The station was abandoned long ago. Through its corridors of twisted metal and fire, among the mazes of green overgrowth, and deep in an abandoned cavern, there walks a robot. A robot designed to discover the Lovecraftian mysteries of the station, and to teach the multitude of enemies and bosses that await one lesson - in space no one can hear you scream.

Environmental Station Alpha is the Metroid game that I always wanted. While the majority of the game takes place on a man-made station, the atmosphere feels genuinely alien and isolating, yet somehow still comfortable in a way that encourages exploration. The best example of this would be the juxtaposition between the 8-bit art style, which lends just enough clarity to let your imagination run wild - like trying to see a whole image in a rippling pool of water - and the soothing soundtrack, which enfolds you like an electronic blanket of fuzz. It's all at once exciting, unsettling, and comforting.

Part of this comfort comes from the map design. Throughout the game, you are given checkpoints to reach, but no route is specifically laid out for you. This allows for free exploration to use new abilities, discover secrets, or just time to pause and catch your breath. The environment traversal is done through platforming sections that test your skill with ability upgrades such as a double-jump, dash, and the grappling hook, and the movement is precise and fluid. The grappling hook works on nearly every surface in the game, making it satisfying and easy to use after some practice. All of this combines to make traversal and exploration much more meaningful than meticulously bombing tiles or scanning walls with radar in order to find the path forward. After a certain point in the game, teleports will become available for fast travel, which also helps encourage exploration, as you won't fear having to backtrack to the ends of eternity if you stumble upon a dead-end.

Checkpoints throughout Environmental Station Alpha are also placed in sensible locations as well, such as before difficult platforming sections and bosses. Boss fights range from fairly easy to challenging but fair, and rely on pattern recognition and planning rather than aggressiveness. Your only weapon is a laser, which can be upgraded up to three times, which means you'll be quite familiar with its range and limitations while in combat. Victory over bosses does feel well-earned, and often comes with an ability-upgrade as a reward. There is an easy-mode for the game which increases health and decreases damage done to the player, and the creator of the game even condones save-file editing in order to further tailor the game's difficulty to your skill level (this can be done with using notepad or a similar text editor with ease). Just like any good Metroidvania, you will start the game feeling nervous upon any enemy encounter, but by the end, the Station's denizens become nothing more than environmental obstacles as you make your way across the map.

While the gameplay is certainly fantastic, it's the strangeness of the world that showcases Environmental Station Alpha's genius, specifically the post-game sections. The beginning of the game plays like a straightforward Metroidvania - you fight bosses, earn upgrades, discover hidden items, and unravel a bit more of the station's mystery, however the post-game throws the entire narrative into Lovecraftian overdrive and switches the gameplay into a platforming puzzler. In some of the most bizarre yet compelling post-game content in any game, you'll be dashing through a deadly maze of spikes, translating an alien language with real-life pen and paper, solving non-Euclidian puzzle rooms while being chased by a ghost, fighting through a glitched version of the station, and earning the ultimate upgrade in order to unlock three more endings to the game.

Each of the endings are satisfying in their own way, but most of the story-telling is done through computer logs in an esoteric fashion. The main story of the game is actually quite simple and does become clear by the end, but don't expect to have all of your questions answered - the story isn't even necessarily the point of the game; the journey is. Knowing that, the post-game puzzles become an interesting insight into a world that our robot isn't fully prepared for or able to understand, and like any good cosmic horror narrative, that's what draws the excitement. Honestly, the most impressive part of Environmental Station Alpha is that a game this ambitious and outside-the-box was created and developed by just one person. While the game certainly owes its existence to the Metroid franchise, for me ESA manages to not only capture the soul of those classic games, but it improves on them in nearly every way for a much more satisfactory and enjoyable experience.