That notion of calculated combat has permeated many games since. The game’s difficulty has morphed into multiple memes “it’s just like Dark Souls” can be heard from all corners of the Internet.Īnd while the games are certainly tough, they’re always fair thanks to a precise, strategic combat system that relies on the careful use of stamina to perform attacks, dodges, blocks and the like. Challenge which indie developers and gamers alike have risen to.
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Of course, indie games were already difficult before Dark Souls, but the series has certainly popularized challenge. They are synonymous with high difficulty, oppressive atmosphere, creepy bosses, strategic combat and minimalist storytelling, all of which have been absorbed into the collective consciousness of modern game developers. The vibrant, Mexican-inspired Guacamelee! and the forthcoming Gato Roboto that sees you playing as a cat in a robotic suit also take the genre’s tropes to new heights.įrom Software’s Souls games are, arguably, the most influential games in the modern age. Other developers have stretched it further, from the action-packed 3D side-scroller Shadow Complex, to the serenely fantastical yet tricky Ori and the Blind Forest. Cave Story, first released in 2004, paid homage to the earlier Nintendo title, while Axiom Verge from Thomas Happ was heavily inspired by the same game, with its lonely scientist delving into a frightening alien world.
It’s as smart and concise in its design as it is addictive for the player.Īnd it’s a design that’s proven to work in any number of settings. The challenge of exploration and navigation leads to the reward of a new toy that’s not only fun to use but yields actionable results with every secret it uncovers.
It’s the rewarding nature of Metroid that makes it so compelling. Even in this new setting, that structural essence remained as enticing as ever.
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Here the core gameplay of Metroid was transposed against the backdrop of a glorious gothic castle, dripping with atmosphere, that slowly opened up further with each demonic upgrade of the lone hero’s powers. It was with Konami’s Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night for the PlayStation in 1997, though, that the genre came to be known as Metroidvania – a portmanteau of the two series. Following a Game Boy sequel in 1991, it was 1994’s Super Metroid on the SNES that perfected the balance between exploration and structured progression, paired with a bleak tone of terrifying isolation. Following the 2D platformer convention of the most popular games of the day, Metroid set itself apart with a core gameplay loop around an alien open world that slowly unlocked in a non-linear fashion through the collection of permanent power-ups. Way back in 1986, Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi created a little game called Metroid that, in many ways, set the blueprint for a plethora of indie games some three decades later. These are the games that always seem familiar, even if you haven’t played them. These, then, are the five games that have most influenced the indie scene – games that have defined genres, raised the bar, and set a precedent against which later releases are inevitably compared. And as more indie games are released, certain gameplay elements and styles recur time and again. After all, developers will always be influenced by what’s come before, however unconsciously. Yet it’s not hard to see patterns of influence. That’s particularly true for indies, with developers steering games into new uncharted territory that could never be achieved by big developers with big budgets and big expectations.
The lines between game genres are becoming increasingly blurred.
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