Islets

Islets is a silly, fun metroidvania with nice music and art, plus a bit of bullet hell action. The combat is intuitive, with a nice variety of both monsters and environmental hazards. I really enjoy the game loop in Islets. Obviously as a metroidvania, there is a lot of back and forth as new abilities unlock new routes. However, Islets makes it feel fresh by providing several completely separate maps. which are slowly connected as you progress in the game. Each new connection both creates a new area to explore and changes how you navigate the map as a whole. Compared to Hollow Knight, where your map slowly expands outwards as you explore, Islets feels more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, working on several sections at once until they meet in the middle.

cute simple metroidvania, not as detailed as other metroidvanias but still very charming

I loved the art style for this game. For as bright and cutesy as it appears, there is all the progression and difficulty that I expect out of a metroidvania.

Cute and short metroidvania game. It took me 16 hours to get all achievements. Combat is rather easy so if you want more of a challenge play in hard mode. I really liked the bosses. Even if you fail, the save point is right next to the boss so you don't have to do long run backs and you can just go do something else if you don't want to try the boss again. You also keep your currency when you die. Minor spoiler: after you beat the final boss you get to talk to all the npc's you met and they throw a party for you. I love it when games acknowledge you saved the world and let you walk around still after instead of just putting you back in the save right before you beat the final boss. Speaking of bosses, after you finish the game you unlock boss rush. There's three achievements tied to this so if you want them all I recommend just doing hard mode from the start, if you go for the "don't die in boss rush" achievement just load your save file whenever you feel like you're about to die. No achievements in this game are missable as far as I know. But just to be sure, if you gain an upgrade and there's a choice of something happening/receiving a letter, pick that one. Don't bother gri…

Awesome Metroidvania. Very charming art style, brisk pace to the upgrades, satisfying combat, non-frustrating exploration; really, really good stuff.

Definetly a great metroidvania, easily the most chill and relaxing one i've ever played, which is kind of weird for the genre it is. The combat may be a bit boring at the start but the bosses do improve throughout the game and are pretty good, sure they may not be on the level of the greats like hollow knight, but they are good enough (and the boss rush mode is decent too). The exploring aspect of the game is also good, with good backtracking, with it being not too boring, and opening new paths and shortcuts for the whole playthrough. Overall a good, chill metroidvania, which doesn't take itself too seriously but has an interesting and unique mechanic for the map (that being the islands connecting to each other to unlock new paths). 7.5/10