This morning I woke up with an itch to explore a castle, or a ruined space station, or some other form of metroidvania. In theory, I could dig out my old blue DS and play a castlevania game on it, but I've got my nice shiny new ipad, and I'd prefer to play on it. Are there any good metroidvania games on the ipad? The only one I can think of from the iphone was The Deeps, which I might just ended up playing in 2x mode.
Elemental Rage HD is a self-described Metroidvania style game. I haven't purchased it yet, so I can't comment persoanlly. I threw it on my wishlist hoping for a price drop. But, it's received pretty decent reviews.
Robot Wants Kitty My favorite is 'Robot Wants Kitty'. Truly a metroidvania style game with great retro style graphics and solid controls. The amount of content is decent, but its the ability to play in short bursts that makes it great for on-the-go M/V gaming. It even includes a fantastic level creator that should eventually allow for content creation sharing.
Elemental Rage is solid, but incredibly short. No real boss fights to speak of, and the same enemy types throughout the entire game. Graphically, it's fantastic. Would be a lot more fun with more enemies and more power-ups, but this really is the closest you'll get to a Metroidvania game on iOS...
Not a single metroidvania game on iOS "gets" character movement, IMHO. I've said this a few times on these forums, but companies like CAPCOM and Nintendo spend a lot of time getting the character movement to feel fluid, natural, and actually physical. Indie developers rarely focus on this. I tried out both Elemental Rage and Robot Wants Kitty and both fall into this category unfortunately. For reference, the best character movement I have seen is a tie between Super Mario Bros 3, and New Super Mario Bros on DS. There are a lot of subtle details that make up why those games have such great design.
robo wants kitty is more a distilled approach since its level based and not one huge world to explore over time.. but still better than elemental rage imho.. but rbk is iphone only so you need to "enjoy" it in 2x mode..
Great question! I too wish that someone would develop this type of game. Unfortunately though, due to the complexity of their nature, metroidvania games are quite time consuming and resource intensive. I doubt we will see many indie developers tackling a project like that. Just consider the prop list alone... Then you have your enemies, weapons, locals, armour if applicable, and then animation for all of the enemies and your hero. The to do list really starts to add up. All of that still doesn't even include the behind the scenes stuff like setting up your characters and props for animation, lighting every single room, working out enemy AI, camera issues, menu options, Setting up every item in the game for texturing. It's a huge list. Sorry for the tangent!
Phoenix Spirit is a pretty good Metroidvania title... You fly around a diseased forest, collecting power-ups, which let you get a stronger weapon, and open previously closed off areas... It's based primarily on exploration. It's a GREAT game, and one of my favorite iOS games EVER... definitely in my top 20 (out of ALL the iOS games I have... all 3,000 of em...) There's also Miss Claire Garden. Not really Metroidvania... but you need to collect a certain amount of feathers to move on in the game, you also collect power-ups that stay with you, as you move on, you'll need to collect all of them in order to get to, and beat the last level... there's lots of going back and forth between levels, and the level select screen is set up like Mario 3... there's lots of exploration within each stage. Elemental Rage, Grokion, and Robot Wants Kitty, all mentioned, are, of course, good Metroidvania titles too... Grokion is REALLY short... but if you do decide to get it, wait until the price drops to at least $1.99... it jumps between $2 and $4 quite a bit... sometimes you can catch it for a buck... Elemental Rage is kind of on the expensive side ($5... I think $8 for iPad) - but it's a really polished title... once you beat the game, you can't go back and explore... which is one of the biggest complaints I've seen in reviews and here on TA... but it's worth the buy. You go through different areas of a castle getting power ups and keys that let you access other areas of the castle and make you stronger... all the while your weapon is used more like Mario... some enemies have a weapon power up - if you get hit, your weapon goes down 1... you can power up your weapon upto... I think it's 4 times... and then there's 1 weapon upgrade in the game that stays with you (lets you hold down the attack button and shoot a flame ball or something... it also breaks walls and lets you access previously un-reachable areas...) Robot Wants Kitty is just like the flash version... but comes with a level editor, so you can always have levels to play if you're patient enough to sit there and make em. =o) Lars kind of has some Metroidvania aspects throughout the levels... you can collect gems, which open up closed off areas of the levels... other than that... it's a pretty straight forward platformer... but I figured it was worth mentioning... there's some exploration within the levels if you decide to look for all the gems and 3 collectible suns in each stage... Bounce On 2 has some exploration... and little power-ups (none of which are kept from level to level, and once you get hit, you loose them...) - but also worth mentioning... Astroboy Tap Tap Rush isn't really Metroidvania... but it's a sort of RPG Platformer (not like Illusia or Maple Story...) - kind of like a... Mega Man with RPG aspects. But there's quite a bit of exploration too... Hope you find something that really hits the spot for ya! =oD Good luck!
