I'm probably an outsider with metroidvanias.. but the main draw for me is the sense of the unknown, and the realization/discovery moments when you get items or abilities that allow you to reach places of interest that you had to pass up earlier. 
I'd really like to see more experimental FPS metroidvania style games, or even 3rd person ones.

Sturdy well-oiled hinges glide willingly as a vertical band of light swiftly unfurls through the featureless void, racing upwards it expands into a luminous rectangle slouched against the wall.  After resting there a moment its motion reverses and is carefully wiped away, the thick drone of electronic activity that hangs implacable within the walls is swallowed once again, the mechanical locks engage with a dull loyal click.

another quick piece of fictional equipment...69 tris, more to come.

I highly recommend the free version of SketchUp for 3D level design needs, I use it at work and for personal stuff. 
Another good program to try out if you're drawn to the sculpting workflow is 3D Coat ( http://3d-coat.com ), it has excellent retopology tools and the voxel sculpting has a different kind of feel compared to polygon sculpting, since you can cut right through 3d volumes or mash different shapes together with ease, it's more like you're dealing with real chunks of clay and not just pushing and pulling a mesh shell around.

yea ZBrush uses polygons (mudbox too).  I'm finding 3D Coat to be really comfortable to work in because of the voxels, I've never really hit it off with trials of Zbrush in the past, and Sculptris is nice but still ended up with the same issue of having a ton of polygons and needing to reduce that to something useable, or getting messy polygons in tangled clumps...   
The Retopo features of 3D Coat are amazing btw, I've never used anything like it before but they function in ways that make sense to me, so it (so far) has seemed very straightforward to draw the low poly mesh right ontop of the voxel sculpt.

The program is pretty WIP though, the author releases new versions regularly with new features/fixes which is great (check the forums).   I'd also say that performance-wise Voxels get slower at high resolutions when compared to polygons, and that ZBrush has much more "refined" tool behaviors, but I think 3D Coat will get there with time.

a low poly (168 tri) monitor made entirely in 3D Coat
I'm still learning the program, this is just a potential prop for a scene...

Here's a shot of how our game Drillboid is coming along, I'm trying to improve all the art assets since we are aiming for a full screen standalone. Created the tiles and background texture using Zbrush. Just the one tile at different rotations for now but my coder said I should post it here to show you guys =]

wow, really nice work, is this in Unity? I seem to remember playing an early version of this over on the showcase forums, lookin good!

that new animation you've made there is excellent, keep it up!! 

megastructures (blame! ??) and Stalker mentioned in the same post, that's what I like to see!  The painterly style you've got going looks great, I'm curious what your approach to building structures is, are you using prefab/components made in another 3d program? (personally I'm hooked on using Sketchup for all my level design needs)

wwow that gameplay footage looks great, good attention to detail and movement in the environment!
The only thing that really stood out that I want to give feedback on is the jump animation (or lack of one?). I felt like the body can benefit from being kind of exaggerated squash and stretchy, to give it a feeling of momentum/weight/whatever, but overall just a bit more character in that little guy and his spacesuit.
I'm not suggesting changing the jump height and speed, maybe experiment with some animation frames getting stretched at the start to trick the eye, maybe arching his back inward and stuff when reaching the apex i dunno.  
I know it isn't exactly something you see often in the smaller character sprites, but something tells me it could go well with the look you've got right now.

i've been slowly experimenting with 3d and animation stuff lately, heres a collection of WIP images...
Animated in Messiah Studio and the recent UV mapping, painting and sculpting was done right ontop of the original 430 tri lowpoly mesh in the 3D Coat demo
the sculpting part was kind of unneeded.. but i just wanted to see how it worked.

3D Coat is awesome. maybe I should be putting this in the 3d thread.
UV mappin this model was painless (430 tris), i started messing with a texture for it too.

Multivac that looks excellent, I think lineless is the way to go...imo..   I sort of wish the size of the point/splotches increased exponentially in the very distance, so you'd get more of a big wash of color and shapes, although maybe it would look too DOF'y?  Something to somehow make the foreground look like finer detail, painted ontop of watercolor washes..

you guys made me LOL with the disco stuff, I'm going to have to try to make a dance animation now just for practice.

I came across this 3D Coat program ( www.3d-coat.com )and have been trying the demo version this evening, it is absolutely blowing my mind... voxel sculpting!  
I was able to import the low poly space suit dude and get right to building up details, I hadn't planned on attempting to get fancy with graphics- but even if I simply baked this stuff into diffuse it would be able to help my low poly model texturing go smoother.  
But for now I'm just kind of experimenting,

messing with anticipation and expectation, I think.    I'm thinking about similar, are there survival games where the Player has no way to fight back?.. I have that Amnesia game but haven't played it yet, maybe I should..

I'm not sure if these qualify as great games, so I'm still getting off topic 

Ninja Rabbits is so crap,


I played this one a lot for a rental..
but the box art, whats going on with that guys face?

walk cycle! kind of a determined "walking to my space vehicle pod  prior to launch" thing, or maybe it is more of a dance shuffle?
I really want to make an alternate where it is all slow low gravity looking... maybe i could handle player controls with basic physics somehow ?

metroidvania where you are an archaeologist of some kind, exploring the remains of a planet (earth) but it is unknown what date it truly is, you explore cities overgrown by jungles and slowly uncover clues that piece together the tale of the last civilization.

been slowly learning Messiah Studio and rigging the messy low poly space suit thing I made last weekend, i'm not sure what to do with it now though

i was ranting about my hates but overall it just made me feel like i hate games

i would LOVE to see a return to what i think of as classic game design but mixed with the immersion and capabilities of modern graphics techniques, along with more modern design ideas.

yeah, i feel the same way OP, I'm experimenting with things that could be similar in feel.
For me it isn't so much about replicating aspects of analog stuff, but just providing an interactive audio + visual experience that blurs together and can't be broken apart as being artificial, or broken apart into the individual assets..

 kind of like how when you were playing super metriod through RF, sure you could still see the sprites and things, but the feeling i get from that is they are more connected to the background and the sound, you've got the hum of the audio signal mixed in with the normal game audio, even the hum of the CRT tube's flyback buzzing depending on where brighter parts are currently on the screen... the bass from explosions mess with the characteristics of other sound effects, its much more organic feeling.
 
I can't explain it... looking at a game like that now when it is all pristine and digital + the knowledge of games from playing them, your brain more easily separates the parts, the player character is nothing more than a box with collision, the background is nonexistant, the platforms and dangers are clear...you see all the tricks..so the original illusion that i was believing and imagining more of as a kid isn't quite there.  

i guess that is only part of it though, cause i get some of the same "illusion broken" stuff even with modern 3d games.  

Probably the best example of a modern game doing it all extremely well is Limbo, the individual assets merge together and the whole experience is what it is... there isn't an emphasis on pristine individual assets where it becomes jarring or distracting or too clear.