It was actually the extremely recent finally completing Metroid Prime that made me think of how i could revisit something like that but in a slightly more stylised more palatable endeavour for a one man job. Probs not a cat, i was thinking something out of journey (strange implacable forms) crossed with dark souls (slightly doom-inspiring bleakness). I think i'll try a lot of sketches first though and get a strong feeling for the structure and visuals
I hope i can actually stick with this, it would be so fun to pull off
If you're going to have hostiles in it, try to get them to 'match' their zone, that's always a cool detail in these games.
Treasure-hunting is still a serviceable and low-workload scenario. Toughest thing is designing spaces that remain interesting if/when the player's range of navigation mechanics expand. Personally I'd swear off double-jump upgrades like a flagellant.
Im gonna try keep the mechanics very similar to citadel if possible, they work very nicely, if they can be translated, some of the jumping/item switch puzzles are great. Much of it needs de-obfuscating and the space needs rearranging obviously, so im watching a crapload of dark souls stuff cause to me thats the go-to source for space arrangement artistry. I wanna keep actual fighting to a minimum, in citadel all you can kill (in a natural sense) are the monks by shooting them in the face, maybe giving them some locational context and challenge would be good, but its why so many games can be an influence, you've space management (dark souls, ico), non combative exploration (journey) and staged exploration (metroid), so its interesting. By translating such a bizarre 2d metroid-a-like to 3D you are constrained in some ways but allowed to be as weird as you like in other ways
After im done watching videos (this may take a while) i'm going to start arranging cubes in unity, seems as good a way as any other, and see if i can make it work for me