Outbuddies DX

If you’ve played Axiom Verge to death, and are looking for something else that scratches that same Metroidvania itch, do we have the game for you. Failing to garner the widespread attention it deserved, Outbuddies is a PC and Switch retro-platformer that matches Axiom Verge for level design and imagination.

Bahlam is an underground, sometimes underwater, realm beneath the Atlantic ocean. There, you play as Nikolay Bernstein, a shipwrecked maritime archaeologist who’s accompanied by a robot buddy, Buddy. Together you find a race called the Wozan, who are—remarkably for this genre—friendly. However, nothing else is, and you’re tasked with finding the missing Wozan in an ever-expanding world.

While in many ways Outbuddies is very influenced by Metroid, what’s rather special here are the ways it adds to the format, rather than simply emulating it. There’s another universe where this game made it big, and Nintendo noticed, and stole ideas back for it, giving us a far more exciting Metroid future. Ideas like how you can control Buddy too, in a slice of single-player co-op, with the robo-pal able to explore a room, move platforms with its telekinetic abilities, and even “hack” enemies.

This is another one-person team somehow creating a vast, fully-fledged Metroidvania, but even more astonishing given its developer—Julian Laufer—is also a full-time doctor! Its map sucks, which is a real shame, and there’s too much retreading of locations, but then again, a full-time doctor made a complete Metroid clone in his spare time. Gives a kind of perspective, that.