending? Help?

Here’s the hook for Chasm, a game that otherwise looks kinda generic: every world is unique. The world isn’t procedurally generated in the sense that everything is completely random—there is a specific story to follow with characters and bosses and items to encounter—but it is randomly laid out, using a series of pieces handcrafted by the developers. These worlds are assigned a specific ID, which means you can share the world you’re playing with your friends, if it’s particularly cool.

I’m playing around with Chasm right now and will have more to say about it next week!

This has been in early access for more than a year now, and it’s taken everything in my power to not play the game before it was properly finished. The hour or so I spent with Dead Cells, a roguelike riff on the genre, left a powerful impression last year.

I know Austin has already spent time with Dead Cells, and while I’m not sure if I’m supposed to announce this yet (??), I’ll be spending at least a full week playing Dead Cells every morning when it's out. If you enjoyed Spelunkin’ With Scoops at Giant Bomb, this is similar. If people enjoy it, maybe we’ll go beyond a full week.

Death’s Gambit might be more Dark Souls than anything else, but given you could make an credible argument Dark Souls has a lot in common with Metroid, it’s a negligible difference. Like Salt & Sanctuary before it, Death’s Gambit moves FromSoftware’s style into 2D. There’s no doubt Death’s Gambit looks very pretty, but the only thing that matters is combat.

I watched Austin play a few minutes at PAX East and found it unmemorable, but those places are hardly the way to wrap your head around games like this, so we’ll see.

The original Guacamelee was tremendously fun, and grabbed me enough to track down just about everything the game had to offer, long after I’d finished the story. I’ve seen (or heard) precious little about the sequel, which I’d normally take as worrying, but I’m mostly hoping it means I’m in a position to be surprised by what's in there.

I’m also curious how (or if) the game will address the stereotyping criticisms.

Four games! And that’s to say nothing of Switch ports coming in the next few weeks:

Even for superfans, this is probably too much of a good thing, and the likely side effect is one or more of these games being overlooked, no matter how well they turn out.

But here we go.

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