What Is a Metroidvania? The Genre Explained
Two classic games gave their names to an entire genre. Here is what actually defines a metroidvania, and why the term stuck.
Two Games, One Portmanteau
Sometime in the early days of gaming forums, a fan needed a quick way to describe a very specific kind of game and glued two franchise names together. The result, metroidvania, is now a recognized genre label used by developers, critics, and storefronts around the world. It is clunky as portmanteaus go, but it does the job.
The two halves each carry real meaning. Metroid, Nintendo’s 1986 science-fiction action game, introduced Western console audiences to a style of exploration where the map itself was the puzzle. Progress was not about getting to the right side of the screen. It was about finding the right door. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, released by Konami in 1997, took that spatial logic and poured it into a gothic castle full of RPG systems, hidden rooms, and a map that gradually revealed itself as players grew more capable. Together, the two games described a genre before anyone had a name for it.
What Actually Defines the Genre
Strip away the names and a few core design principles remain. Nearly every game called a metroidvania shares them.
A large, interconnected world. Rather than a sequence of levels, the map is one continuous space. Regions connect to each other in ways that matter. A door you noticed early might only open after an event several hours later, and walking back through familiar territory feels different once you know where you are.
Ability-gated progression. Walls, passages, and shortcuts unlock when the player character gains new powers or tools, not simply when a timer runs out or a cutscene plays. A double jump clears a ledge that was just out of reach. A wall-crawl ability opens a tunnel that looked decorative. This creates a quiet feedback loop: explore, acquire, return, reveal.
Encouraged backtracking. Most genres treat backtracking as something to be minimized. Metroidvanias treat it as the point. Revisiting old areas with new eyes, finding the thing you could not reach before, is the primary source of satisfaction. A well-designed example makes that return feel like a reward rather than a chore.
A persistent, readable map. Players almost always have access to a map that fills in as they explore. Part of the appeal is the slow completion of that map, watching blank space become known territory.
Not every game with these elements will carry the label, and some games carry it loosely. Roguelite hybrids like Dead Cells borrow the ability-based exploration without a fixed persistent world. Developers and players debate the edges constantly, which is probably a sign the genre is healthy.
Why Indie Studios Made It Their Own
The original namesake games came from major publishers with large teams and dedicated hardware. The genre they inspired became, somewhat ironically, a defining format for small independent studios. The reasons are practical.
A single large interconnected world rewards careful design over raw content volume. A team of two or three people can build a memorable fifty-room castle if every room earns its place. The genre also has built-in pacing: ability gates naturally space out the player’s sense of discovery, which gives a small team time to craft setpieces without needing to produce them constantly.
The result is that the genre’s modern canon is largely indie work. Hollow Knight’s enormous underground kingdom. The hand-painted forests of Ori and the Blind Forest. The pixel-art alien planets of Axiom Verge. Each of those games is in direct conversation with Metroid and Symphony of the Night, but they exist because a small team found the format achievable and expressive.
The Map Is the Message
What makes the genre endure is something a little harder to quantify than any single mechanic. There is a specific pleasure in gradually understanding a space. Not just navigating it, but internalizing it, until you can picture the whole layout and feel the logic of how it was built. That pleasure is available in almost no other genre in quite the same way.
The portmanteau is awkward. The genre it names is not.
What is a metroidvania?
A metroidvania is a style of action-adventure game built around interconnected maps that players explore non-linearly, unlocking new areas by gaining abilities or items rather than simply progressing in a straight line. The term blends the names of two classic franchises: Nintendo's Metroid and Konami's Castlevania.
Which games created the metroidvania genre?
The genre takes its name from Metroid (1986) and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997). Both games emphasized exploration, backtracking, and ability-gated progression in large, connected worlds, and that combination became the template other developers built on.
Is metroidvania a real genre name?
It started as informal fan shorthand but has become widely accepted by developers, critics, and publishers. Many studios now use the term openly in their own marketing.
What is the difference between a metroidvania and a platformer?
A traditional platformer moves players through discrete, largely linear levels. A metroidvania uses one large, interconnected map where returning to earlier areas with new abilities is a core part of the design, not optional.