A Metroidvania is an exploration-focused video-game subgenre built around a connected world, blocked routes, and abilities or knowledge that let you reach places that were previously inaccessible. You revisit earlier areas with new capabilities, gradually turning an unfamiliar map into a navigable one.
The name combines Metroid and Castlevania, but the label is flexible. Combat, platforming, role-playing systems, camera perspective, map assistance, and even the amount of backtracking can vary widely between games.
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Castlevania: Belmont's Curse | Night One Edition - Nintendo Switch | $39.99 | Buy on Amazon |
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Metroid Prime Remastered - Nintendo Switch | $39.99 | Buy on Amazon |
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Voidwrought Collector's Edition - PlayStation 5 | $69.99 | Buy on Amazon |
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The History of Metroidvania: Decade One--1980-1990 | $29.00 | Buy on Amazon |
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What is a Metroidvania?
The defining experience is not a particular camera angle, weapon system, or art style. It is the relationship between exploration and progression: the game presents a connected environment, places obstacles in the player’s path, and later provides an ability, item, or piece of knowledge that changes what routes are possible.
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A locked door, an unreachable ledge, a hazardous passage, or a puzzle that initially makes no sense is not merely scenery. It is a promise that the world may become more legible or traversable later. The player remembers the barrier, marks it mentally or on a map, and returns after gaining the necessary capability.
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- Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse | Night One Edition includes: Main Game, Alucard Style Costume, Digital Sound & Art Gallery, Trevor Style Costume, Sypha Style Costume, and Family's Grace (Relic).
- Medieval Paris, Where the Tolling Bells Herald the End - 1499: Paris is engulfed in flames as monstrous creatures suddenly emerge from the shadows. Armed with the legendary holy whip, the Vampire Killer, Trevor Belmont’s successor ventures into the burning streets and the looming castle to hunt down the beasts. Can they save the city from the brink of destruction?
- Satisfying Whip Action - The iconic whip of the series is now more important than ever! Crack your whip to move around freely like a trapeze artist! Master the whip mechanics and be creative to pounce on your prey like a wolf in fast-paced combats!
- A Large Selection of Weapons and Abilities - The whip is not the only tool at your disposal. You will need to strategically plan your next move in combat and make full use of all the weapons and abilities to stand a chance!
- Environment Hazards That Will make you grit your teeth - Biomes are packed with secrets, traps and puzzles. It is not just about muscles, it's about brains too!
William Pellen, designer and co-director of Hollow Knight, gave a deliberately broad description in a PC Gamer interview: “All it means is a game set in a large, interconnected world.” That is not a formal industry standard, but it captures why the term has porous boundaries. A game can fit the pattern without satisfying every feature associated with the label.
The features that define the genre
A connected world
Instead of moving through wholly separate stages in a fixed sequence, the player travels through areas that link to one another. Shortcuts, elevators, doors, tunnels, and other connections make the world feel like a place rather than a stack of disconnected levels.
Connectivity does not require one seamless screen or a completely open map. Loading screens and distinct regions are compatible with the genre as long as the regions form a navigable structure that the player can revisit.
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Gated progress
Progress is often controlled by gates. A gate can be physical, such as a high ledge or a door requiring a particular tool, or environmental, such as a passage filled with a hazard the player cannot yet withstand. Some gates are informational: a solution, password, route, or rule only becomes apparent after the player learns something.
The important point is that the gate changes from impossible to possible because the player’s capabilities or understanding changed. Simply finding a key that opens one isolated level is less characteristic than acquiring something that changes movement through a wider portion of the world.
Exploration and return trips
Exploration is not a detour from the main progression; it is how progression is found. Players investigate side rooms, note suspicious obstacles, and return to older locations when a new ability suggests a previously unreachable route.
Backtracking can be brief or extensive. Some games offer shortcuts and fast travel to reduce repetition, while others make retracing routes part of the challenge. There is no universal acceptable amount of backtracking, but a game with no meaningful return to earlier spaces is less likely to feel like a conventional Metroidvania.
Discovery as progression
Knowledge matters alongside statistics and combat skill. Understanding how regions connect, recognizing a visual clue, remembering where a barrier appeared, or realizing what a newly acquired power can do may be as important as defeating an enemy.
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- Become intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran and explore an alien planet in this critically-acclaimed first-person adventure
- Use and upgrade abilities like the Morph Ball, Missiles, and an array of beams to survive the harsh environments and lethal creatures of the planet Tallon IV
- Gain abilities and revisit areas to uncover the different routes and secrets hiding in a beautiful-yet-threatening interconnected world
- Scan your surroundings to gather information about the planet’s history and the creatures that call it home or to reveal enemies’ weak points
- Choose from multiple control options and experience revamped graphics, sound, and unlockable art in this remastered classic
Flexible supporting ingredients
Common ingredients are not mandatory requirements. A Metroidvania may emphasize combat, precision platforming, environmental puzzles, role-playing upgrades, stealth, or narrative discovery. It may use a side-on view, a top-down perspective, or another camera arrangement. Maps may be detailed, partially automated, hand-drawn by the player, or intentionally sparse.
How ability-gated exploration works
Movement abilities
Movement upgrades are a familiar form of gate. A new jump, dash, climb, glide, grapple, or other traversal capability can convert a visible but unreachable platform into a viable route. The upgrade is valuable because it affects many places, not because it is merely a stronger attack.
Items and environmental protection
Tools can open doors, activate mechanisms, break barriers, or protect the player from a specific environmental threat. A route may be visible long before the item needed to use it is discovered, creating a reason to remember that location.
Knowledge gates
Not every gate is an object in the inventory. A game can require the player to learn a pattern, identify a safe route, interpret a clue, or understand a character’s instruction. These gates make observation and memory part of the progression system.
The typical player loop
- Encounter an obstacle. The player finds a blocked route, unexplained mechanism, dangerous region, or unreachable reward.
- Record its significance. The location is remembered, marked, or retained as a potential objective.
- Explore elsewhere. The player follows another route through the interconnected map.
- Gain a capability or insight. An ability, item, upgrade, or piece of information changes what is possible.
- Revisit the obstacle. The player returns and tests the new capability against the earlier barrier.
- Open a new branch. The formerly blocked route leads to additional spaces, rewards, story, or another upgrade.
This loop creates a sense of mastery over both the character and the world. The map becomes easier to read because the player understands its rules.
Why maps and backtracking matter
A Metroidvania map is usually more than a record of visited rooms. Its arrangement communicates possibilities: a gap that appears just beyond the character’s reach, a door with an unfamiliar symbol, or a passage that ends at a conspicuous barrier can all signal future objectives.
Map support is a design choice, not a genre requirement. A game may automatically fill in rooms, show icons for unresolved points of interest, provide fast travel, or leave the player to take notes. More guidance lowers the memory burden; less guidance can make orientation and discovery central challenges.
When assessing how strongly a game leans into the format, ask how often the map asks you to return, how many abilities unlock routes rather than merely increasing damage, and whether the world’s connections produce meaningful choices. A large map alone does not make a game a Metroidvania.
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- Descend below the star-scorched surface and explore multidimensional depths filled with secrets and lore. Witness the corrupted revelry of the Court, lose yourself in the icy tunnels of the Old Waters, and discover the grim fate of the Abandoned Expedition.
- The world is filled with treasures sought by the learned, the brave, and the mad. Scour the halls of your shrine, rend the corpses of defeated deities, and hunt in the hidden corners of the cosmos to find objects capable of granting unique powers.
- Excavate into the rubble of the Gray City to construct a shrine filled with loyal followers. As you expand your shrine and followers, new secrets, rewards, and horrors come to light.
- In-game text languages: English, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese.
- COLLECTOR’S EDITION includes the physical game, Collector's Edition box, Digipack soundtrack, fabric patch, set of magnets, and pin.
Why is it called “Metroidvania”?
“Metroidvania” is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania. The British Film Institute describes the term as combining those two franchises and places the genre’s development in the mid-1980s.
Nintendo’s retrospective Metroid series history dates the original Metroid to its Japanese launch in 1986. That date is useful historical context, but it does not establish one universally accepted first Metroidvania. The answer changes according to whether the label is limited to the later combination of exploration, ability gates, and interconnected maps or applied more broadly to earlier games with related ideas.
The name describes influential lineages, not a license requirement. A game does not need to use science-fiction settings, gothic imagery, or either franchise’s characters to employ the same design pattern.
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Metroid Dread
Metroid Dread is a current official example from the Metroid series. Nintendo’s Metroid Dread Report Vol. 3 describes exploration and the discovery of new capabilities as recurring features of the 2D series. In practical terms, Samus’s expanding abilities alter which passages, platforms, and areas she can reach.
It illustrates the lineage behind the name, but one installment should not be treated as a checklist for every game carrying the label.
Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight is commonly described as a Metroidvania because its Hallownest is a connected environment in which exploration, ability-based access, and return visits structure progress. Nintendo’s official Nintendo UK game page provides a publisher and platform reference and describes the game’s environments and journey.
Its developers did not want a genre label to dictate the game’s design, as Pellen explains in the cited PC Gamer interview. That is a useful reminder that classification is descriptive and flexible rather than a binding design specification.
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Yes, it is widely treated as one because it combines a large interconnected world with exploration, blocked routes, and progression that changes as the player gains capabilities and understanding. The qualification matters: “Metroidvania” is not a formal certification, so reasonable descriptions may emphasize different aspects of the game.
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How to tell whether a game is a Metroidvania
Use the following player-facing test rather than counting superficial similarities:
- World structure: Do regions connect into a space you can revisit?
- Meaningful barriers: Do obstacles become passable through abilities, items, or knowledge?
- Return value: Does going back to an earlier location reveal a new route, reward, or piece of progression?
- Discovery: Does understanding the map or its rules matter as much as reaching the next objective?
- System variation: Are combat style, platforming difficulty, role-playing mechanics, and camera perspective treated as variable rather than defining?
If the answer to the first four questions is mostly yes, the label is usually useful even when the game’s presentation differs from familiar examples.
How the genre differs from nearby formats
| Player-facing question | What points toward a Metroidvania | What points toward a different structure |
|---|---|---|
| How is the world arranged? | Connected regions with routes that can be revisited. | Wholly separate stages completed in a fixed sequence. |
| What makes progress possible? | A capability or knowledge change that unlocks multiple previously blocked routes. | Only a linear level transition or a numerical increase with no new traversal options. |
| What does exploration accomplish? | It reveals shortcuts, abilities, story, and routes through the same world. | It mainly supplies optional scenery or collectibles without changing access. |
| How does failure affect the map? | The world remains a persistent space whose connections the player learns. | Runs or stages reset in a way that replaces learning a fixed world with repeated procedural attempts. |
These are diagnostic comparisons, not strict genre laws. A game can combine a connected map with procedural areas, or include ability gates in an otherwise level-based structure. The label is most useful when it communicates the dominant experience rather than forcing a binary verdict.
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Design trade-offs players should expect
Guidance versus discovery
Strong map markers and explicit objectives make it easier to know where to go next, while sparse guidance increases the importance of memory and experimentation. Neither approach is inherently more authentic.
Backtracking versus convenience
Returning through familiar rooms can make a new ability feel powerful, but repeated travel can become tedious when shortcuts are scarce. Fast travel, elevators, interconnected doors, and compact regions are ways games can preserve the idea of return without requiring identical walks.
Combat and movement balance
Some games make combat the primary challenge; others make traversal or environmental puzzles more demanding. Combat intensity does not determine whether the game qualifies, provided exploration and changing access remain central.
Map size versus readability
A bigger map is not automatically a better one. The player needs enough visual or structural information to form a usable mental model, whether that information comes from an in-game map, landmarks, shortcuts, or repeated environmental motifs.
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For a focused history of the genre’s early influences, Penguin Random House lists Jeremy Parish’s The History of Metroidvania: Decade One—1980–1990. Its publisher page describes a study of the genre’s origins and influences. It is supplementary history; the practical definition remains the player’s experience of exploring a connected world whose possibilities expand over time.
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