As a lifelong fan ofMetroid,Castlevania, and all things Metroidvania, it’s hard not to feel like the runaway success ofHollow Knighthas ushered in a proverbial “Golden Age” for the subgenre. The release cadence for promising-looking Metroidvanias is surprisingly frequent, with a new genre entry seemingly arriving about once a month. Of course, the consequence of the Metroidvania’s ongoing heyday is that the genre is now as flooded as it’s ever been. While the novelty of simply being a Metroidvania used to be enough to float interest in a game, players are now rich with options, with new entries needing to offer something novel to stand out. ExoGenesis Studios — a new developer comprised of industry veterans from prestigious studios such as Owlcat Games, Blizzard, and even Disney — is the latest to throw its hat in the ring in an attempt to come up with the next great Metroidvania withINAYAH - Life After Gods.Following a successful Kickstarter campaign,INAYAHis now available on PC ahead of its console launch this summer, which begs the question whether it’s a worthwhile pickup when stacked against all the options players have.
INAYAHis a phenomenal-looking game with stunning hand-drawn visuals and fluid animations that, when it’s firing on all cylinders, feels satisfying and responsive in terms of both its combat and platforming. But underneath those occasional glimpses of brilliance and its aesthetically pleasing presentation lies a game that is ultimately held back by more than a few frustrating design decisions related to its progression economy, ability gating, environmental diversity, map layout, and boss design. Unfortunately, most of these are systemic issues that preventINAYAHfrom being something more than it is. It’s not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s also nothing it does that’s particularly great, either.
INAYAH’s Story Mostly Fails to Live Up to Its Premise
There’s a common criticism ofMetroidvaniasthat they tend to emphasize gameplay over compelling characters and narratives, andINAYAH - Life After Godsdoes little to avoid those common genre pitfalls. The game’s story begins with the titular protagonist recounting the day that her father died at the hands of a villainous force we come to know as the “Ironskins,” resulting in her being orphaned and left for dead were it not for the help of a mysterious wandering stranger who took her in and raised her. But by the time this intro sequence ends, and you actually get to control Inayah, any semblance of subtlety or personality shaped by past trauma is eschewed in favor of a wise-cracking protagonist who can’t seem to stop talking. And while the dialogue ofINAYAHis smartly written and mostly does a good job establishing the game’s characters and their motivations, the voice acting is a mixed bag, with the quality of the performances varying wildly from great to downright grating.
It doesn’t help that the big twists ofINAYAH’s story are telegraphed from a mile away, making the game’s conclusion feel flat and unearned by the time it eventually arrives. There are some interesting elements of player choice in howINAYAH’s story plays out, complete with the ability to betray certain characters and fail quest lines should you choose to side with another opposing party, but these moments are few and far between. The same can be said of the game’s major themes, which are about as cliché as one could get from a story about forging afound familyand how the futile attempts to outrun our pasts ultimately lead to us repeating the worst parts of it. PlayingINAYAHmight look like getting to control a top-tier animated feature or series, but its plot and characters undercut its presentation.
Combat and Platforming are INAYAH’s Silver Lining
The main area whereINAYAHshines, and the aspect that carries its moment-to-moment gameplay throughout its entire runtime, is its combat and platforming. Similar toThe Game Kitchen’sBlasphemous 2, players beginINAYAHby getting to choose one of three weapons that also doubles as a traversal tool. Players will eventually unlock all three weapons to swap between at will, which shakes up the critical path and the options for traversing the different rooms spread out acrossINAYAH’s map. It’s an interesting shake-up of the classic “ability-gating” that the Metroidvania subgenre is built upon, and it also means that players are free to tackle the game’s first Act in a way that fits their starting weapon choice. It doesn’t hurt that all three weapons are satisfying to use and, together, give Inayah one of the most satisfying platforming suites right out of the gate.
The three weapons that comprise Inayah’s arsenal — the blades, flail, and fists — each behave differently in combat and provide a unique traversal ability that opens up new sections of the map or shortens the travel distance between them. The blades are a fast and combo-driven weapon that applies Nanites to enemies that can do everything from increasing the chance of critical damage to passively healing Inayah. They also have an upward slash that acts as adouble jumpuntil players acquire that ability in earnest. The fists are slightly more powerful at the expense of mobility, but they also allow Inayah to grip certain walls and ledges. Finally, the flail is the most powerful weapon that, in exchange for its offensive capability, is incredibly slow, but it also doubles as the game’s grappling hook, magnetizing to special nodes that dot most of the game’s biomes.
Once players have access to all three weapons (achieved by finding relics of Inayah’s tribe that include her father’s special gauntlets), it’s easy to swap between them at will using either a radial menu or a shoulder button. As a result, the variousplatforming challengesare mini-puzzles to solve where players frantically swapping between abilities in an attempt to nail a perfect execution of a run. Eventually, Inayah will get special Implants that she can equip (a total of 6) that can unlock enhanced abilities such as an official double jump, a midair dash, or an extension of the blades' upward slash that significantly open up the map and make previously inaccessible areas accessible.
Along the way, you’ll be fighting a fairly diverse cast of enemies — from the forest biome’s killer plants and crazed tribesmen to the desert biome’s bugs and bandits — and the game provides a fairly satisfying power curve that sees these encounters eventually shift from fights for survival to Inayah dispatching enemies with one or two hits. It doesn’t hurt that, thanks toINAYAH’s well-donehand-drawn visualsand fluid animations, the moment-to-moment gameplay looks spectacular once players get into a flow and are zipping from one end of a room to the other.
INAYAH’s Strong Points Are Ultimately Held Back By Some Confusing Design Choices
But while the act of getting from one end of a room to another might look great, it eventually loses its luster thanks to a slew of frustrating design decisions that work againstINAYAH’s strong points. The most glaring of these is the sheer size and scale of the different rooms in each biome. While a large map is always great, it only works in favor of a Metroidvania if there are meaningful rewards for exploration and traversal, either through in-game upgrades or satisfying platforming and combat. Unfortunately forINAYAH, the lack of any incentivization for exploration means that even the game’s fun platforming and combat will get old, fast, and you’ll be stuck hoofing it from one end of a biome to another thanks to the game’s lackluster fast-travel system. The rooms acrossINAYAH’s map are some of the largest of anymodern Metroidvania, but they’re so empty and devoid of meaning that their size is a detriment, not a benefit. Add in the fact that many of the rooms start to look the same thanks to recycled assets, and you have a map that quickly shifts from being fun and novel to explore to being a downright chore.
Another element ofINAYAHthat works against one of the game’s strongest aspects, its combat, is the title’sprogression economy. Each of the three weapons players have access to has three abilities tied to a button press, as well as a standard attack and a traversal ability. Instead of combining upgrades for these weapons into one single skill tree, each of the 5 different abilities for the three weapons has its own very large skill tree, which has the unintended and unfortunate effect of making individual upgrades feel weak and useless. You’ll defeat so many enemies and acquire plenty of the game’s currency (Dust) to upgrade fairly often, but it’s honestly not even worth bothering with until you’re able to knock out an entire branch of a skill tree with vast reserves of currency so that the effects of the upgrades become palpable. It’s a system that gives the impression of a natural power curve, but in reality, you’ll go from being toothless to an outright killing machine seemingly overnight.
But even if you’re capable of readily dispatching the game’s cannon-fodder enemies in each of its 4 major biomes, you’ll likely still struggle with the game’sboss enemies, some of which are so frustrating as to inspire outright quitting the game before its completion. Many of the boss encounters, of which there are at least 20, are fun and challenging exercises that push the player to utilize every tool in their toolkit, but some are trial-and-error fights that will see players trying to complete a Sisyphean task if they happen to have upgraded their skill trees the wrong way or prioritized one specific weapon over another. With no easy way to respec, you’re stuck grinding out encounters with lesser enemies to acquire enough Dust to get the upgrades you need, which artificially pads outINAYAH’s length just so you have a chance of defeating a boss that has already lost any semblance of fun.
There’s nothing aboutINAYAHthat is objectively bad, but the few very frustrating design decisions the game features are systemically baked into the title’s gameplay to where even the good parts are undercut by them. At 15–20 hours to complete the game,INAYAHasks a lot of the player in terms of a time commitment, and while there are glimpses of brilliance in its execution, it’s ultimately undone by the parts of the experience that work against it. Considering the sheer number of options players have forquality Metroidvanias,INAYAH’s few annoyances hold it back from being worthy of players' time when there are so many similar titles to choose from that execute the formula better.
