The metroidvania genre has been having quite a moment of late. “Metroidvania” may be an irritating word that sends many people into paroxysms of rage, but that doesn’t make it any less useful a word. When someone says “metroidvania,” you know exactly what they mean: A 2D platformer based around exploration and character progression, built in the style of Metroid and the latter-day Castlevania games.
Cultured Vultures: Valve's Steam Deck is a pretty impressive piece of kit, so here's our recommendations of the best Steam Deck games you should play.
Few Metroidvanias have managed to live up to the potential and promise of Hollow Knight. The bug-themed adventure's excellent combination of world exploration, emotional storytelling, and decisive combat work to create a game like no other. Still, there are some similar games that may scratch that itch before Silksong arrives.
Aferimage is the best like Hollow Knight imo. It’s not even mentioned as most people don’t even know about it. I just beat it , it has a bunch of endings and I loved it. They even have a nod to hollow knight in an item you can get
VGChartz's Paul Broussard: "Sometimes a game gets so much attention that it’s basically impossible to do a retrospective on the genre without talking about it, and Hollow Knight probably fits that description for the Metroidvania genre better than just about any game that isn’t actually an official Metroid or Castlevania title. It’s now been seven years since Hollow Knight launched, and while the initial PC launch didn’t garner an astounding amount of acclaim, by the time the Switch release rolled around the following year it had developed an intense cult following, to the point where it isn’t uncommon to find Hollow Knight on “best of all time” lists.
I had initially planned to wait until Hollow Knight’s DLC/Expansion/Sequel/Whatever it is now, Silksong, was close to being released to drop this piece, but it’s increasingly becoming clear to me that Team Cherry is waiting for the heat death of the universe to release anything, so let’s just forget timeliness and talk about it now."