As a fan of both Metroidvania and platformers (especially the latter), I'm thrilled that the Build Your Own Platformania bundle has launched over at Fanatical. It's a perfect opportunity to fill your Steam Deck library with titles packed with deep world-building and evocative narrative at a massive 82% off. From Cavern of Dreams to Pine Hearts, this bundle offers hours of platforming and Metroidvania fun.
Cavern of Dreams is an eggscellent game and probably my favorite of the bunch. It's bright, colorful, and low-poly rendered aesthetic manages to capture that feeling of 90s nostalgia much more successfully than a lot of similar indie games. I love the original Spyro trilogy (I've got a tattoo and everything) as well as the Crash Bandicoot games, and Cavern of Dreams pays homage to these greats, taking me back to the simple days of my childhood, offering up an experience that stands shoulder to shoulder with those of yesteryear. Aside from Spyro and Crash, you can also see a lot of N64 influence here, with the game's central hub in particular feeling a lot like Gruntilda's Lair from Banjo-Kazooie.
You play as a wee dragon named Fynn who is looking to rescue a total of 40 eggs… all of which happen to be your siblings. Hmm, searching for eggs, eh? This sounds familiar. Fynn ends up at the Cavern of Dreams, where he meets Sage, a pleasant person who offers to help. From there, you'll explore, collect, platform, and solve puzzles across a number of enchanting, dream-like worlds. It's not the hardest or longest game you'll play this year, but this game strikes the perfect balance between platforming and puzzles, and is so unbelievably fun.
Like you'd expect with a platformer, there are loads of collectibles, and eggs are your main focus. You start being able to roll and jump, but once you've reached a milestone, you are granted new abilities. In our Cavern of Dreams review, Kayleigh Partleton illustrates its progression, saying, "For instance, you develop wings, which then allow you to reach places that were previously off-limits. You also start the game without a tail, which made me chuckle; I didn't even notice until Sage gave me one and told me to start knocking things out with it."
Eggs aren't the only collectables, though. You can collect mushrooms to feed to your siblings, which results in new areas to explore. With a hefty 320 mushrooms in total, this poses quite the challenge for a completionist like myself. Meanwhile, collecting cards fills an encyclopedia, displaying the meanies and the friends you'll make along the way. And as you explore the big ole cavern, you'll truly encounter some good characters. My favorite is Mr Kerrington, an abandoned pacifist ship, who was possibly intended to have some connection to the Kremlings of Donkey Kong fame.
I mentioned earlier that this game is heavily influenced by the N64, but fear not, there have been some modern upgrades to the controls. Control and movement work perfectly in tandem. You can tell that a lot of thought has gone into maneuverability. Gauging jumps and distances isn't difficult, and you won't find yourself getting frustrated because you fell off the edge again and again. Admittedly, the camera can be a bit janky, but this is something even the titans of the genre have struggled with.
Where Cavern of Dreams deviates from its 90s-inspired platformer is with the lack of combat. You don't have lives, and you don't die. You can fall off edges, but you just respawn, and when you get hurt, you can see Fynn is in pain, but there's no damage. I'd argue that this is a sign that this indie platformer is moving with the times, after all, classic lives systems are starting to feel a little archaic.
You've got until Tuesday, 21st October, to take advantage of the Build Your Own Platformania bundle over on Fanatical. How it works is you can get two plus games for $4/£4 per item or four plus games for $3.75/£3.75. You could get all 17 games for just $63.71/£63.71, opposed to $352.35/£292.10, if you wanted.
Here's a full list of games included in the Build Your Own Platformania Bundle:
- Particle Hearts- Steam Deck Verified
- Pine Heats- Steam Deck Verified
- Exophobia- Steam Deck Verified
- Aeterna Noctis- Steam Deck Verified
- Sephonie- Steam Deck Verified
- Moonlight Pulse- Steam Deck Verified
- Eden Genesis- Steam Deck Verified
- Decline's Drop- Steam Deck Verified
- Death's Gambit: Afterlife- Steam Deck Verified
- Johnny Trigger: Definitive Edition- Deck status unknown
- Cavern of Dreams- Steam Deck Playable
- Afterimage Deluxe Edition- Steam Deck Verified
- Bzzzt- Steam Deck Verified
- Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara- Steam Deck Playable
- GRIME - Deluxe Edition- Steam Deck Verified
- Magenta Horizon - Neverending Harvest- Deck status unknown
- Mail Time- Steam Deck Playable
If you'd like to discover similar games, check out our guide on the best Metroidvania games. Or if you'd rather dive into a completely different genre, our list of the best roguelike games has plenty of cracking games to discover.