I’ve talked before about how metroidvania games are often a good way for indie developers to first stretch their legs. INAYAH: Life After Gods, the first title from ExoGenesis studios is another example of that.
While a few things hold it back from standing toe to toe with some of the greats such as Hollow Knight and recent standouts like Ender Magnolia; it’s excellent animation, solid story and characters and fluid combat system are sure to help it find a good fan base.
The game sees you play as the eponymous character, Inayah, years after her father along with many members of her tribe were killed. Now fully grown and armed with her Father’s gauntlets, Inayah sets out to find any members of her tribe that could still be alive, while impacting the land around her in various ways.
Pros
ExoGenesis has marketed the combat system as one of the games strong points and, it certainly is. The combat focuses on you swapping between 3 distinct weapons each with their own strengths and strategies. A pair of blades, which will be a weapon familiar to many metroidvania fans. The blades feature a parry, a boomerang throw, and a berserk mode which increases her damage. A set of fists which get more damage and speed as you continuously attack, as well as granting Inayah various shields as well as a projectile that can somewhat double as a dodge as it launches her in the opposite direction. The last weapon is a flail which is slow and requires precision but does immense damage and also has the benefit of being able to absorb enemy projectile attacks. By tapping the shoulder buttons, you can swap between any of the 3 weapons instantly.
Complementing the weapons and combat is a series of quite detailed upgrade systems. The weapons themselves can be granted various perks you can buy with gold you get from killing enemies or just while you’re exploring. These upgrades have various paths you choose, some of which will lock others off so you pick the ones that sound most appealing to how you want to play.
Each of the weapons attacks and skills have many upgrade paths which do things such as Increasing critical hit chances and damage, healing when you absorb projectiles with the flail, and even buffing other weapons attacks when you switch. There are also upgrades you get as you complete missions. These can range from things that help with a specific area to more practical things such as increasing Inayah’s defense or critical when her health is at a certain point.
Lastly, the healing system, which is similar to games like Hollow Knight also has its own upgrade system in the form of flowers you find throughout the map. These range from increasing the number of times you can heal to giving you a damage boost when you do heal.
Combat wouldn’t matter if the enemies weren’t enjoyable to fight and the boss fights in INAYAH: Life After Gods are for the most part, quite enjoyable and well thought out. There were around 2 dozen bosses in the game and none of them felt the same way to fight as another. The bosses ranged from more personal fights with enemies your size, to huge monsters to even boss fights that take multiple phases across the map. There’s even a certain section that’ll give Mother 3 fans flashbacks to the ultimate chimera section of that game. Most of the games bosses felt fun and well designed, save for a few examples I’ll get to later. It also helps that the character designs of the bosses are all pretty good themselves.
Speaking of character designs, as well as just the games art design and direction itself, it’s all stellar. INAYAH Life After Gods reminds me of something animated by Genndy Tartatovsky, particularly Primal or Samurai Jack. It’s characters, locales as well as the fully animated cutscenes are all well done. This coupled with a pretty great soundtrack as well. While much of the game is an apocalyptic future jungle setting, it branches off into more unique looking locales from the bug filled Sand Lands to the sinister looking and unsettling Flesh Wilds which somehow feels both living and dead at the same time. ExoGenesis truly knocked it out of the park with the games art and animations.
The game’s story isn’t going to win any awards but it’s solid overall and the characters are likeable as well. I particularly enjoyed Inayah herself as you more or less decide the character she’s going to be. The game has dialogue choices and you can choose to present Inayah as kind hearted and heroic, cold and ruthless or something of an in-between anti hero. It’s not on the level of say Mass Effect or but what is presented here is nice as you interact with the various characters, most notably between 3 kids which depending on your choices (I played the kind hearted hero… I always do) Inayah becomes something of a big sister to them.
Cons
So unfortunately, one thing that really does hold INAYAH: Life After Gods back is its platforming and traversal. The game is one of those games where you can’t grab on ledges, save for select points with the fists that don’t really pop up often. There aren’t instant death pits or anything but rooms are often massive in size with a lot of jumps to make so if you fall, you could find yourself having to make up a lot of ground again. This is especially prevalent in the earlier parts of the game where you don’t have all the weapons yet. The game does feature different difficulty levels and the easiest does allow a double jump which greatly helps. Thankfully the game has a custom difficulty slider so you can do this without making the combat feel too easy as well but it’s weird that something that’s pretty much a keystone ability in most metroidvanias and platformers is tied to a difficulty setting. The only traversal option that felt solid was the flails grappling hook ability.
The game wants you to swap between the various abilities to help with the traversal as both the blade and the fists offer options that can function as something of a double jump but switching between while traversing isn’t as intuitive as it is during combat and neither of the options really offer great range either. There aren’t any upgrades for traversal options either really outside a straightforward air dash you get early in the game.
While I enjoyed the combat and most of the bosses, some bosses were unfortunately massive damage sponges. Bosses such as the Headless Rider and the Mad Chief seemed to take an eternity to put down even with upgrades that significantly improved my damage and critical hits. These enemies often do massive themselves which is expected of bosses but it could make things feel unbalanced due to their spongey nature. Even more so, even some of the basic enemies you run into feel like they can take a lot of hits. You can turn the difficulty down like with the platforming but then this turns bosses into pushovers
Lastly, while I enjoyed the art style a lot, some areas did feel a bit too cluttered overall with things in the background as well as the foreground. Just a bit too much going on in certain areas.
Final thoughts
While not perfect, INAYAH : Life After Gods is an overall solid experience and a good first attempt from ExoGenesis. Though it’s traversal holds it back, which is an important part of any metroidvania type game it’s fun combat, visuals and solid story and characters help make up for it. With some adjustment to the damage sponge nature of the bosses along with the platforming ExoGenesis could take something good and make it great depending on what they decide to do in the future.
Inayah: Life After Gods was reviewed on PC via Steam Deck and releases on March 27th 2025 on PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.
Thank you ExoGenesis for providing us with a code.
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