Check Out The Beta Demo Of The Metroid-Esque ‘Ex Vitro’

Now here’s a pleasant surprise. While on a random trawl of IndieDB, I stumbled upon a very interesting little game in development. Ex Vitro is an atmospheric, well produced Metroid-inspired platform shooter by a solo developer who clearly has a broad range of talents, as there’s good sprite-art, level design and writing on display here. While it’s still relatively early in development (the current version only contains 120 rooms or so), you can get a good feel for how it works by downloading the latest build and trying it for yourself.

It’s very, very Metroid, and that’s a good thing. The first ten minutes or so bring back very fond memories of the opening to Super Metroid, with you fumbling your way around a dark, abandoned and all-too-quiet facility, while an oppressive ambient drone thrums in the background. There’s even an optional ‘desolation mode’ which removes the occasional data-logs and diaries you find scattered around, if you’d rather recreate the atmosphere of the very earliest story-free Metroid games. Not that I’d advise this. There’s quite a bit of story, and it’s actually fairly well written, although more than a little dark.

Unlike Metroid, this uses an Abuse-esque mouse/keyboard control setup, so you can shoot independently of movement, and double-jump right from the start. Once you find your first weapon upgrade, you’ll need to get good at shooting and fast, as things get significantly more hostile rather quickly. I’m not sure whether the full version will be commercial or freeware, but I honestly think it could easily command a price-tag of a few dollars if it continues to improve from here. If you like Metroid, then this is a demo well worth playing, and I hope to see this game completed, eventually.

Follow the game and get the Beta over on IndieDB now.