Best Metroidvania Side Scroller Games on PC

Songbird Symphony

Songbird Symphony is a musical platformer which follows the adventures of little Birb. Its adorable pixel graphics and catchy songs make it an unmissable and unique title for fans of the genres and newcomers alike.

Pros

Adorable pixel graphics and animations.
Heart-warming story about acceptance, belonging and self-discovery.
Musical aspects are integrated into puzzles.
Many different cute and hilarious characters to interact with.
High quality, catchy and enjoyable songs.
All songs are replayable and are graded C,B,A,S which motivates players to achieve better scores.

– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game

Read More: Best Metroidvania Rhythm Games.


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Info Game:

This is such a beautiful rhythm platformer. Words can’t describe the feelings I got from this game. This game shows how powerful music is! There are songs that will make you happy and song that will feel you sad, just like the main character is feeling at those moments. Even more wonderful is that there is a song that you’ll hear a few times during the game, and it will give you a familiar feeling, which is exactly what it is supposed to do around the end of the game.

– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game

Songbird Symphony on Steam

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a 2D platformer so solid and lovely to control i wanna kiss it.

like, imagine Dark Souls and Metroid had a little 16-bit baby, and then that baby made a game called Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight for his preschool project. thats this game.

Momo borrows its core mechanics from games like Metroid and Dark Souls, which i heard are pretty good. main gameplay really only includes jumping on platforms and slashing/shooting bad dudes, but Momodora likes to get a little deeper than that. your main weapon is a leaf, which attacks slowly and leaves you vulnerable between slashes, but you have a roll that gives you invincibility frames if things are dicey. your other weapon is a bow that’s pretty quick but forces you to stand still, again leaving you vulnerable. this means you cant be strolling along willy nilly and you gotta take each group of enemies on with care and strategy. as a result you get combat that’s pretty gosh darn fun and challenging (hey this kinda reminds me of Dark Souls).

– Real player with 158.4 hrs in game

Read More: Best Metroidvania 2D Platformer Games.

So after 100%’d this game, I’ve decided to write this review.

Overview

To me this game seems to be a combination of Castlevania and Dark Souls, and a good one.

The gloomy atmosphere, non-linear (metroidvania) gameplay, and Souls-like combat (maybe more like Bloodborne).

Art and Music

The pixel art is very well done, especially since the animations are smoothly hand-drawn, very pleasing to the eye.

And then the music, while it may not be the greatest, it does the job right, and some of them are quite memorable, especially the Pardoner’s Dance. I feel like a lot of people might agree that Fennel’s fight is the best part in the game.

– Real player with 30.6 hrs in game

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight on Steam

Vigil: The Longest Night

First things first, tl;dr: I enjoyed most of my time with Vigil, I think it’s a solid metroidvania, offers a decent challenge, provides an interesting story, and entertaining combat, but it has some flaws.

I’ll start with the flaws, one of which made me put the game down for a while:

There are several obscure NPC questlines that you can fail permanently, and while this can be frustrating, I would have accepted it if all I missed out on was some story or maybe some more useless trinkets. However, what I don’t like is that you can permanently miss very important weapons, spells etc. if you fail some of those obscure quests, and once you do, you just have to restart your entire playthrough or accept you won’t have some of the best and most fun weapons/spells.

– Real player with 76.8 hrs in game

Read More: Best Metroidvania Souls-like Games.

For starters i love this game, but im well aware that is in large part due to it being a perfect combination of things i really dig. Large and confusing world, check; occult themes and a nice lovecraftian feel, check; metroidvania styled progression with a fairly simple but fun combat system, check; tons of items and secrets to find, check. The point is it would’ve been tough for this game to let me down in the first place, I know that. But im still confident in saying this its not just me, this game is just straight up great.

– Real player with 41.1 hrs in game

Vigil: The Longest Night on Steam

Super Win the Game

#LinuxOnly

Zelda II, Metroid, and Super Mario without swords or any weapons, epic music, extra lives, boss battles, life meter, destroyable enemies, cutting edge 8-bit graphics, or magic. What does it add for the things it lacks?

Optionally, it can be experienced in CRT mode. CRT mode is everything bad about playing on old style TVs. Fuzzy moire hexagonal screen pixels, color bleeding, curved screen distortion, invisible overscan and rounded off image corners, motion blur/phosphor burn, reflections on the CRT frame. Even rolling screen, RF interference, and static make an appearance. But it’s nostalgic… I think this might well be the only Linux game that has “action safe” and “title safe” design (google it). CRT mode is also tunable to better match the old TV players used when they had no other choice. Personally, I found CRT mode to be worth 15 seconds of enjoyment, then I switched it off. But, that’s just my personal preference. Turning off CRT mode does not result in ‘modern’ graphics. Without the CRT mode, this game is about gameplay only.

– Real player with 25.2 hrs in game

Rating: 9/10

Have you ever replayed one of your treasured childhood 8-bit games, only to be disappointed? It felt so different in your memory… Well, Super Win The Game feels the exact opposite of that. In fact, SWTG is what old childhood games should have been in the first place. Don’t know what I am talking about? Try its freeware prequel “You Have To Win The Game”, that is, if you grew up playing games on an old CGA-monitor. Put it simply, it is PURE AWESOMENESS.

Pros

Level Design: this is probably what most reviewers will overlook, since the best level designs are the ones you don’t even notice. The levels are just so complex and fun to explore, with its different themes and multiple secrets. And speaking of secrets, oh my, you will be served. I literally discover one every single time I load the game.

– Real player with 24.1 hrs in game

Super Win the Game on Steam

Timespinner

Personal General Impressions

TL;DR: Unlock hardmode with a code, ignore the uneven difficulty curve, ignore the bad narrative and heavy handed politics and poor writing, and the gameplay isn’t bad but I’d easily recommend Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight over this.

I have really mixed feelings on this: I don’t regret my purchase, but I also can’t recommend it when there are alternatives that are so much better.

The game on normal is awful (bad writing, mediocre narrative, and absurdly insanely easy game play). But with a code

! Nightmare777 you can unlock nightmare/hard mode right away; then the difficulty curve is a bit uneven peaking on the second boss and getting too easy by endgame. But overall I had some good times with the game play and I don’t really play metroidvania’s for good narratives or good writing (though I guess I’ve been a bit spoiled by Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, and even Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight all of which I easily recommend over Timespinner).

– Real player with 89.4 hrs in game

As someone who backed this game on kickstarter and was a regular on his weekly development livestreams, this game was a massive disappointment. While it gets the basics of a game done right it never bothers to do anything to make itself truly unique amongst the other games of its kind.

I’ll first give this game some credit and say there is some semblance of a quality game in here. Bodie has evolved as a pixel artist through HD index painting, and a majority of the landscapes have a good look to them, save for a couple of isolated areas that have a plain black background, which to me seem unfinished. Another quality is that the soundtrack is also above average, with several tracks approaching that of Michiru Yamane’s level of talent. The game’s basic setup is a revenge story that pits magic against technology. Also, the game controls are tight and responsive, and unlike the GBA Metroid games it doesn’t hold your hand through the whole thing, letting you progress by realizing and learning what each upgrade does. In essence, the game benefits from a strong start.

– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game

Timespinner on Steam

Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora

Why did I buy this game? I’m not even trying to hate, I’m genuinely quite confused why I bought this, it must have been about four years ago that I decided to. Maybe it was because it was on sale or something, maybe I liked the trailer. Which is pretty amateur as I can now see, but for some reason I decided to buy the bundle thing, with the soundtracks and Jones on Fire. Why did I do that? This is such a flawed game it’s painful to think why I ever finished it even once. At it’s best It’s got this kind of unique feel that allows you to see past some (but never all) of the flaws; at it’s worst it’s absolutely unbearable. Okay there are some good things, some of the characters are pretty cool, Franky is a nice companion, the music is good (not something I’d ever listen to outside of the game though, which makes the purchase of the soundtrack even more baffling to me), and some of the platforming and gun mechanics are cool. But it’s nowhere near enough to make up for all the problems.

– Real player with 25.4 hrs in game

I enjoy quirky games that have a sense of humour and aren’t overly-complicated. And I enjoy mysteries. I enjoyed these aspects of the game, and I do recommend it, but there are some caveats.

The concept of the different ammunition in the game is a great one, and makes the game simple, provides many possibilities for problem solving, and is kinda cool. But the way it was implemented drove me bonkers. When in a room and needing to use different ammunitions, sometimes the puzzle would require three or four of a particular type, then you would have to switch out to a different one (or two), do something with them, and then switch back. Granted, I’m sure in hindsight that I could have streamlined that and analyzed the problem and come up with a more efficient ammunition usage, but who wants to do that? Swapping out the ammunition is such an annoying mechanic, it would be much easier to put in some sort of ammo configuration and swap to it with a button or hotkey.

– Real player with 19.4 hrs in game

Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora on Steam

Akatori

Akatori is a metroidvania/slasher platformer with a charming pixel-art and a captivating story. You’re going to follow the young girl Mako that starts a fascinating adventure to save her world from destruction.

Dive into magical worlds of Aarkalia, uncover its secrets and stop the ancient God awakening ritual.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1442520/Akatori/

Gameplay

Akatori has a unique world-switching mechanic. A World Warp ability turns the special in-game areas 180 degrees, transfers the protagonist into another dimension and unlocks new locations.

Combat

The core element of the Akatori combat system are various combos. The hero can fight enemies on the ground, toss them up and continue to battle in mid-air. Equipped with a quarterstaff and a hand fan Mako can perform melee and ranged style attacks.

Key features

Fight like an assassin!

Slasher fighting mechanics with combos.

Don’t get lost!

Explore the world of Aarkalia in two different dimensions.

Defend against evil forces!

Challenge dozens of unique enemies and furious bosses through your adventure.

Become a master!

Evolve and change your playstyle by obtaining a wide range of unique abilities and special attacks.

Look into it!

Charming pixel-art aesthetics combined with smooth animations.

Find your path!

Solve the mystery of the Great Mirror through multiple endings.

Akatori on Steam

Big Adventure Of Fighting Chicken

I bought this game for a dollar, and I still question if it was worth that. It’s like, barely functional, and I didn’t get very far before it’s brokenness made it ridiculously hard. Maybe get this on a 90 off sale if you’re curious, maybe.

– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

Big Adventure Of Fighting Chicken on Steam

Custodian: Beginning of the End

Very short, very easy, nothing “brutally difficult” even credits level isnt that hard. Gameplay is mix of lots and lots of games in the genre, nothing new. And most funny thing, when i get developer ass kicked(at the credis level) i got a crash. Tried several more times, still crash every time, so i cant finish the game cuz devs are handicapped. Too bad i cant get my money back.

– Real player with 29.8 hrs in game

Custodian: Beginning of the End is a brutal platformer, lot’s of trial and error and patience will be needed with this game.

+Beautiful pixel art. Some pretty environments.

+Nice sounds and ambience.

+Story telling is quite good so far.

+Boss designs are very cool. Some nice art here as well and animations.

+Love the combat mechanics and gathering of light energy.

-Platforming while enjoyable will result in many one shot deaths by being impaled on spikes. So have patience while doing these.

-Animation locks while doing certain actions will end up getting you killed, while frustrating this will be a learning curve.

– Real player with 21.6 hrs in game

Custodian: Beginning of the End on Steam

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