@@r6scrubs126 that’s such a shame… this game is a truly beautiful experience but it doesn’t have a very wide target audience: those that like lore and dialogue (the type of person that reads tutorials with a fiery passion, aka me) Do you like dialogue in general? Do you also like solving enigmas? I think these are sort of the "requirements" for liking this game. It really surprises me that you get bored because when playing the game I usually felt very overwhelmed with different branching paths to explore, and every one of them I explored opened up new possibilities again (through mere knowledge) Of course I did at some point I did feel like I was lost and everything was explored although I wasn’t finished but that was very rare - the fix to this might just be searching it up online or, if you’re really into puzzles and mind stuff, continue rewinding your memories (literally IRL not in-game lol) to see if you might have missed something
@@r6scrubs126 I understand Outer Wilds might not be a game for everyone, but are you not at least a bit intrigued to find out what happened in that universe? How far have you gotten? Have you figured out the purpose of the game, or at least what you think the purpose is? If not then I encourage you to at least try to reach that far, if you're still not interested at that point it's fair to say it's not for you.
I know this sounds cheesy AF, but it actually changed the way I view life in general, obviously gaming as well, but it spoke to me on a level no other game has before.
"Knowledge-based Progression" can be slimmed down to "Knowledge-Progression" or even "KnowProgress", and still convey the meaning well enough. Both this and "Research Action" are solid options to name this genre (while "MetroidBrainia" is so 'un-solid' we'd have to learn Quantum Physics to truly understand what state it's at).
I love the spoiler free real life footage when talking about the witness, where people who KNOW are seeing it instantly and everyone else is just seeing random outdoor shots
@@louis559Do it and you will become one of us. :D The game was designed to make people learn a whole new mental language, experience the joys of epiphany, and _literally change how we view the world_ And it's so freaking silly, I love it
The best videogame subgenre. It's hard to decide whether a game belongs, but imo any puzzle game that makes me go "Wait, I could've done that the ENTIRE TIME?" several times fits. I also think the existence of some puzzles should be hidden right under the player's nose. Here's a list of games I've played that did both: TUNIC Outer Wilds The Witness A Monster's Expedition Leap Year Can of Wormholes Linelith Elechead N Step Steve Parts 1 & 2 Toki Tori 2
Here's a few more that fit in: La Mulana 1 + 2 Environmental Station Alpha Noita Stephen's Sausage Roll (I would say this, alongside Can of Wormholes and Monster's Expedition, are not "metroidbrainias" but rather "sausage-likes")
@@Sunderlol A decent chunk of what makes Outerwilds so memorable is its music. How well it was written and arranged, how well it fit the current scene. Just so well done.
I sometimes refer to this type of games as "rabbit hole games", because they have these moments of sublime epiphany that recontextualizes everything, kind of like falling into a rabbit hole. Baba is You is a great example for that - the puzzles are fantastic on its own, but the moment you realize how to reach that damn island on the overworld screen you also realize that the whole game is even deeper and more complex than you ever imagined.
When I first discovered TUNIC, I didn't see many people talking about it, or at least not as many people as I think should've been talking about it. I think that, at first, most people will brush it off as just a cute, cozy zelda-like. I, too, brushed it off like this. But the game stuck with me, it gnawed at my mind, and eventually I caved and got it. To this day, nearly a year after I first beat it, it is my favorite game I've ever played. Every moment is shrouded in this immaculate air (air, heir) of mystery, and when you finally unlock that last bit of knowledge that unclouds the mystery, and it feels soooo.... intimate. I can't recommend TUNIC enough to anyone who hasn't played it. And if you do, please go in blind.
Agreed, the balance of the combat, adventure and puzzle aspects is just wonderful. I would also recommend Environmental Station Alpha in the same vein. It is a bit more demanding mechanically but I've found a very similar feeling as I progressed and eventually completed it.
Tunic has become my favorite game of all time recently. I first played it a couple of years ago, but I realized recently that I gushed about it continually. It's such a beautiful combination of Zelda, Dark Souls, Fez, and Outer Wilds.
I was filtered hard by Rain World and stopped after a few hours. I've seen several people who have said that as well, only to have given it a second chance, then "got it" and loved it. I intend to go back to it some day when I can set aside some time.
@@tin_sensei yeah, it was quite the same for me. hated it on my first few hours, friends convinced me to try it again, fell in love with 500 hours now. think the game is just too harsh to immediately understand.
I've seen people calling those games "knowledge-based" games and I prefer that term. It's not a genre on its own, it has to be paired with other genres. Just like you would say "an action-adventure roguelike game", you could simply say "a knowledge-based 2D platformer". I would define Outer Wilds as a 3D exploration knowledge-based game for instance.
I appreciate how that description is independent of IP, but "knowledge-based" or "knowledge-gated" as a genre label sounds erudite and pretentious, to my ears. It's a great mechanical descriptor, but it doesn't feel catchy enough as a name.
Yep 'knowledge-based' is far better than the 'MetroidBrainia' , though I prefer the term 'Curiosity driven' as you are 'driven' to play and explore due to the curiosity of discovery. That discovery can be of new knowledge, tools, abilities etc. So i feel its more encompassing of the wide range of gaming mechanics it can cover and puts emphasis on the point and experience of playing, that of 'curiosity'. MetroidBrainia has way too much baggage due to being coined off Metroidvania, which itself is an already strained term especially as its derived from a specific game rather than a description of actual gameplay. For example 'Doom Clone' was popular in 1990's but eventually replaced by 'First person shooter' and these days those old style Doom games are known as 'Boomer shooters'.
@@noisecrimenah, when you say "curiosity driven" I think of Skyrim or Elden ring with landmarks that make you wonder what you are gonna find over there. Knowledge-based is pretty good I think
@@kunai9809 While those games can involve curiosity they are neither driven by it, nor required. More so curiosity here refers to more than landmarks, its the curiosity of knowledge, curiosity of experiences, curiosity of puzzles/how things work etc.
I will give it to the fez devs that it is extremely funny that they have been radio silent on the black monolith solution except for one instance like 7 years after the game released when they came out and said that the release date theory was wrong, the most popular and assumed by the fanbase to be the intended solution. Absolute legends lmao Although checking on old forums and seeing statements on people who claim to know the devs it seems pretty likely that the black monolith solution is actually hidden in the images of the soundtrack, as they said something along the lines of "you guys should wait until the soundtrack is out". Maybe the black monolith represents that black part in the spectrogram before they put an image? Who knows Also another thing of note is that in an interview with Phil 10 years after the game came out he said that bruteforcing the puzzle was a much cooler solution than the one he planned. So there's that. Maybe it has something to do with the heartbreak code, which was intended to be datamined, as some sort of symbolism with how game completionism culture and squeezing every drop of content out of games is killing them and the developers I'm so normal about this game trust me guys
If I remember correctly, the solution as the community has discovered it was actually related to the release date of the game, as well as the poetry in the book. *SPOILER* The date of the release gave a code of numbers that one could reorder the pages of the book. Reading them in that order, then (I forget how) translating those letters to numbers, and from that to inputs is the solution as we understand it so far
@@indigonao9864 no that's the theory that was proven to be wrong lmao. The devs already said that planning a game to be released on a specific day is something very hard to do and they just barely made it to the deadline with some insane crunch, so there's no way they made a whole puzzle about it
Dude, I waited until earlier this year, having had fez in my steam library since release, to finally play it and when I finally started looking some stuff up that part kind of pissed me off lol.
@@thaneros fez was made by 3 people: Phil Fish (the main guy in terms of puzzle design and graphics and the person who created the original idea), Renaud Bédard (who did the programming and created trixel engine, the engine the game uses), and Disasterpeace (who made the music and i'm pretty sure the sound effects too? don't quote me on that one)
I agree that Outer wild is basically the definitive "metroidbrainia". I almost prefer the term "wildslike" for this genre since many of the games are so far removed from traditional metroidvanias.
I personaly have heard that Outer Wild would more likely be a "KnowledgeVania", the name is pretty self-explainatory, it's a metroivania where you are not block because of lacking powers but because of lacking knowledge. I like it more
I think the issue with Outer Wilds being called a metroidbrania is most of what you can see you can get to right at the beginning even with no knowledge. You're knowledge doesn't reveal the map more so what you know about the world. I feel like a core part of the Metroidvania games is unlocking new areas of the world to find and explore. Sure that exists in Outer Wilds to a degree but then there are games like Obra Dinn that shares a lot of its game dna with OW which I would put in the same genre, but no one would argue Obra Dinn is a Metroidvania or even close to it. I like the term "wildslike" for games where you progress with knowledge and in general a lot of these games overlap well with the metroidvania genre.
@@camdenwyeth316it’s a story puzzle game so if you love exploration and adventure and digging for lore in this game this game makes reading lore the way to gain knowledge to advance further
"note taking-puzzle games" is a genre term I've been using for a while (whether the notes are kept in game, or have to be done by hand). If you like having a note book full of weird scribbles I'd recommend the Myst series if you haven't played it!
The Witness really only has one puzzle that requires note taking (the colored lights puzzle in the Town). Everything else is pretty forgiving on your brain RAM, though ymmv of course.
I just replayed Obra Dinn for the first time 4 years, and I can safely say that half a decade is about what you need to brain bleach enough of your memory to enjoy a knowledge-based game again. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about Outer Wilds, as there has hardly been a day that has gone by where I haven't thought about the game, or listened to the music, or thought about a different game through the lens of Outer Wilds. Playing it for the first time was a truly remarkable experience. Impactful enough that I can safely say that it changed me as a person, or at least my perception and outlook on the world around me.
I had fun replaying it and “role playing” as someone who doesn’t know anything. I’ll only use the logbook and rumors and won’t do something that I already know until I see a clue that hints me to do it. Kind of fun to test the game design that way-like choose different planets to go to as your first flight to see how the mystery unfolds with different pieces of information first. Nothing beats the first blind run, but still possible to enjoy a repeat play through!
That's why this guy turned up in my feed again! I thought it was another lego racing game (that I can't remember the name of) and only watched a couple of minutes.
Does anyone remember Toki Tori 2? That’s gotta be the epitome of MetroidBrainia. You’re limited to just 2 actions, stomping and whistling. It looks like a MetroidVania on first glance, but you never unlock any new abilities. Everything in the game is gated by your awareness of how to use the whistle and stomp to get past the obstacles.
For anyone else interested in these Metroidbrania or Knowledge-Based Games, I recommend both: - Void Stranger: puzzle focused - Rain World: exploration kinda, it's hard as hell but worth it
As much as I enjoy Rain World, it doesn't really fit the Knowledge-based genre so well since all you're "learning" is how to get where you're going. Unlike Outer Wilds, where you progress by figuring out new rules, Rain World's progression is by moving forward.
@@mothichorror446 I disagree ngl, althought I see what you mean, a lot of the game's content is just locked behind knowledge, knowledge of how to do X movement technique, knowledge of how to use different items, how different animals act etc. At least to me it feels like a knowledge based game for it, but I can understand your point of view.
I wanna add that Void Stranger is specifically Sokoban-focused and quite punishing, which doesn't work for a lot of people who only enjoy games for their next layers. If you like Sokoban, by all means I recommend.
@@mothichorror446I get what you mean, but I disagree. While progression in Rain World isn't *hard* locked behind knowledge, learning how to effectively navigate the world and exploit the weaknesses of predators definitely forwards progression, so I still think it would count
Watched Cdawg’s Void Stranger playthrough. It’s truly something else. I get the idea of Void Stranger being something you have to experience for yourself, but I kinda don’t think it can be recommended like Outer Wilds can be to everyone. Void Stranger is fuckin brutal. Like as incredible as its storytelling is and how inspired its usage of its medium is, sokoban isn’t exactly peak gameplay, and I really don’t know if I could recommend someone 30+ hours of fuckin sokoban, with some of the later puzzles being especially brutal.
Leap Year released like a week before this video and is a pinnacle distillation of a pure metroidbrainia. Zero unlockable items as progression is exclusively knowledge gated. Captures the entire spirit of the genre within an under 2 hour play time.
@@LegallyJusticefied got about as much fun out of it as I did out of mosalina, definitely worth the price. Didn't really feel like going for the speedrun achievements though
The beginning of this video convinced me to get Fez (and I already want Animal Well), but the ending makes me think that maybe I don't. I'm right there with you that these super-esoteric mandatory community/look-up solutions go against the philosophy of these kinds of games, and take some of that experience from the player. I think the way you describe The Witness as "if you were locked in a room with no internet, you could probably 100% it eventually" should be somewhere in the design philosophy, especially for single-player puzzle games. The solution should be in the game, not in the spectrograph of the soundtrack.
Totally agree. Specialized knowledge in coding and programming will never be an appealing aspect of these games for me. I don’t like ARGs because they usually have stuff like this.
yeah i don't get people who call the game "unreplayable", don't get me wrong, it's a completely different experience, but knowing it all heighens the emotions for me.
@@swan-cloud but what do you do, get on and just finish the game? if you just wander around i dont think thats "replaying" . the only way to relive the game is through others reaction and i know we all did it. to me its ironic how much we try to stick to a game that encourages you to let go
Thank you so much for this,i have been searching for YEARS for games similar to outer wilds or the witness and because of this video i can find some examples even in the comments. Great work man,instantly suscribed
All of my favourite games in one place! I'm now playing through Chants of Senaar looking for another dopamine-filled brain-a-thon. I was hoping I'd find something I haven't already played in this video, but the only one was Chip's Challenge, and I think I'm alright skipping that. Great video!
Chips Challenge is a puzzle game. It's really awesome. It was one of the few games I had on Windows 98 back in the day and we played so much of it. It doesn't have the flair of modern games but it's still good.
Not strictly this genre, but Baba is you (made by one of the creators of Noita) blew my mind how many times it can recontextualize itself and give you the there is no spoon -moment. It may look like sokoban, but the solutions rely mostly on understanding and not much on long, tedious sequences, so you probably solve many levels while not actually playing the game, but just thinking about it while doing something else.
It's free on Steam! It's a port of the Atari Lynx version though, rather than the Windows version that most people remember (and that's shown in the video), meaning it runs a little more "smoothly" in real time instead of the quasi-turn-based feel of the Windows version The sequel that got shelved when Atari discontinued the Lynx is also on there for like $2, it's basically just a massive level pack
Tunic was REAL nice. The story and lore were snoozers coming from Hollow Knight, but solving the mountain door and deciphering the language was some of the most fun I've had in games in a while. And yes, I deciphered it myself. Took about 5 hours or so, lol. I will, however, forever hold up that the softest feather can suck my ass.
did you know there's a second, tonal language that the faeries speak and that plays in other places? the sound engineer for the game made a detailed twitter thread about it a while back.
I agree with everything here, especially that the haiku is garbage. I solved every puzzle in the game completely blind except for that one where I gave up after 2 days and cheated. I even completed the game a second time in NG+, theorising that I started out "soft" and needed to raise my stats to 11 or something. Terrible "puzzle".
Another example of a, Mertoidbrainia I guess, that I will take any opportunity to bring up is 'Toki Tori 2+'. Is cool, play it. A more classic styled puzzle Metroidvania is 'Isles of Sea and Sky' which came out recently. I also agree with the sentiment towards puzzles outside of a game, it even opens up the possibility of a puzzle being impossible to solve the intended way like say a website goes down that has an important key to solve it. I think I managed to 'solve' the word block puzzle. I say 'solve' because well I'd figured that I had to line them up to make a word and somehow managed to luck into finding the right one. So, take that as you will. Great video btw.
This is literally my favorite game genre and I've played hundreds of games. I've always just called them knowledge based games. There's a great video that superdude made on them
dude, I watch a lot of videos about game design and those knowledge-based progressions and this is by far one of the best. I would love to see more essay style videos.
I 100% agree about the community puzzles & ARG stuff. They can be fun, they have been done well in the past and I'm sure there will be more in the future. But it's starting to feel a little bit rote at this point, i guess? Like the final (the ACTUAL final) puzzle of Tunic is a community ARG and when i got to that point i was incredibly disappointed. It really felt like that developers wanted to "heighten" the puzzle solving stuff and the only way they could think to go bigger was to do this, even though none of the puzzles up to that point required that level of dedication or labor from the community. Also mad props to the dedication to spoiler-free. These are some of my favorite games of all time, and it always breaks my heart a little to see other youtubers just flagrantly expose all the fun stuff and ruin the games for their audiences.
Personally I think calling the final final puzzle an ARG is overstating it. Once you're there you're done anyway; all that's left I would categorize as easter eggs rather than puzzles.
I think the way Tunic did it was great. It's 100% obvious that any further puzzles from that point onwards (I agree though that there aren't actually any more puzzles, just easter eggs) use information from outside the game itself. Because last time I checked there is no web browser in the game. It's a very clear way of doing it. Animal Well could take some notes.
I'm gonna have to disagree with Tunic's ARG puzzle. Its clearly an optional thing not at all tied to the main game itself with how few links it does have to the base game. Tunic is very good at presenting the mountain door as the 'final puzzle' for any individual playing the game with how the very first mechanic ties into framing it. Compare that to Animal well or Noita that go into ARG territory without much rhyme or reason. Those games have no framing around the puzzles to focus players onto what they can do or what they should rely on a community for instead its just scattered everywhere and you're expected to just figure it out.
I watched this video in hopes of finding something else in the likes of Tunic, Outer Wilds, The Witness, Animal Well and FEZ... only to find out that those were the only mentioned games in the video. 😭 Awesome video, btw! Love it!
I'm working on a mash up of sokoban and tactical turn based gameplay that I feel fits right into this "genre". I completely agree with how you conceptualized the games that are "metroidbrainia first" and having low replay value, vs "platformer first" and "metroidbrainia second". After watching this, I at least feel like I'm on the right path of design, in this regard anyway! Tactical puzzling with a decent story first, metroidbrainia second. Keep up the great work! Subscribed. I will have to look into your videos on Japan too, but I will say that I am definitely interested in more videos around this topic/pattern of content, you nailed it.
Loved the video! Outer Wilds is my favourite game of all time.. (and I'm normally not one for picking favourites) Obra Dinn was my biggest surprise regarding a game I played last year. Keep it up Tin Sensei! 🎉
I'm built different, I've played Outer Wilds twice. I just liked it so much that I went around and discovered everything again. I've beaten it several times as well, just repeating the ending. I am very passionate about Outer Wilds.
Great video describing my favorite type of game in recent years. As much as it would be amazing to have a game like this that reaches that level of replayability, that larger than life "a-ha!" moment is what cements these games in my mind, and makes the whole experience worthwhile and worth the price of admission. Also I appreciate the discussion of the big community driven endgame meta puzzles that a lot of these games have and how frustrating it is that only a select few people will ever experience properly. Reaching the final secret in Tunic after so much work only to be met with an ARG that I'm too stupid to understand was a bit of a letdown, but I do understand the value and excitement it can hold for others.
I didn't even noticed when the video ended, really had me interested and listening to everything you were saying, I already knew what metroidbrania was. Amazing video!
This is one of those videos for me where I think "Wow this video is really well made! This guy must have a lot of subs." It turns out you don't, but you definetly deserve them!
Loved the video and Metriodbraina is probably just about my favorite type of game, so I have to say I agree about the it sucks to end up late to a community puzzle but I will say that the Animal well community has done a pretty good job about letting you still solve the puzzles only giving you the info you absolutely need and not just saying here's the solution. the Mural puzzle in particular someone made a site that has all of the pieces but allows you to figure out how it actually goes together without spoiling it.
One of my favorite game series that has these knowledge gates is the Myst series. All the puzzles in these games require knowledge that can be acquired by exploring the game world, observing it and through interaction with objects. There are no keys and no items you can pick up. If you understand the mechanics of the game's universe you can breeze through them. And there is so much environmental storytelling in the games apart from the puzzles.
My guy you mentioned the loop a minute into talking about outer wilds 2 minutes after saying you wont spoil anything important...come on. That being said, hell of a video. Ill be playing every one of these games ty sir
To be fair, here’s what it says on the steam store page: Named Game of the Year 2019 by Giant Bomb, Polygon, Eurogamer, and The Guardian, Outer Wilds is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning open world mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop. So anyone who buys the game will know it’s a time loop game. I’m with you on outer wilds being a once in a lifetime experience, but even the devs recognize that at some point you need to at least explain the premise lol. Good luck on your journey with the other games! They’re all great.
A game I see no one mention in this genre is Heaven's Vault. It was amazing. You go diacovering a forgotten language to discover the past of the world. Id say its a story game with the metroidbrania aspect being in the language but its AMAZING everyone in this genre needs to try it. Also, there are so many ways to reach the many endings this has and things you can miss and still finish the game Not to mention it has replayability and I still think people Haven't solved everything about the game
Void Stranger is another great “metroidbrania” or “knowledge-based game” or “Wildslike” as I’ve heard some people call these. It’s a sokoban game that’s like Outer Wilds and Undertale but never grew past the stage of playing with blocks. This genre of games, despite playing very few of them, has quickly become one of my favorite genres in gaming because of how satisfying it is to just learn more about the game and how to keep progressing with that knowledge. More people need to play these
I played and loved both Fez and Tunic. I'm waiting for my Switch copy of Outer Wilds to arrive in late August and just wishlisted Animal Well. Thank you, I really liked this video.
I never had a strong contact with this kind of game, but i absolutely LOVED túnic, some of the best games ever, i Felt só nostaugic and flabergasted só many times in só many ways!
Thanks for explaining so well my gripes with a game requiring community work. I've said this several times, I fell for the Animal Well hype and regretted paying the release price for it as it seems to be based on getting to enjoy the full game from level 1 puzzles to the level 4 ones, which realistically very few people will, in one hand because as you said it's unreasonable to expect a community that has already collectively solved a puzzle to do it again, and in the other hand because most people are not that hardcore and will just get to the credits and at most will explore a bit of the level 2 puzzles before getting bored or distracted by the next new shiny thing or, like in my case, deciding it's too much work and too much repetition of subpar movement mechanics. I had this experience with Animal Well shortly after having played Tunic for the first time, and it felt like a bit of a deja vu. I had to retread a lot of Tunic because of the game giving so little guidance, but at least Tunic had the option to turn on infinite health and stamina, so I just went and 100% it in a quasi-comfortable way. Then with Animal Well when I saw how much of the game I'd have to retread, plus having to do deathless runs and speedrunning challenges and no way of making it all more comfortable, I just couldn't bring myself to do it, despite being so much of a completionist. Maybe in the future I'll go back to it, but right now I'm a bit annoyed at the game for expecting so much of the player and not giving any warning about having such high expectations. In fact, I believe these kind of games, what we can call metroidbrainias, should be more open and transparent about what kind of challenge they impose. While it's true, as you said, that metroidbrainias are best enjoyed going in blind, some can benefit a lot from at least letting you know if the tools required to solve the puzzle are contained within the game or require external tools, because I'm an adult and I don't have time to waste searching for clues that later I'll find out in an online guide that weren't there in the first place. I prefer games respect my immersion and don't break it by requiring me to use an unprovided barcode reader or to check the source code of a website or to make a spectrogram of an audio file, but if they really want to do that, at least be upfront about it and let me take that information into consideration before I decide to pay for a game. Hopefully more people will voice concerns and demands like mine and the industry will react appropriately. All in all, great video.
Thisx1000. I loved the early-to-middle bits of TUNIC and ANIMAL WELL and INSCRYPTION--thrilling moments of discovery! seeing old places/decorations in new ways!--but was really disappointed to see how much investment and/or outside knowledge/ARG was needed to "complete" the games. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Deathless runs are not my idea of fun, ANIMAL WELL. And I shouldn't have to know the author's entire back catalog (INSCRYPTION...!), to find extra story or secrets; that's unfair. And TUNIC, that rotating puzzle in the water room?? It's annoying i know HOW to solve it, but executing it is eye-rollingly difficult, so I'm out. Anyway, I enjoyed playing all 3 of the abovementioned games, they left me feeling :\ about them. For me, TOKI TORI 2+ was best--you could do everything without leaving the game. I wish there was more TOKI TORI2+
Great video! Love this genre and will definitely be checking out these games. Grew up playing Chip’s Challenge on the family PC, so was hooked when I saw that right out of the gate
"I explore around and find things that unlock new areas" is the category of Adventure Games, of which Metroidvania is a subset. Zelda isn't a game that could have been called a Metroidvania if it weren't for an arbitrary rule about 2D platforming. Rather, Zeldas and Metroidvanias are different kinds of Adventure games (and, in fact, different kinds of Action Adventure games.) Like... I shouldn't get so worked up about this. Genres are marketing categories, and they are notoriously non-systematic. People shouldn't fight over buzzwords devised or pushed by salesmen. But freaking text adventures and point and click adventures have the explore/unlock loop. Adventure as a genre predates Metroid and Castlevania by a good large amount, and both Metroid, and Castlevania, and for that matter Zelda, are consciously trying to be Adventures. And every five minutes some UA-camr notices, "hey, this broader swath of games has something in common with Metroidvanias," but doesn't notice that, yes, and that broader swath already has a perfectly good name that has nothing wrong with it, and Metroidvanias have always intended to be part of that broader swath, man, it bugs me.
I think that most of the problem comes with how restrictive these weird genres are since a lot of the time these genres fill a very niche type of game which I think inherently narrows a games potential if it’s trying to fit itself into that genre. For example with the roguelike genre, these games all have the mechanic of completely or at least mostly resetting your progress whenever you fail a challenge or die and also maybe giving you rewards based on how well you did. They also seem to mostly be top down, intense action games which rely on lots of randomness to provide a fresh experience whenever you restart. Although there are some good games here, there aren’t many that stand out on their own as unique or interesting however if we loosened the definition and mostly focused on the action and resetting mechanic then a lot more interesting games are now included like Zelda majora’s mask and I think there would be a lot more interesting games like majora’s mask if people didn’t try to develop games for very specific genres.
All of these games are based off Colossal Cave and later Myst/Riven. It's fucking embarrassing how badly game history has failed these kids. Phil Fish: The game is based off Riven. Blow: The game is based off Myst. Outer Wilds Devs: It was envisioned as a text adventure. Gamers: What do we call this genre. Morons man...
@@theletsplaycurse Funny you say that because there were plenty of interesting roguelikes, which all got thrown under the bus once games like FTL, Rogue Legacy and Binding of Isaac came out and people redefined roguelikes to include those games, and yet people are still making interesting games in those genres. Majora's Mask also has little to do with roguelikes, be they modern, classic, antique or what have you. It's an action adventure game with a time-loop thematic and mechanic. I'm not even sure of what you're asking for, devs aren't following a checklist when making games to make sure they fit in a genre.
@@LutraLovegood see that’s kind of my problem, I said specifically majora’s mask could be considered a roguelike if we loosened the definition to games that reset your progress before allowing you to progress further which I think would be healthy for the genre overall if it was considered to be such. What I would want to come from this is that developers would be able to be a lot more creative and create games with a much broader appeal.
These are my favorite types of games, rain world, noita, outer wilds, the witness, it goes on and on! i have nothing insightful to say but great video and thank you for making it
Nice video. I've always just considered this genre the "Wildslike" akin to roguelike's etymology. Another term I like is to call them "epiphonic" games since knowledge of mechanics drives progression, and thus it's all geared around making players have groundbreaking epiphanies that change their view of the entire game.
Epiphonic is a really cool term, I might have to start saying that. Personally I like the term Tunicwilds, à la Metroidvania: making a portmanteau out of the two most notable examples of a genre.
@@MythicalRedFox Fez is a much older and arguably more impactful game. Fezlike also rolls off the tongue? Dunno. Seems odd to name it after games that came out about a decade later.
@@jeremyblack1929 Yeah, naming a genre after examples that came out so much later feels almost disrespectful to the original. It'd be really weird to call Rogue an Isaaclike, Spirelike, or Morialike. (And Tunicwilds does the exact opposite of rolling off the tongue.)
Who is this man? Such a well spoken, intelligent, and thoughtful creator, with so many great points, and he ONLY HAS 13K SUBS? Thats a crime. At least I feel like I'm getting in on the bottom floor though.
Animal well died for me the moment I learned that some puzzles couldn't be solved inside the game. Not having a way to know which was which I eventually basically followed a guide the rest of the way. I think I had 2 eggs left at that point. I'm really glad you raised that point. Now that I know to expect it going forward I think similar games might will leave a less bitter taste. I actually just 100% Tunic (with some hints from reddit, I'm only human) and was excited by the more obscure late game stuff.
Yeah, Animal Well would have been fine if it was somehow clear which puzzles need to be ignored. All the eggs were legit, and many of the bunnies were not. But there is no way to tell ahead of time whether you're stuck at a dead end or you just need to keep pushing.
I call these "knowledge-based games" - games which require the player to gain certain knowledge to complete; however, these are (mostly) unreplayable, since you go through them once and get all the knowledge needed to complete the game. Sure, there may be some other elements you need to find/unlock to get to the game's end, but the main element - the knowledge - has already been gained on the first playthrough. I think that to be a "metroidbrainia" you also need to be... a traditional metroidvania. Here: metroidbrainias are games which not only require the player to gain certain knowledge to progress, but also heavily require other types of collectibles - abilities, items, etc. - in order to complete. The one example I can think of is Animal Well, where, while you *do* need knowledge to progress, you also need items to use your knowledge on.
Watched the video until you encouraged me to pause, beat the true ending of Tunic, and came back. Thank you so much for encouraging me to go in blind. One of the greatest experiences I've had in gaming.
I've read a lot of discussions about how to define this "genre", what games should or shouldn't be counted in it, or whether the genre exists in the first place, and to be honest, I haven't really made up my mind about it, and I wish to see more writing or videos about it. But my current takeaway is that, I feel like defining a group of games by whether their progression system is unlock-based or knowledge-based is a bit arbitrary for an entire genre. First off, as you've shown, many of the games we consider to be part of the genre don't fully rely on knowledge-based progression. But even for Outer Wilds, the game which many would consider to be the best example of the genre (or even the best game of all time), pure knowledge-based progression isn't even that important. in Alex Beachum's conference "Designing for Curiosity", out of 20 minutes, he spends a grand total of 20 seconds to mention this aspect of the game, and when asked about it in a question later, he says it's totally optional. You could also mention the fact that older games have had knowledge-based progression, either in part (super metroid) or in full (toki tori 2). Yet you don't really see those games mentioned when people talk about games similar to OW/TUNIC/FEZ etc. While on the other hand, games like Obra Dinn do get mentioned regularly, despite not adhering to the rules of the "genre", as you've shown. Rather than looking at mechanics, we should be looking at the *feelings* these games give us, as I believe that is the reason we group these games together when talking about them. They encourage us to let our minds wander, sometimes focusing on specific details, sometimes thinking about the game at large, confident in the fact that there is actually something we can figure out and that it will lead to a tangible reward. They surprise us with stuff that was right under our noses to make us wonder what else we missed, what else there is to see. They shower us with bits of information, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, hints and clues that we get curious about as we know they actually mean something. To me, Outer Wilds is the best one because it unapologetically and exclusively focuses on that: curiosity. As show by Alex Beachum, most if not all large-scale design decisions in the game focus on making the player curious and rewarding that curiosity. It makes that feeling the core element of the game and the only thing that drives it forward, to the point that it becomes a very unusual and weird game that some new players bounce off of when they don't get what they should be doing. But when you vibe with it... man.
I do think theres something to be said that both Super Metroid and Toki Tori 2 form part of this genre. Toki tori 2 probably isnt mention much because not many people have actually played it. But on the other hand, Super Metroid is probably a little difficult to perceive. In reality, the base game ("layer one") of Animal Well isnt really that much different at all to Super Metroid in terms of puzzles, is just devoid of combat. In simplest terms, just the mere act of putting a high ledge you cant reach and then give you a double jump or high jump is in fact a puzzle in any metroidvania. Same for a far away ledge and giving you a mid air dash. But for most metroidvanias we kinda ignore it because they are really consistent and apparent after playing your first one. But thats were super metroid kinda stands out of other metroidvanias and even other metroids, you have the two knowlegde rooms (the wall jump and shinespark rooms), they do a pretty poor job explaining what to do (or at leats for me, i was stuck in each for like an hour) and technically neither are really necessary knowlegde to beat the game. But one that is pretty important is the freeze ray, freezing enemies mid air and using them as plataforms is key to progress. You could even start talking about how combat in some games is some sort of puzzle by itself, but thats a more of a different topic. I guess theres a factor were i see super metroid as more of puzzle game besides being also a metroidvania because it was my first too. The genre itself is plagued with these simple puzzles all over the game, the mysterious green door opened by the newly aquired green missile is technically a puzzle reduced to its simplest form.
In Alex Bechum's presentation, which you mention, he defines a curiosity as a location that answers a question, aka has knowledge. So I would argue he spends all 22 minutes talking about the same contextual knowledge we are concerned with for the possible genre, not 20 seconds. You are right that the talk is not very concerned with progression in the traditional sense.
Genres are ultimately arbitrary distinctions to begin with. They're abstract categories to simplify communication. So something blending, breaking or just not fitting into any genres neatly is pretty much what you'd expect to happen.
toki tori 2 is absolutely a metroidbrainia, super metroid isnt though. not only because by definition and linguistic origins its a metroidvania, and therefor cant be a subset of metroidvania when its existance is what defined the metroidvania genre. progression and gameplay in super metroid is about collecting items that factually upgrade your character and abilities, theres no secret code you can input or know to warp straight to riddley, theres no codes that need deciphered, theres no puzzles that need solving. theres some intangible blocks that lead to a few optional items but thats not what a metroidbrainia is about. they arent problems to be solved, theyre secrets to be told about.
@@firelasto Metroid is at least worth including in the discussion, eg. are the animal well hidden movement techniques really unique secrets or even required for progression? Then what about Metroid's bomb jumps which aren't explained explicitly by the game but which are required for progression? What about more advanced Mario Odyssey movement cappy tech that is totally optional? Does the "brainia" part refer to knowledge not explicitly explained? knowledge that significantly alters gameplay? or does it refer to knowledge being mandatory for progression? Since at a minimum the discussion is fairly new we need to be on the same page. Since you brought up animal well mechanics I have an opinion you may find interesting. While puzzles are very fun, imo secret codes are just as boring as keys, simply not as interesting compared to having gameplay/techniques/lore which were always available to the player from the start if they had an open mind and experimented. I suppose this depends on what you count as being open to the player, Since the warp whistle is egg locked but then after that you can technically brute force a small number of codes.
I have good news. You know how everyone says you can never experience the joy of discovering Outer Wilds again ? Well that's simply not true. You guys have forgotten about the amazing human capacity of empathy. Give Outer Wilds to a close one and watch them play it. You'll feel the wonder through them! I swear it works. Even watching a good stream or let's play works.
More importantly people seem to forget about the amazing human capacity to forget stuff. Guarantee I could play Outer Wilds in a decade or two and it'd be brand new to me.
These are "Knowledge Games". At least, that's the name I've most consistently seen and used. Outer Wilds, Animal Well, FEZ, TUNIC, Void Stranger, Manifold Garden, Toki Tori 2, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror (somewhat), Baba is You, Rain World, etc. All games where the player is gated mainly by how familiar they are with what they need to do. Where the "sequence" only exists for someone playing the game for the first time, and the best secrets are under your nose the whole time.
Outer Wilds has been and will most likely continue being the single greatest video game I have ever played. No game will ever have an impact on me like this one
I stumbled upon a similar term, invented by game developer Tom Francis, who made two videos about it: Information Game. He however defined it a bit differently by saying an information game is about "understanding the story" (and the world) to progress in a game, while a metroidbrainia is about understanding your abilities and by thus progress through the game. Really can recommend especially the later video "Redefing Information Games, based on their cleverest trick" if you haven't seen it yet.
@@matijamaksan4344 "metroidvania" is derived from other game's name, like "Doom clone" or "Roguelike", which requires someone to have some knowledge on games, while "Exploration platformer" is self-descriptive and independant.
This is indeed my favorite genre, nice to have a name for it. You make a good point, I enjoyed solving all the secrets in Animal Well on my own, but was frustrated by the puzzle that required I tip toe around spoilers to find those pieces so I could put them together. The "final" puzzle of the game I think is more understandable in terms of collaboration, not in that it needs it, but because the pieces of the puzzle are not designed to be found, but rather, to be uncovered over a large amount of time by a large amount of people. It's one in which the difficulty is so high that you ought to collaborate, not one which mandates it in the design.
I really enjoyed your video on this topic, this is a genre I really love and didn’t know there was a name for besides their original titles, I.e. metroidvania etc. great choices in music as well, and some lovely b-roll. Great quality on your voice over, I feel like there were no particularly slow parts, you didn’t talk over yourself, just a really well put together video! Amazing work my friend 🔥
This was a great recommendation by the YT algorithm, thanks for the great video! This is indeed a pretty amazing kind of game and makes sense that there's not a lot of them out there since it's not the easiest type of experience to craft. Also not that easy to get people to play! how do you hook someone on something you can't talk anything about or else you'll ruin it for them? haha. The way you went over the listed games without giving out too much was well done in that sense.
I absolutely agree on the community puzzle part. Finding out the puzzle is something I would've never figured out feels really bad. Also what's the music at 2:55?
I'm actually working on one right now! I have to say I hate the name 'metroidbrainia' with a passion though. But anyway, It has been very tough advertising the game, exactly because there is no defined audience or name. I can tell everyone who played my prototype had no idea what I was talking about, and I know people who do love this genre haven't found my game yet.
By the way, if anyone wants to check it out, I would really appreciate it. I could really use the extra reach. You can see it in my uploaded videos, a trailer and a playthrough of the prototype. It's a cinematic platformer for the megadrive, strongly rooted in information games.
Great video! Outer Wilds, Tunic and Fez are among my favorite gaming memories. They are masterpieces, all with exceptional soundtracks. One unique thing you didn't mention is the way some even hide lore and information in a cryptic language which you get to decipher in the end. And boy was it a fun, rewarding challenge in Fez and Tunic. I want more games like this. Metroidbrainia is the best genre for me. Maybe I should start developing one.
This is an awesome video (I might be biased because this is probably my favorite genre, and you just told me it had a real name!!!) but I really like your content in general - You've just gained one more hardcore fan, keep pushing Tin Sensei!!
This is my favourite type of game genre ❤ as you said, it allows for the best, most emotionally involved and most rewarding first gameplay by far. Thanks for the video!
i've heard it called "mystroid" before (you know, after Myst and Metroid). i would put la mulana (and la mulana 2) in that category. (also void stranger to some extent. it's less platformy, more puzzley.)
Fantastic video! I've now played through Outer Wilds, twice. The second time was in VR, so perhaps that reelevated the experience. But I feel like the second time wasn't a lesser experience. The imagery, the sounds, and story were all very good on the replay. I realize the sense of true discovery that is experienced on the first playthrough cannot be repeated but to use this single measure as the standard for all future playthroughs is a bit reductive. Anyway, thanks for the video and I hope we get more games like these!
I think called them Knowlege Based Games removes the unessceary complexity that comes from calling it a Metroidbrainia which is derived from an already weird name of Metroidvania which people still get confused about
Metroidvania is just blending Metroid and Castlevania, some of the early examples of the Genre. I actually find knowledge based game to be a poor name because it doesn't really give you a good idea what the genre is about. That could mean something completely different from what is discussed here, such as Trivia games.
Although it's a weird word play on an already weird name, i think metroidbrainia fits perfectly if you already know whay metroidvania is. Metroidvania is basically "you unlock progress by finding new habilities as you explore the map" MetroidBrainia is "you unlock progress by finding new ways to think as you explore the map" There are in some aspects the exact opposite, because one is "you already know that you need to double jump, but you haven't earned that ability yet", whilst the other one is "you already have the power to turn off gravity by pressing a button, but you still don't know that"
@@Llortnerof Knowledge based gives you the central values of the game. That is based around the knowledge you obtain, that is more useful that blending several more games with distinct qualities and expecting someone to know which ones are relevant or not. While something like Animal well might look like it fits being similar in style to a metroidvania with a heavy thinking focus, other ones like Outerwilds don't seem to have any reason to be there when the mechanics and presentation vary so much from metroidvania's. By contrast no one is going to disagree that Animal well and Outerwilds are knowledged based games with how strongly the both focus on it.
@@theresnothinghere1745 Missing the point. Knowledge based game is _too broad_ and includes games like Trivial Pursuit or Who wants to be a Millionaire just as much as Animal Well or Outer Wilds.
Outer wilds legitimately changed the whole way I view video games. Truly incredible experience
It truly changed the way I look at game dev
I wish I could experience this but every time I try play it I get bored within an hour or so and give up
@@r6scrubs126 that’s such a shame… this game is a truly beautiful experience but it doesn’t have a very wide target audience: those that like lore and dialogue (the type of person that reads tutorials with a fiery passion, aka me)
Do you like dialogue in general? Do you also like solving enigmas? I think these are sort of the "requirements" for liking this game. It really surprises me that you get bored because when playing the game I usually felt very overwhelmed with different branching paths to explore, and every one of them I explored opened up new possibilities again (through mere knowledge)
Of course I did at some point I did feel like I was lost and everything was explored although I wasn’t finished but that was very rare - the fix to this might just be searching it up online or, if you’re really into puzzles and mind stuff, continue rewinding your memories (literally IRL not in-game lol) to see if you might have missed something
@@r6scrubs126 I understand Outer Wilds might not be a game for everyone, but are you not at least a bit intrigued to find out what happened in that universe? How far have you gotten? Have you figured out the purpose of the game, or at least what you think the purpose is? If not then I encourage you to at least try to reach that far, if you're still not interested at that point it's fair to say it's not for you.
I know this sounds cheesy AF, but it actually changed the way I view life in general, obviously gaming as well, but it spoke to me on a level no other game has before.
Knowledge-based progression
'Research Action'
@@KillahMate wow that's a fantastic name. I like your play on "Search Action" given that that is the alternate name for Metroidvanias
@@KillahMate Search Action HD (Hidden Depth) or RHAD for short
"Knowledge-based Progression" can be slimmed down to "Knowledge-Progression" or even "KnowProgress", and still convey the meaning well enough. Both this and "Research Action" are solid options to name this genre (while "MetroidBrainia" is so 'un-solid' we'd have to learn Quantum Physics to truly understand what state it's at).
isn't 'knowledge-based unlock' the actual name? I hear industry people use that term all the time
I love the spoiler free real life footage when talking about the witness, where people who KNOW are seeing it instantly and everyone else is just seeing random outdoor shots
I was using my finger on the screen T_T
I really thought it was just randomly outdoor shots
This more than anything I've heard about it makes me want to play The Witness
get out of my head get out of my head get out of my head get out of my head
@@louis559Do it and you will become one of us. :D The game was designed to make people learn a whole new mental language, experience the joys of epiphany, and _literally change how we view the world_
And it's so freaking silly, I love it
The best videogame subgenre. It's hard to decide whether a game belongs, but imo any puzzle game that makes me go "Wait, I could've done that the ENTIRE TIME?" several times fits. I also think the existence of some puzzles should be hidden right under the player's nose. Here's a list of games I've played that did both:
TUNIC
Outer Wilds
The Witness
A Monster's Expedition
Leap Year
Can of Wormholes
Linelith
Elechead
N Step Steve Parts 1 & 2
Toki Tori 2
Aliensrock the goat!!
Aliensrock, the certified expert on the topic.
Can't forget Papa Louie 2
Myhouse.wad
Environmental Station Alpha
Here's a few more that fit in:
La Mulana 1 + 2
Environmental Station Alpha
Noita
Stephen's Sausage Roll (I would say this, alongside Can of Wormholes and Monster's Expedition, are not "metroidbrainias" but rather "sausage-likes")
Outer Wilds soundrack made me cry instantly. Good job on not spoiling expirience of mentioned titles.
I cri everytim :(
Same, I don't know why bu it gets me everytime. Maybe because it's the most memorable gaming experience I've ever had? I will never forget this game
@@Sunderlol A decent chunk of what makes Outerwilds so memorable is its music. How well it was written and arranged, how well it fit the current scene. Just so well done.
I sometimes refer to this type of games as "rabbit hole games", because they have these moments of sublime epiphany that recontextualizes everything, kind of like falling into a rabbit hole. Baba is You is a great example for that - the puzzles are fantastic on its own, but the moment you realize how to reach that damn island on the overworld screen you also realize that the whole game is even deeper and more complex than you ever imagined.
It has some kind of meta-puzzle?!?
When I first discovered TUNIC, I didn't see many people talking about it, or at least not as many people as I think should've been talking about it. I think that, at first, most people will brush it off as just a cute, cozy zelda-like. I, too, brushed it off like this. But the game stuck with me, it gnawed at my mind, and eventually I caved and got it. To this day, nearly a year after I first beat it, it is my favorite game I've ever played. Every moment is shrouded in this immaculate air (air, heir) of mystery, and when you finally unlock that last bit of knowledge that unclouds the mystery, and it feels soooo.... intimate. I can't recommend TUNIC enough to anyone who hasn't played it. And if you do, please go in blind.
was so hype for this game but it kicked my ass. maybe i should try it again
Agreed, the balance of the combat, adventure and puzzle aspects is just wonderful. I would also recommend Environmental Station Alpha in the same vein. It is a bit more demanding mechanically but I've found a very similar feeling as I progressed and eventually completed it.
Tunic has become my favorite game of all time recently. I first played it a couple of years ago, but I realized recently that I gushed about it continually.
It's such a beautiful combination of Zelda, Dark Souls, Fez, and Outer Wilds.
Do it. @@Kontrazt1990
I teach the language. ;3
Still best game in this genre is Rain World. You have unlocked everything (except 1 thing) from the start. Can go anywhere. Only knowledge limits you.
yes
I like hk more tho
I was filtered hard by Rain World and stopped after a few hours. I've seen several people who have said that as well, only to have given it a second chance, then "got it" and loved it. I intend to go back to it some day when I can set aside some time.
Because Outer Wilds is a metroidbrania, then it has to be my favorite. Only the lack of knowledge is in your way. Rain World sounds fun I might try it
@@tin_sensei yeah, it was quite the same for me. hated it on my first few hours, friends convinced me to try it again, fell in love with 500 hours now. think the game is just too harsh to immediately understand.
I've seen people calling those games "knowledge-based" games and I prefer that term. It's not a genre on its own, it has to be paired with other genres. Just like you would say "an action-adventure roguelike game", you could simply say "a knowledge-based 2D platformer".
I would define Outer Wilds as a 3D exploration knowledge-based game for instance.
I appreciate how that description is independent of IP, but "knowledge-based" or "knowledge-gated" as a genre label sounds erudite and pretentious, to my ears. It's a great mechanical descriptor, but it doesn't feel catchy enough as a name.
Yep 'knowledge-based' is far better than the 'MetroidBrainia' , though I prefer the term 'Curiosity driven' as you are 'driven' to play and explore due to the curiosity of discovery. That discovery can be of new knowledge, tools, abilities etc. So i feel its more encompassing of the wide range of gaming mechanics it can cover and puts emphasis on the point and experience of playing, that of 'curiosity'.
MetroidBrainia has way too much baggage due to being coined off Metroidvania, which itself is an already strained term especially as its derived from a specific game rather than a description of actual gameplay. For example 'Doom Clone' was popular in 1990's but eventually replaced by 'First person shooter' and these days those old style Doom games are known as 'Boomer shooters'.
@@noisecrimenah, when you say "curiosity driven" I think of Skyrim or Elden ring with landmarks that make you wonder what you are gonna find over there.
Knowledge-based is pretty good I think
I like calling them Brainia games because I feel the Metroid part is unnecessary.
@@kunai9809 While those games can involve curiosity they are neither driven by it, nor required. More so curiosity here refers to more than landmarks, its the curiosity of knowledge, curiosity of experiences, curiosity of puzzles/how things work etc.
I will give it to the fez devs that it is extremely funny that they have been radio silent on the black monolith solution except for one instance like 7 years after the game released when they came out and said that the release date theory was wrong, the most popular and assumed by the fanbase to be the intended solution. Absolute legends lmao
Although checking on old forums and seeing statements on people who claim to know the devs it seems pretty likely that the black monolith solution is actually hidden in the images of the soundtrack, as they said something along the lines of "you guys should wait until the soundtrack is out". Maybe the black monolith represents that black part in the spectrogram before they put an image? Who knows
Also another thing of note is that in an interview with Phil 10 years after the game came out he said that bruteforcing the puzzle was a much cooler solution than the one he planned. So there's that. Maybe it has something to do with the heartbreak code, which was intended to be datamined, as some sort of symbolism with how game completionism culture and squeezing every drop of content out of games is killing them and the developers
I'm so normal about this game trust me guys
If I remember correctly, the solution as the community has discovered it was actually related to the release date of the game, as well as the poetry in the book.
*SPOILER*
The date of the release gave a code of numbers that one could reorder the pages of the book. Reading them in that order, then (I forget how) translating those letters to numbers, and from that to inputs is the solution as we understand it so far
@@indigonao9864 no that's the theory that was proven to be wrong lmao. The devs already said that planning a game to be released on a specific day is something very hard to do and they just barely made it to the deadline with some insane crunch, so there's no way they made a whole puzzle about it
Dude, I waited until earlier this year, having had fez in my steam library since release, to finally play it and when I finally started looking some stuff up that part kind of pissed me off lol.
Fez was made by one guy
@@thaneros fez was made by 3 people: Phil Fish (the main guy in terms of puzzle design and graphics and the person who created the original idea), Renaud Bédard (who did the programming and created trixel engine, the engine the game uses), and Disasterpeace (who made the music and i'm pretty sure the sound effects too? don't quote me on that one)
I agree that Outer wild is basically the definitive "metroidbrainia". I almost prefer the term "wildslike" for this genre since many of the games are so far removed from traditional metroidvanias.
Eh, this is my favorite genre of game and for some reason I just couldn't stand outer wilds
I personaly have heard that Outer Wild would more likely be a "KnowledgeVania", the name is pretty self-explainatory, it's a metroivania where you are not block because of lacking powers but because of lacking knowledge. I like it more
I think the issue with Outer Wilds being called a metroidbrania is most of what you can see you can get to right at the beginning even with no knowledge. You're knowledge doesn't reveal the map more so what you know about the world. I feel like a core part of the Metroidvania games is unlocking new areas of the world to find and explore. Sure that exists in Outer Wilds to a degree but then there are games like Obra Dinn that shares a lot of its game dna with OW which I would put in the same genre, but no one would argue Obra Dinn is a Metroidvania or even close to it. I like the term "wildslike" for games where you progress with knowledge and in general a lot of these games overlap well with the metroidvania genre.
@@camdenwyeth316it’s a story puzzle game so if you love exploration and adventure and digging for lore in this game this game makes reading lore the way to gain knowledge to advance further
Why Outer Wilds? FEZ popularized this. Or do we still like slighting Phil Fish.
There's something so cool about having a notebook full of weird scribbles trying to figure out stuff in games like The Witness and FEZ
"note taking-puzzle games" is a genre term I've been using for a while (whether the notes are kept in game, or have to be done by hand).
If you like having a note book full of weird scribbles I'd recommend the Myst series if you haven't played it!
The Witness really only has one puzzle that requires note taking (the colored lights puzzle in the Town). Everything else is pretty forgiving on your brain RAM, though ymmv of course.
@@CheesecakeMilitia what about all the notes in the briefcases
Yeah! I loved writing down the various flute songs on the walls in animal well so I could try em in different areas
I just replayed Obra Dinn for the first time 4 years, and I can safely say that half a decade is about what you need to brain bleach enough of your memory to enjoy a knowledge-based game again.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same about Outer Wilds, as there has hardly been a day that has gone by where I haven't thought about the game, or listened to the music, or thought about a different game through the lens of Outer Wilds. Playing it for the first time was a truly remarkable experience. Impactful enough that I can safely say that it changed me as a person, or at least my perception and outlook on the world around me.
I had fun replaying it and “role playing” as someone who doesn’t know anything. I’ll only use the logbook and rumors and won’t do something that I already know until I see a clue that hints me to do it. Kind of fun to test the game design that way-like choose different planets to go to as your first flight to see how the mystery unfolds with different pieces of information first. Nothing beats the first blind run, but still possible to enjoy a repeat play through!
Found you through the Lego Racers video & now I'm enjoying everything you have on offer ;)
There's a Lego Racers video?!
Finally, a UA-cam channel for me.
same
Hoping he does more of this kind of gaming content!
That's why this guy turned up in my feed again! I thought it was another lego racing game (that I can't remember the name of) and only watched a couple of minutes.
When I heard the Outer Wilds Soundtrack kick in, I knew this was gonna be a really good vid
The smile on my face when it came on.
I love it when a game is so amazing that any reference to it makes you go crazy lmaoo. 😂
Noita would fit this description in the roquelike category
Yes!!
I'm deep in the Noita knowledge trenches as we speak, so that's one of the first games which came to mind.
Does anyone remember Toki Tori 2? That’s gotta be the epitome of MetroidBrainia. You’re limited to just 2 actions, stomping and whistling. It looks like a MetroidVania on first glance, but you never unlock any new abilities. Everything in the game is gated by your awareness of how to use the whistle and stomp to get past the obstacles.
YES! I just made a comment about that game, glad I'm not the only one who played it
This game is THE metroidbrainia
YES!!! I need more people to play toki tori 2 because it is SUCH a good game.
Was this the original Metroidbrainia? I remember someone talking about this as its selling point back when it first came out.
@@ZerogunRivalenah I would argue there’s older games like “la mulana” that fall into this category
For anyone else interested in these Metroidbrania or Knowledge-Based Games, I recommend both:
- Void Stranger: puzzle focused
- Rain World: exploration kinda, it's hard as hell but worth it
As much as I enjoy Rain World, it doesn't really fit the Knowledge-based genre so well since all you're "learning" is how to get where you're going. Unlike Outer Wilds, where you progress by figuring out new rules, Rain World's progression is by moving forward.
@@mothichorror446 I disagree ngl, althought I see what you mean, a lot of the game's content is just locked behind knowledge, knowledge of how to do X movement technique, knowledge of how to use different items, how different animals act etc.
At least to me it feels like a knowledge based game for it, but I can understand your point of view.
I wanna add that Void Stranger is specifically Sokoban-focused and quite punishing, which doesn't work for a lot of people who only enjoy games for their next layers. If you like Sokoban, by all means I recommend.
@@mothichorror446I get what you mean, but I disagree. While progression in Rain World isn't *hard* locked behind knowledge, learning how to effectively navigate the world and exploit the weaknesses of predators definitely forwards progression, so I still think it would count
Watched Cdawg’s Void Stranger playthrough. It’s truly something else. I get the idea of Void Stranger being something you have to experience for yourself, but I kinda don’t think it can be recommended like Outer Wilds can be to everyone. Void Stranger is fuckin brutal. Like as incredible as its storytelling is and how inspired its usage of its medium is, sokoban isn’t exactly peak gameplay, and I really don’t know if I could recommend someone 30+ hours of fuckin sokoban, with some of the later puzzles being especially brutal.
I see Antichamber in thumbnail, I click. Simple as that.
One of my favorite games which is also among the most misunderstood games
Same. Such an underrated gem.
Antichamber appreciation club here ^^^
Game is ahead of it time , I wish the dev makes a sequel or just remake it with more mechanics and better art style
Thanks, was trying to remember the name of it. Was thinking it was Manifold Garden as I haven't played that either.
Fantastic job with this video.
Easy sub.
You will be at 10k quick with quality like this
Leap Year released like a week before this video and is a pinnacle distillation of a pure metroidbrainia. Zero unlockable items as progression is exclusively knowledge gated. Captures the entire spirit of the genre within an under 2 hour play time.
yoo was waiting for someone to mention leap year
adding it to the list, thank you
Bought it based off this comment alone
@@lukechase6346 Nice! Let me know how what you think of it. It's a very cool game
@@LegallyJusticefied got about as much fun out of it as I did out of mosalina, definitely worth the price. Didn't really feel like going for the speedrun achievements though
The beginning of this video convinced me to get Fez (and I already want Animal Well), but the ending makes me think that maybe I don't. I'm right there with you that these super-esoteric mandatory community/look-up solutions go against the philosophy of these kinds of games, and take some of that experience from the player. I think the way you describe The Witness as "if you were locked in a room with no internet, you could probably 100% it eventually" should be somewhere in the design philosophy, especially for single-player puzzle games. The solution should be in the game, not in the spectrograph of the soundtrack.
Totally agree. Specialized knowledge in coding and programming will never be an appealing aspect of these games for me. I don’t like ARGs because they usually have stuff like this.
That depends if it’s a easter egg secret or the game itself, for fez I don’t the game bored me before the end, need to try it again.
I still revisit Outer Wilds sometimes... Just for sightseeing, the music, and visiting the Sun station...
I really can't go back to the game. I want to and I *need* to play the DLC but just can't do it. Too many emotions.
@@thaneros the DLC is amazing, and quite long as well. But yes, there will be feels
@@thanerosdude the dlc is absolute perfection imo, it’s literally them saying “we can make outer wilds again if we wanted to.”
yeah i don't get people who call the game "unreplayable", don't get me wrong, it's a completely different experience, but knowing it all heighens the emotions for me.
@@swan-cloud but what do you do, get on and just finish the game? if you just wander around i dont think thats "replaying" . the only way to relive the game is through others reaction and i know we all did it. to me its ironic how much we try to stick to a game that encourages you to let go
Thank you so much for this,i have been searching for YEARS for games similar to outer wilds or the witness and because of this video i can find some examples even in the comments. Great work man,instantly suscribed
All of my favourite games in one place! I'm now playing through Chants of Senaar looking for another dopamine-filled brain-a-thon. I was hoping I'd find something I haven't already played in this video, but the only one was Chip's Challenge, and I think I'm alright skipping that. Great video!
The La Mulana games are pretty good metroidbrania games. Just be warned that they ask a lot from the player in terms of problem solving and patience.
It's not quite the same, but I would recommend giving Heaven's Vault a look
You should give Void Stranger a shot, it’s absolutely one of the best in this genre and criminally underrated
Chips Challenge is a puzzle game. It's really awesome. It was one of the few games I had on Windows 98 back in the day and we played so much of it. It doesn't have the flair of modern games but it's still good.
Not strictly this genre, but Baba is you (made by one of the creators of Noita) blew my mind how many times it can recontextualize itself and give you the there is no spoon -moment. It may look like sokoban, but the solutions rely mostly on understanding and not much on long, tedious sequences, so you probably solve many levels while not actually playing the game, but just thinking about it while doing something else.
Holy shit Chip's Challenge was one of my favorite games back in the day. Nice to see other people still remember it.
Thank you for the video.
It's free on Steam! It's a port of the Atari Lynx version though, rather than the Windows version that most people remember (and that's shown in the video), meaning it runs a little more "smoothly" in real time instead of the quasi-turn-based feel of the Windows version
The sequel that got shelved when Atari discontinued the Lynx is also on there for like $2, it's basically just a massive level pack
@@LonkinPork Thanks for telling me! Off to Steam to grab them now.
Tunic was REAL nice. The story and lore were snoozers coming from Hollow Knight, but solving the mountain door and deciphering the language was some of the most fun I've had in games in a while. And yes, I deciphered it myself. Took about 5 hours or so, lol.
I will, however, forever hold up that the softest feather can suck my ass.
did you know there's a second, tonal language that the faeries speak and that plays in other places? the sound engineer for the game made a detailed twitter thread about it a while back.
I agree with everything here, especially that the haiku is garbage. I solved every puzzle in the game completely blind except for that one where I gave up after 2 days and cheated. I even completed the game a second time in NG+, theorising that I started out "soft" and needed to raise my stats to 11 or something. Terrible "puzzle".
Great video, big fan of this "genre"
Where Void Stranger?
Hey, that's me at 0:03 :D
I'm so pumped more people are talking about these sorts of games!
Another example of a, Mertoidbrainia I guess, that I will take any opportunity to bring up is 'Toki Tori 2+'. Is cool, play it.
A more classic styled puzzle Metroidvania is 'Isles of Sea and Sky' which came out recently.
I also agree with the sentiment towards puzzles outside of a game, it even opens up the possibility of a puzzle being impossible to solve the intended way like say a website goes down that has an important key to solve it.
I think I managed to 'solve' the word block puzzle. I say 'solve' because well I'd figured that I had to line them up to make a word and somehow managed to luck into finding the right one.
So, take that as you will.
Great video btw.
This is literally my favorite game genre and I've played hundreds of games. I've always just called them knowledge based games. There's a great video that superdude made on them
Most underrated UA-camr I have seen in recent times. Loving the video essays, keep it up my guy!
Dude Chips Challenge! Thats a classic, one of my first gaming memories.
Bummer!
dude, I watch a lot of videos about game design and those knowledge-based progressions and this is by far one of the best. I would love to see more essay style videos.
I 100% agree about the community puzzles & ARG stuff. They can be fun, they have been done well in the past and I'm sure there will be more in the future. But it's starting to feel a little bit rote at this point, i guess? Like the final (the ACTUAL final) puzzle of Tunic is a community ARG and when i got to that point i was incredibly disappointed. It really felt like that developers wanted to "heighten" the puzzle solving stuff and the only way they could think to go bigger was to do this, even though none of the puzzles up to that point required that level of dedication or labor from the community.
Also mad props to the dedication to spoiler-free. These are some of my favorite games of all time, and it always breaks my heart a little to see other youtubers just flagrantly expose all the fun stuff and ruin the games for their audiences.
Personally I think calling the final final puzzle an ARG is overstating it. Once you're there you're done anyway; all that's left I would categorize as easter eggs rather than puzzles.
I think the way Tunic did it was great. It's 100% obvious that any further puzzles from that point onwards (I agree though that there aren't actually any more puzzles, just easter eggs) use information from outside the game itself. Because last time I checked there is no web browser in the game. It's a very clear way of doing it. Animal Well could take some notes.
I'm gonna have to disagree with Tunic's ARG puzzle. Its clearly an optional thing not at all tied to the main game itself with how few links it does have to the base game.
Tunic is very good at presenting the mountain door as the 'final puzzle' for any individual playing the game with how the very first mechanic ties into framing it.
Compare that to Animal well or Noita that go into ARG territory without much rhyme or reason.
Those games have no framing around the puzzles to focus players onto what they can do or what they should rely on a community for instead its just scattered everywhere and you're expected to just figure it out.
Great video, thank you Tin and the algorithm!
I watched this video in hopes of finding something else in the likes of Tunic, Outer Wilds, The Witness, Animal Well and FEZ... only to find out that those were the only mentioned games in the video. 😭
Awesome video, btw! Love it!
Check the comments, there's a lot of good looking recommendations, I'm scouring through them.
I'm working on a mash up of sokoban and tactical turn based gameplay that I feel fits right into this "genre".
I completely agree with how you conceptualized the games that are "metroidbrainia first" and having low replay value, vs "platformer first" and "metroidbrainia second".
After watching this, I at least feel like I'm on the right path of design, in this regard anyway! Tactical puzzling with a decent story first, metroidbrainia second.
Keep up the great work! Subscribed. I will have to look into your videos on Japan too, but I will say that I am definitely interested in more videos around this topic/pattern of content, you nailed it.
Loved the video! Outer Wilds is my favourite game of all time.. (and I'm normally not one for picking favourites)
Obra Dinn was my biggest surprise regarding a game I played last year.
Keep it up Tin Sensei! 🎉
I would not be surprised when your channel blows up!!! I can’t wait to see you grow
I was pulled the thumbnail and I’m barely a few minutes into your video….take my Like already!!
I'm built different, I've played Outer Wilds twice. I just liked it so much that I went around and discovered everything again. I've beaten it several times as well, just repeating the ending. I am very passionate about Outer Wilds.
Great video describing my favorite type of game in recent years. As much as it would be amazing to have a game like this that reaches that level of replayability, that larger than life "a-ha!" moment is what cements these games in my mind, and makes the whole experience worthwhile and worth the price of admission. Also I appreciate the discussion of the big community driven endgame meta puzzles that a lot of these games have and how frustrating it is that only a select few people will ever experience properly. Reaching the final secret in Tunic after so much work only to be met with an ARG that I'm too stupid to understand was a bit of a letdown, but I do understand the value and excitement it can hold for others.
I didn't even noticed when the video ended, really had me interested and listening to everything you were saying, I already knew what metroidbrania was. Amazing video!
This is one of those videos for me where I think "Wow this video is really well made! This guy must have a lot of subs." It turns out you don't, but you definetly deserve them!
Loved the video and Metriodbraina is probably just about my favorite type of game, so I have to say I agree about the it sucks to end up late to a community puzzle but I will say that the Animal well community has done a pretty good job about letting you still solve the puzzles only giving you the info you absolutely need and not just saying here's the solution. the Mural puzzle in particular someone made a site that has all of the pieces but allows you to figure out how it actually goes together without spoiling it.
One of my favorite game series that has these knowledge gates is the Myst series. All the puzzles in these games require knowledge that can be acquired by exploring the game world, observing it and through interaction with objects. There are no keys and no items you can pick up.
If you understand the mechanics of the game's universe you can breeze through them. And there is so much environmental storytelling in the games apart from the puzzles.
The name I’ve given to this beautiful subgenre is “cryptic puzzlers”.
Closest to a formal definition of a genre I've seen yet. Including counterexamples is key. We should start using it - I know I will anyway!
My guy you mentioned the loop a minute into talking about outer wilds 2 minutes after saying you wont spoil anything important...come on. That being said, hell of a video. Ill be playing every one of these games ty sir
To be fair, here’s what it says on the steam store page:
Named Game of the Year 2019 by Giant Bomb, Polygon, Eurogamer, and The Guardian, Outer Wilds is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning open world mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop.
So anyone who buys the game will know it’s a time loop game. I’m with you on outer wilds being a once in a lifetime experience, but even the devs recognize that at some point you need to at least explain the premise lol.
Good luck on your journey with the other games! They’re all great.
A game I see no one mention in this genre is Heaven's Vault. It was amazing. You go diacovering a forgotten language to discover the past of the world. Id say its a story game with the metroidbrania aspect being in the language but its AMAZING everyone in this genre needs to try it.
Also, there are so many ways to reach the many endings this has and things you can miss and still finish the game
Not to mention it has replayability and I still think people Haven't solved everything about the game
Amazing video!
I recently saw a tweet that made me think of this topic.
This type of game is particularly magic.
Chip's Challenge! That's what it was called!
Omg I played chips challenge on windows 3.1 omggg
Void Stranger is another great “metroidbrania” or “knowledge-based game” or “Wildslike” as I’ve heard some people call these. It’s a sokoban game that’s like Outer Wilds and Undertale but never grew past the stage of playing with blocks. This genre of games, despite playing very few of them, has quickly become one of my favorite genres in gaming because of how satisfying it is to just learn more about the game and how to keep progressing with that knowledge. More people need to play these
So many good references! My personal favorites were Swampy Boots and "My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that? Hammocks!"
I played and loved both Fez and Tunic. I'm waiting for my Switch copy of Outer Wilds to arrive in late August and just wishlisted Animal Well. Thank you, I really liked this video.
that simpsons clip for the obra dinn is too perfect
I never had a strong contact with this kind of game, but i absolutely LOVED túnic, some of the best games ever, i Felt só nostaugic and flabergasted só many times in só many ways!
I call them puzzlevanias
I'm not sure it's an accurate descriptor, but it sounds rad as hell
I left the video (for now) at the spoiler warning, but I just wanted to let you know that I think this is really great stuff and I'm excited for more!
A criminally under rated Video again. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for explaining so well my gripes with a game requiring community work. I've said this several times, I fell for the Animal Well hype and regretted paying the release price for it as it seems to be based on getting to enjoy the full game from level 1 puzzles to the level 4 ones, which realistically very few people will, in one hand because as you said it's unreasonable to expect a community that has already collectively solved a puzzle to do it again, and in the other hand because most people are not that hardcore and will just get to the credits and at most will explore a bit of the level 2 puzzles before getting bored or distracted by the next new shiny thing or, like in my case, deciding it's too much work and too much repetition of subpar movement mechanics.
I had this experience with Animal Well shortly after having played Tunic for the first time, and it felt like a bit of a deja vu. I had to retread a lot of Tunic because of the game giving so little guidance, but at least Tunic had the option to turn on infinite health and stamina, so I just went and 100% it in a quasi-comfortable way. Then with Animal Well when I saw how much of the game I'd have to retread, plus having to do deathless runs and speedrunning challenges and no way of making it all more comfortable, I just couldn't bring myself to do it, despite being so much of a completionist. Maybe in the future I'll go back to it, but right now I'm a bit annoyed at the game for expecting so much of the player and not giving any warning about having such high expectations.
In fact, I believe these kind of games, what we can call metroidbrainias, should be more open and transparent about what kind of challenge they impose. While it's true, as you said, that metroidbrainias are best enjoyed going in blind, some can benefit a lot from at least letting you know if the tools required to solve the puzzle are contained within the game or require external tools, because I'm an adult and I don't have time to waste searching for clues that later I'll find out in an online guide that weren't there in the first place. I prefer games respect my immersion and don't break it by requiring me to use an unprovided barcode reader or to check the source code of a website or to make a spectrogram of an audio file, but if they really want to do that, at least be upfront about it and let me take that information into consideration before I decide to pay for a game. Hopefully more people will voice concerns and demands like mine and the industry will react appropriately.
All in all, great video.
Thisx1000. I loved the early-to-middle bits of TUNIC and ANIMAL WELL and INSCRYPTION--thrilling moments of discovery! seeing old places/decorations in new ways!--but was really disappointed to see how much investment and/or outside knowledge/ARG was needed to "complete" the games. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Deathless runs are not my idea of fun, ANIMAL WELL. And I shouldn't have to know the author's entire back catalog (INSCRYPTION...!), to find extra story or secrets; that's unfair. And TUNIC, that rotating puzzle in the water room?? It's annoying i know HOW to solve it, but executing it is eye-rollingly difficult, so I'm out.
Anyway, I enjoyed playing all 3 of the abovementioned games, they left me feeling :\ about them.
For me, TOKI TORI 2+ was best--you could do everything without leaving the game. I wish there was more TOKI TORI2+
@@dwilliams21in tunic you know about the hourglass right
@@karlhendrikse yup!
Great video! Love this genre and will definitely be checking out these games. Grew up playing Chip’s Challenge on the family PC, so was hooked when I saw that right out of the gate
"I explore around and find things that unlock new areas" is the category of Adventure Games, of which Metroidvania is a subset.
Zelda isn't a game that could have been called a Metroidvania if it weren't for an arbitrary rule about 2D platforming. Rather, Zeldas and Metroidvanias are different kinds of Adventure games (and, in fact, different kinds of Action Adventure games.)
Like... I shouldn't get so worked up about this. Genres are marketing categories, and they are notoriously non-systematic. People shouldn't fight over buzzwords devised or pushed by salesmen. But freaking text adventures and point and click adventures have the explore/unlock loop. Adventure as a genre predates Metroid and Castlevania by a good large amount, and both Metroid, and Castlevania, and for that matter Zelda, are consciously trying to be Adventures. And every five minutes some UA-camr notices, "hey, this broader swath of games has something in common with Metroidvanias," but doesn't notice that, yes, and that broader swath already has a perfectly good name that has nothing wrong with it, and Metroidvanias have always intended to be part of that broader swath, man, it bugs me.
I think that most of the problem comes with how restrictive these weird genres are since a lot of the time these genres fill a very niche type of game which I think inherently narrows a games potential if it’s trying to fit itself into that genre. For example with the roguelike genre, these games all have the mechanic of completely or at least mostly resetting your progress whenever you fail a challenge or die and also maybe giving you rewards based on how well you did. They also seem to mostly be top down, intense action games which rely on lots of randomness to provide a fresh experience whenever you restart. Although there are some good games here, there aren’t many that stand out on their own as unique or interesting however if we loosened the definition and mostly focused on the action and resetting mechanic then a lot more interesting games are now included like Zelda majora’s mask and I think there would be a lot more interesting games like majora’s mask if people didn’t try to develop games for very specific genres.
All of these games are based off Colossal Cave and later Myst/Riven. It's fucking embarrassing how badly game history has failed these kids. Phil Fish: The game is based off Riven. Blow: The game is based off Myst. Outer Wilds Devs: It was envisioned as a text adventure. Gamers: What do we call this genre. Morons man...
Ok, I agree with you, but I have to say, *clutching a plucked chicken* "Behold! A man!"
@@theletsplaycurse Funny you say that because there were plenty of interesting roguelikes, which all got thrown under the bus once games like FTL, Rogue Legacy and Binding of Isaac came out and people redefined roguelikes to include those games, and yet people are still making interesting games in those genres.
Majora's Mask also has little to do with roguelikes, be they modern, classic, antique or what have you. It's an action adventure game with a time-loop thematic and mechanic. I'm not even sure of what you're asking for, devs aren't following a checklist when making games to make sure they fit in a genre.
@@LutraLovegood see that’s kind of my problem, I said specifically majora’s mask could be considered a roguelike if we loosened the definition to games that reset your progress before allowing you to progress further which I think would be healthy for the genre overall if it was considered to be such. What I would want to come from this is that developers would be able to be a lot more creative and create games with a much broader appeal.
These are my favorite types of games, rain world, noita, outer wilds, the witness, it goes on and on! i have nothing insightful to say but great video and thank you for making it
Nice video. I've always just considered this genre the "Wildslike" akin to roguelike's etymology. Another term I like is to call them "epiphonic" games since knowledge of mechanics drives progression, and thus it's all geared around making players have groundbreaking epiphanies that change their view of the entire game.
Epiphonic is a really cool term, I might have to start saying that.
Personally I like the term Tunicwilds, à la Metroidvania: making a portmanteau out of the two most notable examples of a genre.
@@MythicalRedFox Fez is a much older and arguably more impactful game. Fezlike also rolls off the tongue? Dunno. Seems odd to name it after games that came out about a decade later.
@@jeremyblack1929 Yeah, naming a genre after examples that came out so much later feels almost disrespectful to the original. It'd be really weird to call Rogue an Isaaclike, Spirelike, or Morialike. (And Tunicwilds does the exact opposite of rolling off the tongue.)
Who is this man? Such a well spoken, intelligent, and thoughtful creator, with so many great points, and he ONLY HAS 13K SUBS? Thats a crime. At least I feel like I'm getting in on the bottom floor though.
Animal well died for me the moment I learned that some puzzles couldn't be solved inside the game. Not having a way to know which was which I eventually basically followed a guide the rest of the way. I think I had 2 eggs left at that point. I'm really glad you raised that point. Now that I know to expect it going forward I think similar games might will leave a less bitter taste. I actually just 100% Tunic (with some hints from reddit, I'm only human) and was excited by the more obscure late game stuff.
Yeah, Animal Well would have been fine if it was somehow clear which puzzles need to be ignored. All the eggs were legit, and many of the bunnies were not. But there is no way to tell ahead of time whether you're stuck at a dead end or you just need to keep pushing.
Yeah, Chip's Challenge! 🤩💖 Great video by the way. Thank you for diving into this topic! 😊
I call these "knowledge-based games" - games which require the player to gain certain knowledge to complete; however, these are (mostly) unreplayable, since you go through them once and get all the knowledge needed to complete the game. Sure, there may be some other elements you need to find/unlock to get to the game's end, but the main element - the knowledge - has already been gained on the first playthrough.
I think that to be a "metroidbrainia" you also need to be... a traditional metroidvania. Here: metroidbrainias are games which not only require the player to gain certain knowledge to progress, but also heavily require other types of collectibles - abilities, items, etc. - in order to complete. The one example I can think of is Animal Well, where, while you *do* need knowledge to progress, you also need items to use your knowledge on.
Watched the video until you encouraged me to pause, beat the true ending of Tunic, and came back. Thank you so much for encouraging me to go in blind. One of the greatest experiences I've had in gaming.
Wholesome, sir 🌟 🎉
I've read a lot of discussions about how to define this "genre", what games should or shouldn't be counted in it, or whether the genre exists in the first place, and to be honest, I haven't really made up my mind about it, and I wish to see more writing or videos about it.
But my current takeaway is that, I feel like defining a group of games by whether their progression system is unlock-based or knowledge-based is a bit arbitrary for an entire genre.
First off, as you've shown, many of the games we consider to be part of the genre don't fully rely on knowledge-based progression. But even for Outer Wilds, the game which many would consider to be the best example of the genre (or even the best game of all time), pure knowledge-based progression isn't even that important. in Alex Beachum's conference "Designing for Curiosity", out of 20 minutes, he spends a grand total of 20 seconds to mention this aspect of the game, and when asked about it in a question later, he says it's totally optional.
You could also mention the fact that older games have had knowledge-based progression, either in part (super metroid) or in full (toki tori 2). Yet you don't really see those games mentioned when people talk about games similar to OW/TUNIC/FEZ etc. While on the other hand, games like Obra Dinn do get mentioned regularly, despite not adhering to the rules of the "genre", as you've shown.
Rather than looking at mechanics, we should be looking at the *feelings* these games give us, as I believe that is the reason we group these games together when talking about them. They encourage us to let our minds wander, sometimes focusing on specific details, sometimes thinking about the game at large, confident in the fact that there is actually something we can figure out and that it will lead to a tangible reward. They surprise us with stuff that was right under our noses to make us wonder what else we missed, what else there is to see. They shower us with bits of information, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, hints and clues that we get curious about as we know they actually mean something.
To me, Outer Wilds is the best one because it unapologetically and exclusively focuses on that: curiosity. As show by Alex Beachum, most if not all large-scale design decisions in the game focus on making the player curious and rewarding that curiosity. It makes that feeling the core element of the game and the only thing that drives it forward, to the point that it becomes a very unusual and weird game that some new players bounce off of when they don't get what they should be doing. But when you vibe with it... man.
I do think theres something to be said that both Super Metroid and Toki Tori 2 form part of this genre. Toki tori 2 probably isnt mention much because not many people have actually played it.
But on the other hand, Super Metroid is probably a little difficult to perceive. In reality, the base game ("layer one") of Animal Well isnt really that much different at all to Super Metroid in terms of puzzles, is just devoid of combat.
In simplest terms, just the mere act of putting a high ledge you cant reach and then give you a double jump or high jump is in fact a puzzle in any metroidvania. Same for a far away ledge and giving you a mid air dash. But for most metroidvanias we kinda ignore it because they are really consistent and apparent after playing your first one. But thats were super metroid kinda stands out of other metroidvanias and even other metroids, you have the two knowlegde rooms (the wall jump and shinespark rooms), they do a pretty poor job explaining what to do (or at leats for me, i was stuck in each for like an hour) and technically neither are really necessary knowlegde to beat the game. But one that is pretty important is the freeze ray, freezing enemies mid air and using them as plataforms is key to progress.
You could even start talking about how combat in some games is some sort of puzzle by itself, but thats a more of a different topic. I guess theres a factor were i see super metroid as more of puzzle game besides being also a metroidvania because it was my first too. The genre itself is plagued with these simple puzzles all over the game, the mysterious green door opened by the newly aquired green missile is technically a puzzle reduced to its simplest form.
In Alex Bechum's presentation, which you mention, he defines a curiosity as a location that answers a question, aka has knowledge. So I would argue he spends all 22 minutes talking about the same contextual knowledge we are concerned with for the possible genre, not 20 seconds. You are right that the talk is not very concerned with progression in the traditional sense.
Genres are ultimately arbitrary distinctions to begin with. They're abstract categories to simplify communication. So something blending, breaking or just not fitting into any genres neatly is pretty much what you'd expect to happen.
toki tori 2 is absolutely a metroidbrainia, super metroid isnt though. not only because by definition and linguistic origins its a metroidvania, and therefor cant be a subset of metroidvania when its existance is what defined the metroidvania genre. progression and gameplay in super metroid is about collecting items that factually upgrade your character and abilities, theres no secret code you can input or know to warp straight to riddley, theres no codes that need deciphered, theres no puzzles that need solving. theres some intangible blocks that lead to a few optional items but thats not what a metroidbrainia is about. they arent problems to be solved, theyre secrets to be told about.
@@firelasto Metroid is at least worth including in the discussion, eg. are the animal well hidden movement techniques really unique secrets or even required for progression? Then what about Metroid's bomb jumps which aren't explained explicitly by the game but which are required for progression? What about more advanced Mario Odyssey movement cappy tech that is totally optional? Does the "brainia" part refer to knowledge not explicitly explained? knowledge that significantly alters gameplay? or does it refer to knowledge being mandatory for progression? Since at a minimum the discussion is fairly new we need to be on the same page.
Since you brought up animal well mechanics I have an opinion you may find interesting. While puzzles are very fun, imo secret codes are just as boring as keys, simply not as interesting compared to having gameplay/techniques/lore which were always available to the player from the start if they had an open mind and experimented. I suppose this depends on what you count as being open to the player, Since the warp whistle is egg locked but then after that you can technically brute force a small number of codes.
I could never put it into words... but yes... THIS is my genre. Great video!
I would classify metroidvania as a action explorer, while these cases like animal well, i would call it as a puzzle explorer
I have good news. You know how everyone says you can never experience the joy of discovering Outer Wilds again ? Well that's simply not true. You guys have forgotten about the amazing human capacity of empathy. Give Outer Wilds to a close one and watch them play it. You'll feel the wonder through them! I swear it works. Even watching a good stream or let's play works.
More importantly people seem to forget about the amazing human capacity to forget stuff. Guarantee I could play Outer Wilds in a decade or two and it'd be brand new to me.
These are "Knowledge Games". At least, that's the name I've most consistently seen and used.
Outer Wilds, Animal Well, FEZ, TUNIC, Void Stranger, Manifold Garden, Toki Tori 2, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror (somewhat), Baba is You, Rain World, etc.
All games where the player is gated mainly by how familiar they are with what they need to do. Where the "sequence" only exists for someone playing the game for the first time, and the best secrets are under your nose the whole time.
Outer Wilds has been and will most likely continue being the single greatest video game I have ever played.
No game will ever have an impact on me like this one
I came into this not knowing what that even was, then as soon as I heard the outerwilds music in the background I got it
I stumbled upon a similar term, invented by game developer Tom Francis, who made two videos about it: Information Game. He however defined it a bit differently by saying an information game is about "understanding the story" (and the world) to progress in a game, while a metroidbrainia is about understanding your abilities and by thus progress through the game. Really can recommend especially the later video "Redefing Information Games, based on their cleverest trick" if you haven't seen it yet.
It has one. In Japan. It's "Tansaku" or "Exploration platformer", but nobody uses it.
Isn't that just metroidvania? Metroidbrainia gotta have knowledge unlocks somewhere in a name.
@@matijamaksan4344 "metroidvania" is derived from other game's name, like "Doom clone" or "Roguelike", which requires someone to have some knowledge on games, while "Exploration platformer" is self-descriptive and independant.
Extremely underrated channel, thanks for the well made video
9:26 oh thats just mean.
This is indeed my favorite genre, nice to have a name for it. You make a good point, I enjoyed solving all the secrets in Animal Well on my own, but was frustrated by the puzzle that required I tip toe around spoilers to find those pieces so I could put them together. The "final" puzzle of the game I think is more understandable in terms of collaboration, not in that it needs it, but because the pieces of the puzzle are not designed to be found, but rather, to be uncovered over a large amount of time by a large amount of people. It's one in which the difficulty is so high that you ought to collaborate, not one which mandates it in the design.
There’s this game I really like called Taiji. It’s basically The Witness, but with tile puzzles instead of line puzzles. Definitely recommend.
oooOOOOOOoooo looks neat! A game I recently played and love that is like The Witness with word puzzles is Lingo.
I really enjoyed your video on this topic, this is a genre I really love and didn’t know there was a name for besides their original titles, I.e. metroidvania etc. great choices in music as well, and some lovely b-roll. Great quality on your voice over, I feel like there were no particularly slow parts, you didn’t talk over yourself, just a really well put together video! Amazing work my friend 🔥
From @Transparencyboo two years ago: Knowladgesouls
Chip's Challenge deep cut, subscribed
This was a great recommendation by the YT algorithm, thanks for the great video! This is indeed a pretty amazing kind of game and makes sense that there's not a lot of them out there since it's not the easiest type of experience to craft. Also not that easy to get people to play! how do you hook someone on something you can't talk anything about or else you'll ruin it for them? haha. The way you went over the listed games without giving out too much was well done in that sense.
I absolutely agree on the community puzzle part. Finding out the puzzle is something I would've never figured out feels really bad.
Also what's the music at 2:55?
Melody sounds like Outer Wilds travelers theme, which is probably that or variation of the song
My recent favorite outer wilds like game is Chants of Sennaar
Super fun and intriguing if you haven’t tried it out
I'm actually working on one right now! I have to say I hate the name 'metroidbrainia' with a passion though. But anyway, It has been very tough advertising the game, exactly because there is no defined audience or name. I can tell everyone who played my prototype had no idea what I was talking about, and I know people who do love this genre haven't found my game yet.
By the way, if anyone wants to check it out, I would really appreciate it. I could really use the extra reach. You can see it in my uploaded videos, a trailer and a playthrough of the prototype. It's a cinematic platformer for the megadrive, strongly rooted in information games.
That looks cool!~ Good move making it for the Mega Drive that's the system of the future ;) hehe just teasing. :)
Great video! Outer Wilds, Tunic and Fez are among my favorite gaming memories. They are masterpieces, all with exceptional soundtracks. One unique thing you didn't mention is the way some even hide lore and information in a cryptic language which you get to decipher in the end. And boy was it a fun, rewarding challenge in Fez and Tunic. I want more games like this. Metroidbrainia is the best genre for me. Maybe I should start developing one.
I was playing Riven this week and thought "this feels like a Metroidvania"
Now I know why.
Its worth it? I wanted to play it but its waaay to expensive, if it has something related to outer wilds and the witness i might get it
You can also get the original 1997 game, its way cheaper
This is an awesome video (I might be biased because this is probably my favorite genre, and you just told me it had a real name!!!) but I really like your content in general - You've just gained one more hardcore fan, keep pushing Tin Sensei!!
We need better words for a bunch of genres. Metroidvanias, Souls-likes, Rouge-likes(lites)... essentially any genre that's named after another game.
This is my favourite type of game genre ❤ as you said, it allows for the best, most emotionally involved and most rewarding first gameplay by far. Thanks for the video!
i've heard it called "mystroid" before (you know, after Myst and Metroid). i would put la mulana (and la mulana 2) in that category. (also void stranger to some extent. it's less platformy, more puzzley.)
Fantastic video! I've now played through Outer Wilds, twice. The second time was in VR, so perhaps that reelevated the experience. But I feel like the second time wasn't a lesser experience. The imagery, the sounds, and story were all very good on the replay. I realize the sense of true discovery that is experienced on the first playthrough cannot be repeated but to use this single measure as the standard for all future playthroughs is a bit reductive. Anyway, thanks for the video and I hope we get more games like these!
I think called them Knowlege Based Games removes the unessceary complexity that comes from calling it a Metroidbrainia which is derived from an already weird name of Metroidvania which people still get confused about
Metroidvania is just blending Metroid and Castlevania, some of the early examples of the Genre.
I actually find knowledge based game to be a poor name because it doesn't really give you a good idea what the genre is about. That could mean something completely different from what is discussed here, such as Trivia games.
Although it's a weird word play on an already weird name, i think metroidbrainia fits perfectly if you already know whay metroidvania is.
Metroidvania is basically "you unlock progress by finding new habilities as you explore the map"
MetroidBrainia is "you unlock progress by finding new ways to think as you explore the map"
There are in some aspects the exact opposite, because one is "you already know that you need to double jump, but you haven't earned that ability yet", whilst the other one is "you already have the power to turn off gravity by pressing a button, but you still don't know that"
Knowledge gates
@@Llortnerof Knowledge based gives you the central values of the game.
That is based around the knowledge you obtain, that is more useful that blending several more games with distinct qualities and expecting someone to know which ones are relevant or not.
While something like Animal well might look like it fits being similar in style to a metroidvania with a heavy thinking focus, other ones like Outerwilds don't seem to have any reason to be there when the mechanics and presentation vary so much from metroidvania's.
By contrast no one is going to disagree that Animal well and Outerwilds are knowledged based games with how strongly the both focus on it.
@@theresnothinghere1745 Missing the point. Knowledge based game is _too broad_ and includes games like Trivial Pursuit or Who wants to be a Millionaire just as much as Animal Well or Outer Wilds.