r/metroidbrainia

Firstly a big thanks to u/Fantastic_Switch_977 for recommending my short itch game 4 rooms in one of their monthly reviews and their kind words as well. I thought it might be interesting for people (including them) to see how their reviews affect the visibility and play count on games that feature in their monthly posts.

Here's a preview of the graph since it's launch, right now it averages around 3 or 4 plays per day and most of the traffic is coming from Reddit. The large peak is the day the review was posted.

https://preview.redd.it/kxr6t99cvjjh1.png?width=903&format=png&auto=webp&s=ebeb7163b05b343d07ae5bdb003fb36b12ffd396

It made a huge difference to the player count and resulted in a regular visits from people coming from Reddit almost every day, even if that's just a handful of people. The domain analytics only show the last 30 days but you can see the vast majority of those come from Reddit, and I only created a single post about it which received 19 upvotes so I have no doubt the bulk of the visits come from their review post.

https://preview.redd.it/7l4csxb1wjjh1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d3af82e218eb98de58a2f38148dac9e73393ae0

The game is free and doesn't allow donations, it was purely designed as a tribute to the metroidbrania genre that I love so much. Thank you again to u/Fantastic_Switch_977 for their monthly reviews, which also help me find games I probably wouldn't have got a chance to play without them, and thanks to everyone who played!

Thank you so much for your participation in my last post https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidbrainia/comments/1vi3a3u/metroidbrainias_in_nongaming_media/ I did not expect so many comments and recommendations! I decided to compile a short and simplified list based on the number of upvotes, so you don't have to go through the entire discussion to find interesting titles.

Important disclaimer, there isn't a single definition of what a brainia is, especially not for non-gaming medias, these titles have been recommended based purely on vibes and voted on by the community.

Books

1. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski - this title is by far the most recommended one!
2. Recursion, Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
3. Books by Jorge Luis Borges and Ted Chiang

Movies

1. Prestige - Christopher Nolan
2. Coherence - James Ward Byrkit
3. Primer - Shane Carruth

TV Shows

1. Dark
2. Westworld S1
3. True Detective S1

Other:
Count the Rice - Game Changer episode
Blood on the Clocktower - social deduction tabletop game

PS. I just ordered House of Leaves

Are there any good Metroidbrania games to play on my iPhone like available in the App Store? I really liked the sara is missing & simulacra games. Thanks in advance !

Disclaimer: I know, I know, we cannot even agree on what a brainia is in games, let another other types of media. And there could be an argument that a brainia can ONLY exist in interactive media like games, because of how knowledge gating works, and that's fair.

That being said, "metroidbrainia is a vibe" so in this thread I invite you to share some recommendation and ideas on what you feel might have a similar brainia vibe but in non-gaming media, like for example movies, books, music (?), whatever else comes to you mind.
For the purposes of this discussion I still treat non-digital games as games (fe. 12 Word Searches or City of Six Moons are nondigital brainias).

I don't have any particular reason for asking about it, it's just an experiment and I'm just curious what will come to your minds and in that way I'll hopefully discover cool new stuff that will surprise me.

For me I can recommend two of my all-time favourite movies that I feel share the vibe:
Memento - it's an old movie that has a unique, non-linear structure, unreliable narrator, delivers an epiphany that makes the second watchthrough hit differently.
Mr Nobody - also a very unique movie with highly non-linear structure, where lots of wild stuff is happening and only at the end you will be able to piece everything together