It took me 14 hours to 100% the amazing Metroidvania Ender Lilies, and just days later the dev announced that the 35-hour sequel launches in a few months
Sep. 14, 2024Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist will leave Steam Early Access in January
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After unadvisedly staying up until 4am to finish it, I ended up liking Ender Lilies so much that I ordered a physical PS4 copy just for collection purposes. It is, as a friend of mine put it, emo Hollow Knight – a whip-smart 2D action platformer with breakneck pacing, a compelling narrative, some great parries, and engrossing RPG mechanics that allow for a flexible move set. There are a few imperfections, but my main critique by the end was a good-natured demand formore. So, the news from joint developers Adglobe and Live Wire felt almost like divine intervention.
In my experience, the meatier end of today’s Metroidvanias tend to average 10 - 20 hours depending on your completion percentage. Hollow Knight is an outlier withan average run of 27 hoursand upwards of 30 for full completion, to say nothing of the more extreme challenges. I remember logging 33 hours for 106% completion before all the DLCs were out. If Ender Magnolia really can pull players in for 35 hours, it’ll not only be more than twice the size of the first game, it also might be one of the biggest modern Metroidvanias.
Ender Magnolia has been received well thus far, with 3,765 “Overwhelmingly Positive” Steam user reviews at the time of writing, and should only get better with its 1.0 update. It follows a similar formula and setup to Ender Lilies – small hero Lilac (not Lily) explores a dreary world with the aid of homunculi (not spirits) – but has been praised for refining and modernizing several elements, notably including the map and difficulty.
Resident Evil and Dead Space writer’s cyberpunk Metroidvania RPG has already doubled its Kickstarter goal with romance “echoing the depth” of Mass Effect.
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