Infinitevania

Infinitevania is a fantastic game and one of the biggest surprises I've played recently. You can clearly feel the passion and care the developers put into every part of the experience. The exploration, boss fights, progression, and level design all come together to create a metroidvania that is both fun and rewarding.
What impressed me the most, however, is how well the game works for speedrunning. It has smooth movement, interesting routing, meaningful optimization, and enough depth to keep improving your times run after run. Every second matters, making it incredibly satisfying to learn and master.
As someone who enjoys speedrunning, I can confidently say that Infinitevania has the potential to build a great speedrunning community. Whether you're looking for a fun metroidvania or your next speedrun challenge, this game is absolutely worth your time.
Congratulations to the entire JHT Games team for creating such an enjoyable experience. I highly recommend it!

Better than expected, Infinitevania is a metroidvania heavily inspired by the classic 2D games, while adding mechanics of modern metroidvanias and a huge focus on platforming. Pixel art is decent, but animations are great (especially on bosses). Voice acting is, honestly, not really good and story so far is not bad (if you care).
Gameplay-wise, there isn't really a particular highlight, nothing that feels unique or something that would make this game memorable. HOWEVER, combat and platforming just feel good. Like I mentioned, there is a big focus in platforming (you can clearly see it by watching the videos here in the Steam Store page) and it looks pretty challenging, but it's a lot of fun to go through them (even when I'm not a big fan of platforming), due to how responsive and intuitive the controls are. It just feels so satisfying and sometimes even easy to beat those precision platforming levels, where you need to be constantly jumping, dashing and using pogo attacks without landing for 1 minute (sounds like it could be stressful, but, like I mentioned, the way controls work make that experience really smooth). With that being said, the game is missing a key to look down during platforming stages, because it will happen during a few instances that you will want to know what's down, sometimes to just go down, sometimes to explore and see if there's something else, and will have to just go for a leap of fate.
Combat itself is pretty is not that remarkable, especially at the start, where it just isn't that interesting, but the longer you play, the better it gets, especially when you need to go switching and mixing combat with platforming, as it happens with some bosses. Because of the same, the boss fights can be pretty enjoyable (although not all of them) and are the main highlight combat-wise, particularly the final 3-4 bosses of the game.
Something that I really like about the game is how easy navigation is. Talking about map (really simple and intuitive at the same, only unlocking what you have explored, making it really easy to see which spots you missed at the time of backtracking) and just exploration and backtracking itself (due to the easily unlockable fast-travel between checkpoints). Not a lot of metroidvanias make exploration this comfortable for the players, most of them to prolong gameplay time, so I appreciate that.
With that being said, as a final "detail" to mention (related to the previous point). I feel like I have the duty to let you know about something that could be a really bad aspect of the game for metroidvania fans. I finished the game with 100% of the achievements in 8.5 hours. Like I mentioned, one of the reasons is how easy to navigate the map is, the other reason being that there are 5 big areas to explore, each one of them with around 2 bosses and a lot of items and secrets to get, but it still is not THAT much content for a metroidvania.
As an extra, this game has the little detail that you can unlock a "secret" final boss early, triggering an early ending for the game. It's just a detail, but it was quite interesting.
Anyways, overall a pretty solid metroidvania, I would score it with a 8/10. You can check some gameplay here if interested

---See where this game landed on my Metroidvania Tier List beneath this rec!---
This raw indie metroidvania was surprisingly fun. The best part is the character movement which feels tight and responsive. The level design is mostly corridors/tunnels which normally I would dislike, though there are so many forks in the road and it's pretty quick to traverse through them that it ended up playing decently.
The game isn’t particularly difficult but the smooth movement and sheer number of inputs I was doing to fight enemies and traverse made it feel good like it was requiring a degree of effort to succeed. There were a few precision platforming segments (mostly in optional areas) toward the end of the game as well. Boss fights have some cool attack patterns that forced me to take them seriously, though I found myself a little overpowered with the self healing ability, so much so that I could beat most bosses on a first try.
The map is decent enough, showing geometry and how everything connects. Later you can find things that will display missing collectables on the map. You can fast travel between all save points (after you buy the upgrade which enables this).

The voice acting is atrocious. The voice actors speak poor english but sound very amateur and dumb. When I walked up to a place where I’d need an ability to get by, my character would say something about it which was a nice touch (would have been nicer if I was able to dig the voice acting).
There were a few occasions where my character clipped out of bounds through the walls or ceiling and I’d be able to walk around in it. Sometimes I could go to the next screen when this happened, other times I’d be forced to reload.
The game is very short, it took me under 6 hours to 100% the Steam achievements. While it's an amateur work of limited scope, the devs did a decent job on this--I enjoyed my time playing.
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There isn't enough space in a Steam Rec to post my entire Tier List, so I cut off the bottom tiers and just left the games I liked.

You can find the latest (and better) version of the Tier List on my reddit profile which I update every six months or sooner, located here: Tier List
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My Metroidvania Tier List (PC) (excluding Metroid & Castlevania titles)
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-Not an objective list, purely how much I enjoyed the games-
S+ Aeterna Noctis |
S Tier (Truly Special) Astalon: Tears of the Earth | Hollow Knight: Silksong | MIO: Memories in Orbit | Hollow Knight | Master Key³$ | Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom |
S- Solateria | Blasphemous 2 | Cathedral | Crypt Custodian³ |
A+ Afterimage | The Last Faith | Supraland³ | Supraland: Six Inches Under³ | Oolo³ | Frogmonster³ |
A Tier (Amazing) Elderand | Ori and the Will of the Wisps | Doomblade^ | BioGun | Zexion | Chronicles of the Wolf | Kotama and Academy Citadel | Blossom Tales 2³$ |
A- Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights | Depths of Sanity | F.I.S.T. | Pampas & Selene | Ender Magnolia | Mandragora |
B+ Blast Brigade | Haak | Turbo Kid | Nine Sols | Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus | Biomorph | Minishoot’ Adventures³ | Banjo-Kazooie³ | Banjo-Tooie³ | Donkey Kong 64³ |
B Tier (Really Enjoyed) Animal Well | Alwa’s Legacy | Steamworld Dig 2 | Islets | Blasphemous | After Death | Pronty^ | Mortal Manor* | Escape From Tethys | Outbuddies DX* | Monster Sanctuary | Elliot Quest | Rebel Transmute | Moonlight Pulse | Environmental Station Alpha | Twilight Monk | Death’s Door³ | Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-yo³ | Yooka-Laylee³ | Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest |
B- Shadow Labyrinth | Haiku, the Robot | Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown | The Mobius Machine | Ultros | Voidwrought | Crystal Project³ | Shattered Divinities | Unsighted³ | Tunic³ | Prey (2017)³ | Possessor(s) | Before I Go |
C+ (Fun) Lone Fungus | Lone Fungus: Melody of Spores | Guns of Fury | Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night | Laika: Aged through Blood | Ghost Song | Kunai | Kingdom Shell | Axiom Verge | Treasure Adventure Game | GigaSword* | Infernax | Flipwitch# | Momodora 4 | Momodora 5 | HunterX | HunterX: code name T | Gestalt | Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists | Super Roboy | BladeChimera | AntiChamber³ | Blossom Tales³$ | Mask of Soul | Tiny Dangerous Dungeons Remake | MF-01 Aerostrike^ | InfiniteVania* | Xanthiom 2 |
C Tier (Enjoyed) The Throne | Plague of Yamorn* | Constance | Column on the Sea | 9 Years of Shadows | Jrago* | Xanthiom Zero | Carrion^ | Chasm | Wuppo | The Mummy Demastered | Catmaze | Curse of the Sea Rats* | Death’s Gambit: Afterlife | Castle In The Clouds DX# | Omega Strike | Aggelos | Midnight Castle Succubus# | Overbowed | Rabi-Ribi | TEVI | Far Star | Sheepo | Skelethrone: The CoE* | Unworthy | Undivine | Somber Echoes | Oirbo* | Ato | Side Scape³$ | And All Would Cry Beware³ | Lycanthorn 2³ | Gravethorn | Vomitoreum³ | Maid of Salvation³ | Kalinur | 100 Pumpkins 2 | Grumpy Jack³ | Sealed Bite | Jedi: Fallen Order³ | Little Nemo and the Guardians of Slumberland | Arkham Asylum³ | Omnigon | SJ-19 learns to Love | Paradox Vector³ | The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest | Hargrave | Bread Adventure | EldritchVania |

Only 2.5 hours in with 60% game completion but so far the controls are great. Enemy variety is good. Bosses slap. Biomes look gorgeous. Upgrades are meaningful. I love the items that show missing collectables on the map, every MV needs to have this. My only complaint is that my game has crashed on steam deck 3 times during my 2.5 hours but thankfully save point are everywhere so it doesn't matter much.

Short, fun action platformer. Game plays smoothly on the steam deck. Also, the action and platforming is a bit forgiving versus other games in the genre. Experienced players can easily clear within 10 hours at 100% completion in one playthrough. Good stuff

I'll give this game an overall recommended. It's not amazing, but it has everything you generally look for in a metroidvania, and the dev is clearly a huge fan of Symphony of the Night. Combat is decent, bosses are decent, platforming is decent, story is decent. Nothing to write home about, but I enjoyed my time with it, and it was made with a lot of love for the genre.
Though there is a pretty nasty ledge-grab glitch that I hit numerous times and made a certain optional platforming section way more frustrating than it needed to be. That will probably get patched, but it was pretty annoying when it happened.

Found a place where you can get out of bounds. not sure what I can do with that yet, or if it'll turn into anything, but still cool.
Really fun game to play, few hours here and there to beat, not too challenging but not hold right and press a single button either. puzzles are fun, combat is same-y but you can add your own flare if you want, though don't need to - bosses are real fun. Only died once legitimately so far - twice if counting me messing around trying to make a jump I clearly couldn't because "I should be able to make that" but nope, there's progression for a reason. regardless. fun game.