Weekly Metroidvania is a once a week editorial that singles out an indie Metroidvania title for editorial comment and recommendation. Sometimes the title may be good, bad, or somewhere in between. This editorial examines them all and makes suggestions based on the author’s findings. Look for this editorial once a week, usually on the weekends.

There are many, many metroidvanias out there to download, for free. Some argue that they aren’t all metroidvanias, but really that’s just semantics talking. In reality, most of them usually follow the simple guidelines required to be considered a metroidvania: exploration and item gathering. Easy peasy, right?

For this week’s game we took a look at Eternal Daughter, one of the older indie games out there having been released way back in 2002.

Eternal Daughter was developed by Derek Yu/Blackeye Software. Now, to many of you that name might be instantly familiar and rightfully so. Derek Yu is a long established indie developer. Credited to his name are both the extremely popular Spelunky (also extremely difficult) and the beautiful Aquaria, both of which are extremely well polished and a huge amount of fun. Unfortunately, I can’t really say the same for Eternal Daughter, one of Yu’s earliest games.

Eternal Daughter has a simple premesis, you are born a “special” child. Right after your home village is taken over by the Dungaga, an imperialistic industrialized race. Years later, after escaping you must find your own path in the world in order to free your people, specifically your mother. And that’s the hard part.

To say that Eternal Daughter is unrelenting in it’s difficulty would be putting it mildly. Eternal Daughter is a very difficult game, and not through it’s own challenges. Frustratingly enough the game has a number of technical quirks that just add to the fury inducing challenge that is this game. These quirks include off-hit detection, unfair damage output by enemies, and few save points which usually are not placed outside of boss areas. Suffice it to say, you will be dying in this game… over and over and over again.

But it’s not all bad, if you are able to get around the crushing difficulty, no small feat I assure you, the game is actually fairly well polished in its art form and the story is somewhat intriguing, almost in a sort of Final Fantasy VI sort of way where magic/faith clash with technology.

Still, I have a feeling that most people will not take to Eternal Daughter very well. While some call the difficulty “harsh-but-fair”, I’d disagree. Within even the first 10 minutes of the game you’ll be challenged immensely, and not through your own skill (or lack there of) will you die. But that’s just the name of the game with Eternal Daughter.

At least it’s free though.

[download via DerekYu.com]

We’re giving away two copies of the insanely popular robot ninja-infused Plain Sight for the PC over on our forums! Check it out!

Forum Contest

Indie Music Cancer Drive has raised more than $6,000 in past years. The goal for 2010 is to top $10,000, and the project is almost 20 percent of the way there.

This year’s double CD features new or exclusive music from Alec Holowka (Aquaria), David Saulesco (Eternal Daughter), Stemage (Metroid Metal), Select Start and many, many others — more than 30 tracks over two discs.

If you donate before the release date, March 1, $10 gets you the digital download and $25 gets you the physical disc. After that date, the download price rises to $12, and the physical copy remains at $25, but you have to pay for shipping.

And remember, you can download last year’s album for a donation of any size.

Songs for the Cure ’10 from Josh Whelchel on Vimeo.

[via TIGSource]