Outland

Outland is an action platformer from the Finnish studio Housemarque, best known for its arcade shooters, but with Outland in 2011 on Xbox Live Arcade it showed it could also craft a carefully built metroidvania. The game's core mechanic is switching between two color polarities, light and dark, with the character only vulnerable to projectiles and enemies of the opposite color to the one currently active. This principle, inspired by games like Ikaruga, is used both in boss fights and while weaving through a tangle of colored projectiles in carefully choreographed passages that resemble a bullet-hell shooter more than a classic platformer.

Exploring the interconnected world in the spirit of classic metroidvanias rewards the player with new abilities that open up previously inaccessible areas of the map, while a backstory drawing on Greek mythology and themes of light and darkness gives the story a mythological, almost balladic tone. The visual style, with dark character silhouettes against a brightly backlit background, creates a striking contrast that also serves as a legible visual language for distinguishing color polarities at full speed. The soundtrack heightens the drama of the boss fights, which rank among the visually most impressive passages in the whole game.

Outland was well received by critics, especially for its inventive blend of the color mechanic with exploration and for its visual design, though some players found the controls less precise in the more hectic passages. The game proved that Housemarque could also craft a more deliberate, slower-paced experience than its typical arcade shooters. To this day, Outland is regarded as one of the most visually distinctive titles on Xbox Live Arcade and an example of successfully bringing a color mechanic into a metroidvania, albeit in a somewhat stricter and less forgiving form than the genre is usually known for.

Why play it: For players with a soft spot for visually striking metroidvanias, it offers a clever blend of color mechanics and platforming exploration, even if the controls aren't always precise in the more hectic passages.