Overview

True to original Metroidvania formula

This is the most important to me. I feel a great Metroidvania is one that lets you explore, find unique abilities and secrets, challenge bosses, and does not hold your hand for much of the playthrough. I don’t feel that abilities trees, character levels, and currency have much to do in a Metroidvania, and I prefer the approach where every upgrade must be found in the game world. This was the formula for the original Metroid games when I was growing up on the NES and SNES and I feel there aren’t enough Metroidvania games that follow this. This is also a step away from the more Castlevania style of metroidvanias. Most of these recent released games in the last few years, were souls like, melee weapon fighting style, with the odd range extra ability. I miss the old sci-fi beam blaster gameplay and feel there is a lack of this in the current game market, aside from the obvious release of the new Metroid. There is just not enough of these games and I, myself, often end up waiting months for another good metroidvania to finally release.

A Unique IP

Goo Keeper is set in Shroomast, a land of Goos and Mushrooms. Goos are slime creatures that are born from mushrooms and mutated into all sorts of beings. The most advanced goos can take humanoid characteristics while some can become fearsome monsters. Goo Town, the starting village, is where Rolly and some other peaceful goos live. While due to pollution, some other goos were corrupted and have taken a more destructive lifestyle.

Being slime by nature, goos can take different shapes and evolve dynamically. This is seen in some or Rolly’s abilities even. One of which makes his hand turn into a giant hammer.

With this game and IP in general, we took the more cartoony approach as it easily matches the world’s creatures, how they behave and allows us to stretch some limits, while keeping things interesting and sometimes funny. We do plan on having Goo Keeper become a series, and we also hope to make a spin off RPG in the future. Some of the early concepts done for Goo Keeper gave us ideas for a lot of future games.

Beautiful hand drawn semi-open world

Goo Keeper offers a hand drawn semi-open world divided in multiple zones. It has multiple ways of progressing forward, where you can tackle bosses and areas in alternate order as well as bypass some altogether. The optional bosses can guard unique abilities or easier paths to another location. There are 9 major biomes in the game. Our goal here is to provide quality over quantity, the world itself should feel unique and fun to explore.

Dozens of unique Abilities

There are 3 types of abilities. The mandatory abilities which are required to progress through the game. These include wall climbing, the power roll, etc. The optional equipable abilities which serves to customize your play style and improve your power against more powerful foes. These come in two flavors; active and passive. And third are the hidden abilities, which are from combining specific equipable ability into a new version. All abilities use up energy from the energy meter, which refills automatically on its own. The speed for which it refills however is based on the power of the ability itself. This is a simpler way to manage how often you can re-use abilities, while also given the choice between faster attacks or slower more powerful attacks.