Animal Well dev discusses his Metroidvania influences

Animal Well was released on Switch earlier this year and has proven to be a big indie success. Created and designed solely by developer Billy Basso, the game is a retro-inspired puzzler/Metroidvania. However, while it shares many common features of the genre, it deviates in many others.
In a new interview with Nintendo Life, Basso discusses which Metroidvanias in particular inspired him while working on Animal Well. Unsurprisingly, and of interest to Nintendo fans, one of the big ones was Super Metroid. Perhaps equally as important as what Basso took from Super Metroid was what he didn’t take, as he explains in the following quote:
Yeah, I love a lot of those games. I think Super Metroid is probably one of my favorites. I like the idea of exploring a space and returning to places you’ve already visited, but then finding something new. It’s not just the idea that you’re exploring, but that you still have these loose ends in your mind that you want to go back to. It’s fun. As a whole, I probably have a soft spot for the Metroidvania genre.
But I also don’t like genre labels much. And it’s actually been kind of sad to see the Metroidvania genre become sort of calcified. A lot of developers are very happy to just follow the blueprint, give you the double jump and a dash and, you know, all these movesets that are solidified from old ideas. It’s not really fun if it’s just a formula. I mean, I like the broad idea of these interlocking areas and abilities. I thought it was still a good framework to design a game in: it’s fun, it gives the player a lot of agency on what direction they get to go in, it’s very rewarding to get new stuff and drip feed the mechanics. But I still wanted to make an original, fresh game, so I avoided almost all the existing tropes that I was aware of in Metroidvanias.
[Billy Basso, Nintendo Life]
Basso also talked specifics about the latest Metroid title, Metroid Dread on Switch. Though he’s obviously a big fan of Metroid games and the genre as a whole, he had some criticisms of Metroid Dread feeling too samey, which he expresses below:
I had a similar experience with Metroid Dread where it had been a while since I played a Metroid game, and it was one of my favourite series so I was like, ‘Oh, a new Metroid, I’m really excited for this!’ But I think I played too many [games like it]. It looked beautiful, it felt great to play, but it was still the same item set you get in all the Metroid games. They added a few new abilities, which I was excited to see, but I don’t think it was enough to really maintain my sense of excitement throughout the game.
I love doing the last quarter or so of any Metroidvania where you’ve got pretty much the whole map open and you get to go clean up all the things you missed and fill in all the maps. But [in Metroid Dread] I was like, I know these are all just missile upgrades. And because I already know ahead of time what I’m going to get, I’m not that excited to go collect them all. Plus they’re not going to really enable any new gameplay experiences, really. It’ll just see a number go up and I’ll bomb all the hidden walls, or whatever. So it didn’t create that sense of exploration and wonder that maybe I got in some of the earlier games when the whole formula was fresher to me.
[Billy Basso, Nintendo Life]
Metroidvanias are almost impossible to avoid in the indie gaming space these days, so it’s fascinating to hear opinions on the genre from one of the current hottest indie designers. Whether or not you agree with Basso’s criticisms of Metroid Dread, it’s probably a good thing that he took some lessons from the game in order to help create his own more unique take on the genre.
Click here to read the full interview, in which Basso discusses the challenges of solo development, plus more insight into the secrets and lore of Animal Well.