don't click here

SAGE 2024 - Complete XGA

Overview Reviews (3)

Overview

1719391243824.png

This is a Metroidvania fangame aiming to continue Metroid Fusion's focus on horror and the SA-X. Explore a huge, interconnected space station, fighting various monsters, upgrades and boss battles. Avoid XGA as getting caught means certain death....

:emoji_fire::emoji_fire::emoji_fire:SPECIAL EDITION OF XGA COMING 2025 :emoji_fire::emoji_fire::emoji_fire:

Media

//PLAY THE GAME HERE//
dinar87.itch.io

XGA by Dinar87

'Metroid Fusion'styled game I'm working on currently...
dinar87.itch.io dinar87.itch.io




Updates

None for now...but 2025....... :emoji_wink:

Credits

Dinar87 (code, art, story) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo6LTBCHRP_ZfNU_ws6peOA
Ciri (music and sound effects) https://www.youtube.com/@ciri494

///Freesounds.org (mostly sound effects)///
Conveyor Belt 2.wav - tosha73
Rolling Metal Conveyor Belt.wav - Razzvio
Sci Fi Interface - Jofae
MENEZ_Corentin_2016_2017_Monster Growling.wav - univ_lyon3
anime cat girl.wav - KurireeVA
Liquid Nitrogen.flac - qubodup
burglar alarm siren long alert warning sound 2 - vyclops
Tube deflating - Pastabra
Horror pack 1.mp3 - Aratron
Drone Horror Music 03 - Magmi.Soundtracks
HorrorSting1.mp3 - shelbyshark
Suspense Motif - jhumbucker
General Atmosphere of Metal Fabrication Workshop - iankath
Ambulance siren - sofialomba
Siren.wav - Jwade722
Sewer beast samples - Dasgoast
kingstalker snoring sfx - MENEZ_Corentin_2016_2017_Monster Growling.wav - univ_lyon3
Creature Wild Frost SFX - szegvari
Under Ocean Sounds.wav - bastardwrio
Rustling Grass - alegemaate


big metallic robot footsteps -gladkiy
RoboticArm.aiff - 4ntony
typing - Rodzuz
Robot/Mech movement - Breviceps
Footstep_Metal_5.wav - GiocoSound
Running - Juandamb
jumping_1.wav - ShaneF91
BallCatch.wav - ToastHatter
Thump.wav - Macif
Explosion2 - deleted_user_3544904
explosion+012.mp3 - deleted_user_5405837
Explosion_01.wav - tommccann
Lightsaber mk2.wav - chipfork71
lightsaber3.mp3 - gyzhor
Power Charge - Sojan


Electricity - FlashTrauma
CaveGorilla.wav - zatar
20 guage shotgun gunshot - michorvath
Machine Gun 002-single shot.ogg - pgi
Gun Hammer Click - magnuswaker
low mid afar explosion 1.wav - logicogonist
rpg launcher three shots.wav - klangfabrik
Bang/Explosion Metallic - Werra


projector_screen_moving.wav - Ottomani138
Stingers and Stabs 001.wav - rodincoil
Tornado Sound (better quality).ogg - Josh74000MC
laser_active_big - mazk1985
hightech_confirm2 - Tissman
TRAM_004.wav - rollingmill
Squeaking tram departing.wav - dersinnsspace
Fast Crawling Bu - dasrealized
Rocket Thrust effect.wav - LimitSnap_Creations
Rock destroy - Bertsz
Dead laptop sound - Rvgerxini
Electric Zap - Electricity - Wakerone
Chainsaw.wav - esperri
Chainsaw Noises 002.wav - yottasounds
Heart Beat - thenudo
Cordless Drill Drilling Wood - deleted_user_7146007
UnrelentingAgony1.wav - zimbot
monster bite - LucasDuff
Single Rock hitting wood2.wav - worthahep88
Shovel hitting metal swing frame.mp3 - Jadester64


Sword Stab Body Hit by -GeorgeDiamond- -- https://freesound.org/s/718259/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 (I modified the original sound)

Latest reviews

Linky439
Disclaimer: I haven't finished the game yet. To be honest I hadn't realized it was a full game!

XGA is pretty much Metroid Fusion. The story starts in a similar fashion, the gameplay and the abilities you get are also very much Metroid-like - which I enjoy, given the Metroidvania these past 10 years started to borrow more and more from Hollow Knight that anything else.
I like the open nature of the game, as you are told to go to one sector first, but are free to visit three in the order of your choosing! The character controls well and the exploration feeling is well present, making it a fun and great time for any Metroid Fusion fan (which I am). It is, first and foremost, a Metroid-like and it does that thing very well.

Overall, I'd say that from what I've seen, my biggest gripe with the game is how close to Metroid Fusion it actually is. It's one thing to have a similar setting, but even the sectors seem very close to what Fusion did (Sector 1 is akin to a planet, like SRX, Sector 2 is the forest one, like TRO, Sector 3 is the fire one like PYR). In the end, you might be reminded of Fusion a little too much, but then again, Metroid Fusion came out... 23... years... ago... (Jesus!)
Also not a big fan of the writing? It doesn't flow as naturally as Adam or even the introduction. I'll have to keep playing to have a definitive opinion on that.

I had a great time playing XGA, and though I'd love some more original stuff or a few QoL features, let's not forget this is a free game that seem to have at least around 5 to 10 hours of content. My hat's off to you! And I'll go to the end for sure, probably not before the end of SAGE but I'll keep playing :)
  • Like
Reactions: Dinar87
Dinar87
Dinar87
Thanks for the review! I'll try and add more original stuff going forward.

What did you think of the ammo mechanic? Did it make the gameplay more fun, or was it annoying?
Linky439
Linky439
I think it made it interesting and brought something different to the table, but I am not sure I understand when the auto-reload happens, this probably needs some clarification :)
Dinar87
Dinar87
I removed the auto reload (at least at the start) so the mechanics are clear and easier to understand.

What do I need to change about my game, that would make you like it enough to give it 5 stars?
2cents98
I've already said everything I wanna say about it in the comments, but for when this blows up, I'll put it here as well for any poor soul that decides to read all this :P

Review for the SAGE 2024 Demo, version.....13.8.24 (that's probably a date, actually)

Lemme just link the comment instead for space purposes, actually... The Comment In Question

Some added negative bits for actually reviewing things;
Invisibility is extremely boring, I'm sorry. The ammo drains too fast to even bother using its upgrade, it's completely pointless when the sector states revert for any reason other than a key, and it's just kinda there on your weapon list now.
The shockwave emitter seems to do nothing after you get its upgrade other than being an extra key OH THAT REMINDS ME
The Nuke blatantly trivializes any future bossfight, even with the grace i-frames
Nano Armor allows you to completely ignore the Lap 2 upgrade from Sector 3 due to it continuing to ignore damage from all hazards even after it has depleted its ammo.
Bosses are...underwhelming at best, and concerningly trivial at worst. Most times you're more likely to die to sector hazards and basic enemies than bosses. Blatant example going to Sector 2's spike pods that do 4 damage for some reason while bosses are still only doing 2.
The Grace period encouraging charge shot use is fine to me, but maybe flash it at a much lower transparency. Some of the bosses are hard to see during their i-frame flashes, especially the "tutorial boss," given that it has a transparency layer and a texture filter slapped onto them.
This is still a fantastic job for a fan game expo, even more-so given it's an almost completely solo dev project, and I happily encourage you to continue making games.

Can you edit reviews? Looks like you can! Tacking on more commentary from my talk with the dev, and more appropriate reviewing:
I'll be honest; I came in expecting some cheesy, underdeveloped, broken mess, but despite my grievances with some aspects of it I had fun, and the people I heard about it from had fun from what I can tell. I'll go ahead and say "better than metroid dread" is a bit of a lofty ideal, especially for a solo project, but you still accomplished what you set out to do and made something that "feels like Metroid Fusion." I'd definitely do another few playthroughs again after the 2025 updates you speak of, and it's probably gonna keep having its own little place on my harddrive like the others. There's also the fact that almost everything is drawn in GIMP, which...I don't know how the hell you managed that when I can't even get that damn program to change a single color half the time XD I'll definitely say the art style made me nostalgic of a few flash games, and not once did I feel like the animations for the sprites were either too choppy or too smooth, so I'll definitely give you props for that. This is one of those games I'd be likely to toss into a conversation about third party -vanias if such a topic came up (it's more likely than you think when you have a yearly metroid hyperfixation :p), and I'll definitely be back to check on this every once in a while, but I'm not gonna just lie to your face and act like it's perfectly polished. It is a mess, but it's quite a fun mess once you figure it all out. Unintentionally breaking nearly everything on my first playthrough was not something I expected to do, but going through everything one step at a time and figuring out why it did was very fun on top of the already fun time I had with the game.


The dev has been very receptive and from what I here, and is already working on an update for several fixes and that's just pretty damn awesome 😎
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Dinar87
Dinar87
Dinar87
Thanks for the review! I'll work on fixing these issues.

One thing I'm interested in hearing is about the bosses, and why you found the disappointing. What factors made them underwhelming in your opinion?
Blacklightning
I want to preface this by saying despite what my wording may suggest, I don't think the game is bad - I just have a habit of singling out the bad rather than the good, in the interests of helping a good thing become even more good, or at the very least something to learn from for future games. As a Metroid Fusion clone, it works fine. But good lord is the exposition incredibly front loaded in this game - I swear the first like 5-10 minutes was just me clicking through text box after text box so bloated that the text never seems to fit on a single screen. I feel like a good chunk of this exposition could have been saved for somewhere closer to the midgame as a mercy to XGA's pacing, especially all that jazz about where the artifacts came from and why they're doing these things.

Some smaller nitpicks I jotted down while giving the game a try:

- Grace invulnerability on bosses in a game where your weapon fires rapidly feels unsatisfying. Personally I would remove that and just adjust their HP to compensate.
- Right after the first conversation with the ADAM analogue, the breakable obstructions seemed to have wonky collision and I somehow walked halfway inside one of them. Nothing serious, just immersion breaking.
- I can't tell if the reloading mechanic with the main gun is bugged or just poorly communicated. Sometimes it reloads when empty, sometimes it reloads halfway through the clip, sometimes it reloads after the very first shot, but there doesn't appear to be a way to reload manually? Fortunately it doesn't prevent you from firing and enemy encounters seem to be designed pretty well around the amount of ammo you have at any given time, so I guess I'm just more confused than annoyed.
- The music in Sector 1 cuts off abruptly between loops. This kind of thing is a pet peeve of mine - where possible you should probably be running your music through an audio editor (I recommend Audacity if you don't already have one) to better mask the exact point where the file loops, and fade ins / outs should probably be done in-engine rather than baked into the audio file.
  • Like
Reactions: Dinar87
Dinar87
Dinar87
Thanks for the feedback! I take it you played metroid fusion before? If yes, and the exposition was still annoying, then that's valuable for me to hear. I'm aiming for the 'metroid fans who love metroid fusion the most' audience (like me).

If you ever want to replay the game again, there's a skip option for not just both intro expositions, but all text. You need to press 'start' on your gamepad (for my xbox gamepad it's the hamburger icon button).

The bosses used to not have grace period but because of the x saber they all became way too easy with it. Plus having the grace period encourages using the charge shot.

You're not the first person to suggest manual reloading, so I'll add that in as it's not a one off criticism anymore. Also the ammo reloads automatically overtime atm. Should I remove this so it's more obvious what's happening?

For music looping, was it only sector 1's music that was the issue, or are there more tracks that need changing?
Blacklightning
Blacklightning
Between the two, I would consider XGA's pregame exposition dump more frustrating than Fusion's. It's frustrating that it's difficult to quantify exactly why, but I still maintain it would benefit a lot from sprinkling the artifact backstory throughout the game like how a Prime game might exposit through the scanner visor, or how ADAM would keep you informed of an evolving situation via choke points in Fusion.

I didn't realize the game had a charge shot. Anyway, could enemies just resist saber dmg? Or hypothetically, change resists mid fight? (EG: enemy is vulnerable to saber after armour is blown off with guns, or flip-flops to resist to guns or saber but never both)

Manual reload sounds nice, but this system I only really find hard to figure a pattern for. Functionally it works fine. idk, maybe change it to specifically a period of inactivity instead of time passed period?

As for music looping, I wasn't keeping track until Sector 1, that was the only time it stood out to me.
Dinar87
Dinar87
That makes sense. I was thinking of better explaining why XGA doesn't just immediately kill the player once breaking out, and part of that story is the energy waves both you and XGA sent out combine themselves and become the title screen's blackhole object. And this blackhole hid you temporarily. It would be an NPC that you could talk to, and it would replace Mark once he dies in the 2nd half. This blackhole could help fulfil the role of breaking up the intro's exposition as well.

Ah, so you must not be that far into the game then.

I've removed the automatic reloading to make the game mechanics more clear.
Read more…

Comments

2cents98
Dinar87 said:
Your images are not showing up for me. They're completely pure white with no image inside.
Click to expand...
Will it load the image if you click on the white box right above the title or am I just gonna have to try attaching everything again? :p
 
Dinar87
2cents98 said:
Will it load the image if you click on the white box right above the title or am I just gonna have to try attaching everything again? :p
Click to expand...
Nope. I click and it links me to imgur, but there's no image, nothing. It's just completely grey.
1725903336002.png
 
Dinar87
Also this
- Sound settings reset to default (Maximum){Ow} when pausing the game to view the map unless you open and close the sound setting menu. This is fixed by entering a room transition.
Click to expand...
I could not get this bug to occur. The audio works perfectly on my end. It never goes to maximum when pausing/unpausing, even if I completely turn off music and sfx.
 
2cents98
Dinar87 said:
Also this


I could not get this bug to occur. The audio works perfectly on my end. It never goes to maximum when pausing/unpausing, even if I completely turn off music and sfx.
Click to expand...
Hm...maybe it just resets to default, then. I usually have it set to only 3 on both because my computer's audio balancing is absolutely scuffed 🫠

Music also does this after clearing a sector for the second time, especially noticeable with the rosey portion of sector 2
 
Dinar87
2cents98 said:
Hm...maybe it just resets to default, then. I usually have it set to only 3 on both because my computer's audio balancing is absolutely scuffed 🫠

Music also does this after clearing a sector for the second time, especially noticeable with the rosey portion of sector 2
Click to expand...
It sounds like it might be your computer in this case then.

I want to ask you again what you think of my game. I've been working on it for over 6 years now, maybe more. It's hard to accept criticism and admit what you've been working on for so long has this many flaws. But even if nobody will ever care about my game, even if I will never make something successful, I want to keep perfecting XGA. Until it is the perfect successor the fusion, better than metroid dread even.
 
2cents98
Dinar87 said:
It sounds like it might be your computer in this case then.

I want to ask you again what you think of my game. I've been working on it for over 6 years now, maybe more. It's hard to accept criticism and admit what you've been working on for so long has this many flaws. But even if nobody will ever care about my game, even if I will never make something successful, I want to keep perfecting XGA. Until it is the perfect successor the fusion, better than metroid dread even.
Click to expand...
Well I'll be honest; I came in expecting some cheesy, underdeveloped, broken mess, but despite my grievances with some aspects of it I had fun, and the people I heard about it from had fun from what I can tell. I'll go ahead and say "better than metroid dread" is a bit of a lofty ideal, especially for a solo project, but you still accomplished what you set out to do and made something that "feels like Metroid Fusion." I'd definitely do another few playthroughs again after the 2025 updates you speak of, and it's probably gonna keep having its own little place on my harddrive like the others. There's also the fact that almost everything is drawn in GIMP, which...I don't know how the hell you managed that when I can't even get that damn program to change a single color half the time XD I'll definitely say the art style made me nostalgic of a few flash games, and not once did I feel like the animations for the sprites were either too choppy or too smooth, so I'll definitely give you props for that. This is one of those games I'd be likely to toss into a conversation about third party -vanias if such a topic came up (it's more likely than you think when you have a yearly metroid hyperfixation :p), and I'll definitely be back to check on this every once in a while, but I'm not gonna just lie to your face and act like it's perfectly polished. It is a mess, but it's quite a fun mess once you figure it all out. Unintentionally breaking nearly everything on my first playthrough was not something I expected to do, but going through everything one step at a time and figuring out why it did was very fun on top of the already fun time I had with the game.

As a near completely random side note: Speaking of broken....
You really should make x-spin not affect bosses. There's a reason Screw Attack never did til Dread, and even then it only worked on one :P There *is* the appeal of just becoming this unstoppable force that also fits in with the story, but nuking definitely does that enough for the mc 🤭
 
Dinar87
2cents98 said:
Well I'll be honest; I came in expecting some cheesy, underdeveloped, broken mess, but despite my grievances with some aspects of it I had fun, and the people I heard about it from had fun from what I can tell. I'll go ahead and say "better than metroid dread" is a bit of a lofty ideal, especially for a solo project, but you still accomplished what you set out to do and made something that "feels like Metroid Fusion." I'd definitely do another few playthroughs again after the 2025 updates you speak of, and it's probably gonna keep having its own little place on my harddrive like the others. There's also the fact that almost everything is drawn in GIMP, which...I don't know how the hell you managed that when I can't even get that damn program to change a single color half the time XD I'll definitely say the art style made me nostalgic of a few flash games, and not once did I feel like the animations for the sprites were either too choppy or too smooth, so I'll definitely give you props for that. This is one of those games I'd be likely to toss into a conversation about third party -vanias if such a topic came up (it's more likely than you think when you have a yearly metroid hyperfixation :p), and I'll definitely be back to check on this every once in a while, but I'm not gonna just lie to your face and act like it's perfectly polished. It is a mess, but it's quite a fun mess once you figure it all out. Unintentionally breaking nearly everything on my first playthrough was not something I expected to do, but going through everything one step at a time and figuring out why it did was very fun on top of the already fun time I had with the game.

As a near completely random side note: Speaking of broken....
You really should make x-spin not affect bosses. There's a reason Screw Attack never did til Dread, and even then it only worked on one :P There *is* the appeal of just becoming this unstoppable force that also fits in with the story, but nuking definitely does that enough for the mc 🤭
Click to expand...
Thank you for your honesty. I'm currently at work fixing all the remaining issues.

So far I've fixed...
//fixed
- XGA leaving returns original music
- escaping XGA resets the XGA detection orbs so they will work again
- XGA stab death animation after player is already dying glitch, has been fixed
- Boss grace period flashes at lower transparency
- sector 4 one way door skip has been fixed. The door is now further away from the switch so you cannot hit the switch on the otherside anymore.
- killing turtle boss while spinning no longer keeps playing the whirlwind sfx after
- slowed ability usage down to -1 ammo per second
- nerfed nuclearblast a lot!
- nerfed spiked mine damage from 4 to 2
- picking up any upgrades while in the X saber spin animation no longer freezes player
- control remapping now always uses the same input as original 'jump' so it's less confusing
- sector 1 regular ost now loops more smoothly
- The Room Mark is hiding out now doesn't respawn
- Screen size settings are saved when any changes are made. Loaded immediately upon starting the game.
- Audio settings are saved when any changes are made. Loaded immediately upon starting the game.
- Control Remapping settings are saved when any changes are made. Loaded immediately upon starting the game.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Item information

Added by
Dinar87
Views
1,516
Comments
28
Reviews
3
Last update
Rating
3.67 star(s) 3 ratings

Downloads

More in Original Games

Share this item

Top Bottom