r/metroidvania • • Aug 30 '26

Dev Post We want this giant boss fight to feel like a desperate struggle. What do you think?

494 Upvotes

Hope everyone’s doing well! It’s been a while since I last shared some development progress, so I wanted to show you what we’ve been working on.

This is one of the large late-game bosses we’re currently working on.

Our goal is to make the first encounter with something this huge feel overwhelming, while still keeping the fight fair.

We want players to learn its attack patterns, figure out the right timing, and eventually overcome a fight that initially feels like a desperate struggle.

The full boss fight has three phases, and today I’m sharing a small part of the second phase.

There’s still a lot we want to polish, especially the attack patterns, effects, and overall impact of the combat, so this is still very much a work in progress.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

When you fight a huge boss in a Metroidvania, what makes that battle memorable for you?

Edit: I made a mistake in how I explained this. The boss doesn’t have three phases that you fight back-to-back in a single encounter.

You’ll actually face this late-game boss three separate times in different locations as you explore, and each encounter has its own theme. The first fight is more beast-like, the second is focused around lightning, and the third has a blood-themed style.

We’re designing it this way so you won’t have to go through one extremely long, exhausting boss fight all at once. Instead, each encounter happens naturally at a different point during your exploration.

I’ll also reply to some of the comments below to clarify this. Sorry for the confusion!

Edit 09/01: There have been so many great suggestions and comments that we’re already discussing them as a team. I’m reading every single comment. Thank you all so much! I’ll keep replying to as many of you as I can. :)

Edit 09/12: I’ve now read through all of your comments, and we’ve had a lot of discussions as a team about the feedback you shared.

We’ve already started working on several of the points you raised, especially the ones we felt could clearly make the fight better. There’s still a lot we want to improve.

We’re only a team of seven, so we can’t always move as quickly as we’d like, but we’re pushing hard toward the full release in November.

Thank you again for all the feedback, criticism, and encouragement. We’ll keep working hard, and hopefully I can come back soon and share another interesting part of the development process with you all. :)

Thank you again for all the amazing feedback. It really means a lot to us!

r/metroidvania • • Apr 15 '26

Dev Post A new trailer for my owl metroidvania. What do you think?

897 Upvotes

Hey guys! I'm trying not to post here too often, even though your response is always supportive and helpful.

Just wanted to share this new trailer I made for the upcoming demo of Tyto.

Please let me know what you think - is there anything missing in the trailer? I'm a bit worried that I didn't show enough combat...

r/metroidvania • • Aug 27 '26

Dev Post My retro metroidvania Tearscape (90% Very Positive on Steam) is out now on Switch, PS5, Xbox, iOS and Android

702 Upvotes

Porting and publishing it myself for all major consoles was a huuuuuge task so if you like the retro Game Boy Color style and top down metroidvanias please check it out on your platform of choice

r/metroidvania • • Sep 20 '26

Dev Post Eden Lumina, our hand-drawn 2D Metroidvania, now has a Steam page!

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696 Upvotes

Hi! We're back: Davide and Emanuele, the two devs behind Eden Lumina, a fully hand-drawn 2D Metroidvania. Remember us?

We just hit a big milestone: the Steam page is finally live (link in the comments). If you like what you see, wishlisting the game is the thing that helps a tiny team like ours the most right now.

Last time we showed you the full art redesign and promised an update on how development is going, so here it is. Movement, basic combat and the core platforming mechanics are already up and running in engine, and the main character's animations are turning out really well (all drawn frame by frame). We're still polishing everything, so we'd rather show it to you once it's up to standard than rush out a rough clip.

The images in this post show how the game world and its characters are taking shape. Right now we're focused on the final look and atmosphere: lighting, mood and the feeling each area should give you when you walk into it. At the same time we're also working on the story, the worldbuilding and even the first pieces of the soundtrack!

In the meantime, if you want more frequent and detailed updates, we've opened an Instagram profile (link in the comments too). We'll use it as a sort of dev diary, sharing bits about the world, the animations, the mechanics as they come together and more.

As always, let us know what you think. Which area or detail stands out to you the most? Anything you'd change? The comments on our last post shaped the game a lot, so know that we really do read everything. Let's make a great game together.

r/metroidvania • • Mar 11 '26

Dev Post Hey I'm GRIME II's Game Director here for an AMA before it launches this month, ask me LITERALLY anything!

456 Upvotes

Hey my name is Yarden Weissbrot and besides being GRIME I and II's Game Director/Producer I've also done the: Game Design, Level Design, Animations, Concept Art, Level Art, Story & Narrative and a few others things that no else on the team really wanted to do.

Before we are launching GRIME II this month (the 31st) I wanted to show some appreciation to the passionate r/metroidvania community who have probably been some of our most supportive fans over the years. Your feedback has in many ways helped shape this sequel.

Ask me LITERALLY anything and I'll try to be as honest as I can be even if it's something I'm not entirely allowed to talk about. x:


A bit about me and GRIME...

I've been drawing creatures for as log as I can remember (used to copy the art from the game manuals that used to come with games like Diablo and Heroes), and I always thought I'd end up jobless if I tried doing something related to drawing for work. I was certain that it will remain just something I do to not fall asleep in class.

Somehow, I ended up getting the surreal opportunity to do whatever I wanted with a team. But I never designed anything in my life, so I tried to play it safe and lean on other games' design as much as possible. Mostly expressing myself through the art and world.

GRIME's reception gave me the confidence to... get carried away as much as I wanted to for the sequel.

While GRIME was a relatively slow and methodical game, heavily inspired by Dark Souls and Salt & Sanctuary, GRIME 2 is much more ambitious and leans farther into player freedom. Giving you a ton of options (maybe more than any other Metroidvania) in how you fight your way through the game. I wanted player to be able to engage the game in the manner that they enjoy most, rather than forcing players into a specific playstyle.

If you're not into weaving in parries or dashes in close quarters combat, you can cast abilities from afar. Build up poison debuffs. Set up timed traps. Launch enemies against each other, or into pits. And much more.

So, if you disliked GRIME, I would greatly appreciate it if you could give GRIME 2's Demo a shot! After reading hundreds of reviews and feedback posts, It's been specifically designed with you in mind as well. :)

And if you're at all interested in GRIME II, please Wishlist it! It really can be the difference between success and failure on Steam.


Edit: I'll be taking a break for tonight. Have a trailer to work on hehe. I'll continue to answer questions tomorrow! Thank you!

r/metroidvania • • Feb 02 '26

Dev Post My humble take on the metroidvania genre, Tearscape is out now on Steam

742 Upvotes

Also thanks to this community for showing excitement every time I posted here. It really helped me keep going.

My game Tearscape is out now on Steam. I truly hope you'll enjoy it.

r/metroidvania • • Jun 19 '26

Dev Post After 3 Years of Development, I Finally Released My 3D Metroidvania, Maseylia: Echoes of the Past on Steam!

638 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

After more than 3 years of development, Maseylia: Echoes of the Past is finally available on Steam!

Maseylia is a true 3D Metroidvania inspired by Metroid Prime, Pseudoregalia, Hollow Knight, and the worlds of Moebius, focused on fluid movement, exploration, sequence breaking, and interconnected world design.

The game features:

• Non-linear 3D exploration
• Advanced movement abilities (360° Air Dash, Grapple, Double Jump, and more)
• Movement-based progression
• 6 unique biomes to explore
• Atmospheric sci-fi environments
• Steam Deck & Linux compatibility
• 10–15 hours for the main adventure, with plenty more for completionists

The game is available now for €17.00, with a 20% launch discount during the first two weeks (€13.60).

I'd love to hear what you think of the launch trailer and the game!

Steam Page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2938870/Maseylia__Echoes_of_the_Past/

r/metroidvania • • 18d ago

Dev Post Three years ago I quit my job to develop my own metroidvania

479 Upvotes

First, the technical stuff - the demo is roughly 2 hours long, and it's basically the first 2 hours of the full game.

It's not a prototype or a proof of concept - it has all the core mechanics, features, music, and story planned for the full game's opening.

I honestly am kinda speechless. After weeks of playtesting, bug fixes, and polish, Tyto is finally ready to play!

Thanks to everyone in the metroidvania community who helped A LOT with playtesting, speedrunning, and finding every possible way to break the game to pieces so we could make it better. Check out the game's credits to find your name!

And thanks for your constant support throughout the last 3 years of development. Knowing that tens of thousands of players are waiting for Tyto keeps us motivated to create the best game possible.

Alright, that's enough gratitude for today - enjoy playing Tyto's demo, and please let me know what you think, preferably via a Steam review 🙏

r/metroidvania • • Nov 22 '25

Dev Post It's taken 4 years, but I've finally released the demo for my Fallout and Dune inspired metroidvania

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978 Upvotes

I've spent 4 years working on my game Vitrified and today I finally released the demo! It's inspired by Fallout and Dune and I've taken some great feedback from this sub - primarily to 'just add a damn map'!

The key mechanic and theme is your robot pal called ALAN, who you have to work with to progress through the wasteland and find your way home. It's exploration driven but you fight lots of radiation mutated creatures with ALAN, and to unlock new areas you have to upgrade ALAN with spare parts you find on your travels.

I hope you like it and I'd love to hear what you think!

r/metroidvania • • Mar 10 '26

Dev Post My game is releasing today! Almost 6 year working on it after playing games like Ori and Hollow Knight.

599 Upvotes

It's a dream come true to actually release a game after so many years working on it. Ori and HK inspired me so much, me and a friend wanted to create a game of our own. No previous experience, no budget, just perseverance (and a lot of patience).

Sophie: Starlight Whispers is out on Steam today and we're really proud of what we managed to achieve.

r/metroidvania • • 19d ago

Dev Post Every shot moves you AND fights enemies. Our bullet hell metroidvania UNTARCTICA now has a Steam page!

282 Upvotes

We’re working on UNTARCTICA, a horror metroidvania where your gun doubles as your movement tool. Shooting the enemy is only half the decision. The other half is where the recoil will send you.

You use that kick to cross gaps, escape hazards, and weave through bullet hell patterns while fighting back. Combat and traversal share the same mechanic, so positioning matters with every pull of the trigger. It takes place in an Antarctic research station that went silent three months ago. Inside: interconnected corridors, hidden routes, classified experiments, and some very wrong-looking biological mutations.

Our Steam page is now live! If that sounds like your kind of weird, you can check it out and wishlist here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4163950/Untarctica/

r/metroidvania • • Feb 09 '26

Dev Post My metroidvania results after 1st week: Very Positive 92% of 133 reviews, thank you!

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726 Upvotes

Really overwhelmed with the results for Tearscape and I'm not saying that lightly. While working on my own game I never got bored of it, I really enjoyed my own game so I hoped people would also like it. However lots of people who liked it ended up really really liking it, more than I thought. I received lots of great messages, I'm checking the Steam forums everyday and I'm so happy to see people talking about different builds to kill bosses, sharing puzzle solutions, asking where to find certain items, it's all pretty surreal honestly. I'm still listening to all the feedback and releasing patches everyday trying to polish this game as much as possible. I want to thank this community, I posted here a few times and y'all showed me a lot of support. Thank you to all who got my game, I hope you like it and also thanks to anybody who left a review on Steam too.

r/metroidvania • • Feb 19 '25

Dev Post Animal Well [Giveaway][Steam]

182 Upvotes

Hello! I'm working Canvas which will be in the Steam Next Fest soon and the demo is out right now! It's an exploration, painting game where you use your paint and other abilities to explore, uncover the world, and learn the mysteries of the world you've been trapped in.

To celebrate this demo release milestone I'm giving away games that inspired my game. Feel free to join any of these other giveaways! Antichamber | The Magic Circle | Outer wilds | Tunic | The Unfinished Swan | Animal Well | Spiritfarer | Superliminal | Disco Elysium | Eastshade

To enter the giveaway just post the name of your favorite game in the comments and I'll pick the winner randomly in 3 days!

Please check out the demo and good luck!

Giveaway completed, the lucky winner was MechChickn!

r/metroidvania • • 22d ago

Dev Post My stickman MV is finally OUT!

222 Upvotes

Stickility is OUT NOW on Steam, with a 15% off discount! If you like the mix of wacky Stickman-themed adventure, with darker themes and cinematic boss fights, try it out!
It's been a long long long journey for me to get this game out to the public, so I appreciate anyone who picks it up and enjoys it!

r/metroidvania • • Sep 12 '26

Dev Post After almost 3 years of development, I just released my top-down magical girl Metroidvania!

475 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I finally released Magical Blush this week after almost 3 years since I first started working on it, including some time when development had to be paused while I worked on other projects.

It’s a top-down Metroidvania, where you play as Arnin, a magical girl who unlocks different elemental powers throughout her journey.

The abilities aren’t just for combat, they also change how you move through the world, reach previously inaccessible areas, and solve environmental puzzles.

One detail I had a lot of fun with is that some of the elemental bosses are inspired by creatures from Brazilian folklore, adapted to fit the magical girl world. You can see a few of them in the launch trailer. The game is out now, so I’d love to hear what fellow Metroidvania fans think about the exploration and ability-based progression!

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3488640/Magical_Blush/

We’re also trying to reach our first 50 Steam reviews this weekend, so if anyone here ends up playing it, an honest review would mean a lot.

r/metroidvania • • Aug 13 '26

Dev Post Solo-dev 3D Metroidvania: Environment polish, wrapping up

275 Upvotes

Getting very close to done. I spent the last month polishing environments — reworking lighting, adding chevrons and stencils, laying down masses of cables. I modeled and built new props for the key locations. There's a limit to how far a solo dev can push environment quality, so my goal was simply to make sure nothing felt too dark or too empty.

The hardest part was figuring out what to actually write on the walls and floors. It's set dressing that scrolls past, but I didn't want to just put random words there, so working out what tied into the story or setting, how far to take it, and what fit each location took a lot of thought. I've filled it in to a reasonable point for now, and I'll revisit it when I do the dialogue and text revision pass after stage work is done.

Right now I'm wrapping up environment polish and finishing enemy placement and stage gameplay. I'd made changes to the player's parkour along the way, so some of the environmental parkour puzzles no longer lined up and needed fixing. I'm also placing a few enemies that had only been tested in isolation and cleaning up the flow.

It really feels like it's coming to an end. Since releasing that prototype-ish demo in April last year, I've fixed around 2,000 issues based on user feedback. A year and a half is either a long time or not, but looking back it feels distant. r/metroidvania made this possible.

I should be able to finish and start testing around September or October, and I'm looking at Next Fest in February 2027 for release. Word is that GTA is going to vacuum up all media attention this fall and winter, so best to stay far away from it.

Thanks as always. If you're interested, you can try the demo at the link below. Note that the demo hasn't been updated with the new graphics yet. Feedback and wishlists mean a lot too:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3397260

r/metroidvania • • Jul 02 '26

Dev Post Solo-dev 3D metroidvania: Spent two months building the final boss

364 Upvotes

Two months on the final boss. It was brutal.

Since it's a big multi-legged robot, I started with the legs — some simple procedural animation just to get it walking (more of a dance-walk, really). From there I built out the gameplay, the attack patterns and weak points, which is always the slow, fiddly part that eats far more time than I'd expect. Once the gameplay was roughly done, I did the modeling and texturing and swapped out the placeholder. Then wrapped it up.

Two months on a single boss was hard enough, but the thing that really drained me was living with the placeholder for over a month. I think the lack of any visual payoff wore me down more than the actual work did.

The cut from the boss's death straight into the ending is still rough. I couldn't get it where I wanted, so I've left that one to future me for the polishing pass.

Now comes full assembly — lighting, music, sound effects (still placeholder for this boss), gameplay tweaks, cleaning up the story and all the dialogue, finding voice actors and recording the new lines with them, adding and reworking events to match the story, fixing the temporary backgrounds. Still a lot to do, but this really is the final stretch.

Thanks for reading all the way through. You can check out the game and play the demo here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3397260

r/metroidvania • • Jul 07 '26

Dev Post What are your favorite or most hated (overused) boss mechanics in Metroidvanias?

85 Upvotes

Boss animations from our 2D pixel art rpg/metroidvania - Etherland Saga

r/metroidvania • • Aug 26 '24

Dev Post AESTIK JUST RELEASED! Our hand-drawn metroidvania with branching storylines just launched & I'm beyond excited to share it with all of you! To celebrate this & as a thank you for all of the support & feedback we got from this sub, I wanted to GIVE AWAY 2 STEAM KEYS! Just comment if you want one!

336 Upvotes

r/metroidvania • • Jan 12 '25

Dev Post [Giveaway][Steam] Animal Well

161 Upvotes

Hello! I'm working on a game: Canvas that is going to be in the Steam Next Fest in February:

To celebrate this milestone I'm giving away games that were an inspiration for me to make my game.

To enter the giveaway just post the name of any work of art that is meaningful to you and I'll pick the winner randomly tomorrow at this time!

GIVEAWAY COMPLETED:

The winner was Reintroverted and their meaningful art was "Houseki no kuni!!!"

r/metroidvania • • May 18 '26

Dev Post Teaser for Silent Planet - Elegy of a Dying World new trailer

320 Upvotes

In a few weeks, we will present a new trailer for the French Direct event (presented by ActuGaming) on the 27th of May at Noon EST.
In the meantime, please enjoy this small teaser!

r/metroidvania • • Feb 21 '25

Dev Post 🎉 Giveaway: Any Steam Game Tagged "Metroidvania" (1x Up to $30)! 🎉

150 Upvotes

Edit: The winner has been selected the February 23th at 06:15 AM PST and it's u/Jessy_Something who chose Animal Well

Source: https://www.redditraffler.com/raffles/1iurwg0

Hello everyone!

The r/Metroidvania community has supported me a lot until now, and I truly appreciate it! To celebrate the first major release of the Maseylia demo and reaching 5,000 wishlists, I’m giving away one Steam game with the "Metroidvania" tag (up to $30) to a random comment, picked by RedditRaffler!

Here is a list page for game tagged "Metroidvania" : https://store.steampowered.com/category/metroidvania/?flavor=contenthub_all

For those who haven't yet, It would mean a lot if you checked out my game, Maseylia: Echoes of the Past, a 3D Metroidvania inspired by Metroid Prime, Hollow Knight, and the art style of Moebius. Wishlists, follows, and feedback are greatly appreciated! Feel free to share your thoughts or join our Discord for insights and feedback, this is totally optional and won’t affect your chances of winning.

🎮 Steam Link
👾 Discord (new)

🕒 Deadline: February 23th at 6 AM PST

Good luck! 🚀

r/metroidvania • • Jun 20 '25

Dev Post We're working on a classic, gothic Metroidvania!

610 Upvotes

Bloodbreaker: Labyrinth of the Witch is a 2D Metroidvania influenced by a lot of classic titles in the Metroidvania genre - Castlevania for one. Bloodbreaker also features roguelite/roguelike elements, in terms of level/room design.

Journey into the Labyrinth as Ayana Crimson, a vampire with a preference for demon blood, as she searches for his missing brother.

You can play the demo on Steam now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3649940/Bloodbreaker_Labyrinth_of_the_Witch_Demo/

Let us know what you think!

r/metroidvania • • Jan 26 '26

Dev Post My metroidvania is releasing in one week. You get an interconnected ability-gated world plus challenging stamina based combat

352 Upvotes

r/metroidvania • • Feb 20 '26

Dev Post Silent Planet - Elegy of a Dying World - Official Console Announcement Gameplay Trailer

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240 Upvotes

Official announcement for consoles and first look at our new trailer.