Highlights

  • Doctor Strange would be the perfect hero for a Marvel Metroidvania game, with his reality-bending powers lending themselves well to exploration.
  • Players in Metroidvania games navigate intricate maps, defeat enemies, collect items, and gain abilities to unlock new paths and progress.
  • Doctor Strange's distinct abilities, like opening portals and bending reality, could create unique and exciting in-game scenarios.

After a hiatus of over a decade, the Prince of Persia franchise returned to game consoles last month with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a 2.5D action-adventure game with several Metroidvania elements woven into its mechanics. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is at its best when players are utilizing new abilities to revisit previously inaccessible areas of the game's huge map. Should Marvel decide to try its hand at a modern Metroidvania game, it has a famous hero who would seemingly fit the genre perfectly: the reality-bending Doctor Strange.

A typical Metroidvania has players navigating an often convoluted, complex, and intricate map, defeating enemies, collecting items, and gaining new abilities along the way. These new abilities will often allow players to return to earlier parts of the map, and open up new paths in order to progress. Games such as Hollow Knight, Castlevania, and Metroid have showcased how this Metroidvania-style of exploration can work perfectly. Doctor Strange's unique abilities could be put to good use in this type of adventure, should Marvel ever endorse such a project.

Exploring a level in Braid and Fighting enemies in Touhou Luna Nights
Related
8 Games To Play If You Like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

For players who've hit 100% in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, these games offer similar time-based mechanics, settings, or themes to fill the void.

Marvel Has the Perfect Hero For its Own Metroidvania Game

It's fair to say that before the monumental success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange wasn't exactly equal to the likes of Batman and Superman when it came to popularity. While the same is still probably true now, Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of the Master of the Mystic Arts has certainly raised the character's standing, making Doctor Strange a much more popular and well-recognized character than he was pre-MCU.

Besides ensemble or cameo appearances in the likes of Fortnite , however, Doctor Stange has never starred in his own video game.

What makes this even more perplexing is that the mystical Doctor's powers seemingly lend themselves perfectly to a video game. Strange's ability to bend reality to his will could lead to some exciting in-game scenarios that have yet to be explored. His absence as a playable character was particularly noticeable in developer Crystal Dynamics' ill-fated Marvel's Avengers game. It's about time Strange was given a starring role in his own video game, and a Metroidvania side-scroller would be a natural fit.

Doctor Strange's Powers Are Perfect For Exploration

Doctor Strange's ability to open up portals could be a perfect catalyst for exploration, and it's easy to imagine a scenario where he loses his powers and has to gain them back piece by piece, allowing him to travel to branching parts of a map that could, in theory, span different universes. Bringing the multiverse into the equation, which is a plot device that is currently central to the MCU, would keep the action fresh, entertaining, and topical.

Games like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have shown that there is still a huge appetite for Metroidvanias, and further proof of this is found when discovering just how highly anticipated Hollow Knight's sequel actually is. Marvel has plenty of video games in development, including a single-player Iron Man game, a Black Panther title set during World War 2, and the Insomniac Games-led Marvel's Wolverine. Nevertheless, it should seize the initiative and unleash Doctor Strange in some kind of Metroidvania experience that showcases his unique powers.