A Metroidvania is best understood as an exploration-led game built around a connected or revisitable world. As players gain abilities, items, or knowledge, they can reach new routes and return to familiar places with new options. Camera angle, combat style, and an on-screen map can vary; the defining pattern is how exploration and progression reshape the world’s accessibility.
The core Metroidvania loop
The genre’s central rhythm is explore, discover, grow, and explore again. Players choose paths through spaces that connect or can be revisited, find new capabilities or useful knowledge, then use those gains to reach places that were inaccessible before. PLAYISM’s 2025 developer roundtable describes the appeal as freedom to move back and forth through a world while gradually filling out its map (PLAYISM, “Metroidvania Round Table”).
In a 2014 interview, designer Koji Igarashi described exploration paired with a gradually expanding toolset: players investigate, then double back when they can reach a previously inaccessible area (Game Developer, “Father and S.O.N.: IGA talks ‘Metroidvania’”). Backtracking therefore is not simply retracing steps. It matters when a new ability, shortcut, or understanding gives a return visit a new purpose.
Exploration: more than moving through levels
Exploration is strongest when players have meaningful route choices and the world rewards curiosity. That contrasts with a sequence of isolated stages that must be cleared in a fixed order: in a Metroidvania, a player may encounter a blocked route, choose another direction, and later return with a new way forward. Nintendo describes Metroid as an exploratory action series set in a maze-like world, where collected items and weapons expand the areas Samus can visit (Nintendo UK, “Metroid Dread Report Vol. 3”).
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New abilities can also change how players interpret a space, rather than merely matching a tool to one obvious obstacle. Supraland creator David Münnich has described the appeal of an unexpected ability that lets players see the game world with new eyes (Game Developer, “Exploring the potential of ‘metroidvania’ design in Supraland”). That is a design preference, not a requirement: games can make exploration work in different ways.
Abilities, gates, and progression
An ability gate is an obstacle or route that cannot be crossed until the player has a relevant capability or item. A new move might let a character traverse a gap, open a door, or destroy a barrier. Metroid Dread’s developers describe Samus’s capabilities as expanding which doors she can open, walls she can destroy, and paths she can take (Nintendo UK, “Metroid Dread Report Vol. 3”).
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Gates help progression make the world feel connected: players can spot a promising route, remember it, and return after gaining what they need. But abilities need not function only as keys. An ability that enables several kinds of interaction can create more experimentation and choice than one used to open a single matching barrier. For example, an interview about Ori and the Will of the Wisps discusses Spirit Shards that support different play styles (Game Developer, “Q&A: Designing the gorgeous metroidvania Ori and the Will of the Wisps”); Supraland’s developer likewise emphasizes tools with more than one possible use (Game Developer, “Exploring the potential of ‘metroidvania’ design in Supraland”).
Maps, orientation, and revisiting places
A map can help players remember where they have been, plan routes, and recognize opportunities they could not previously use. In its report on Metroid Dread, Nintendo describes map markers, hidden-item hints, and highlighting that can help players find places to explore after gaining a new ability. The development team called the map “the foundation of exploration” (Nintendo UK, “Metroid Dread Report Vol. 3”).
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An in-game map is common, but it is not a necessary test for the genre. PLAYISM roundtable participant Shutaro Iida said gradually filling in a map most strongly evokes Metroidvania for him (PLAYISM, “Metroidvania Round Table”). Yet Supraland’s developer deliberately omitted a minimap to encourage players to look at the world directly (Game Developer, “Exploring the potential of ‘metroidvania’ design in Supraland”). A map changes how much players rely on interface cues versus memory and landmarks; its presence or absence alone does not settle a game’s genre.
There is no universal amount of backtracking that makes a game succeed or fail as a Metroidvania. Return trips can feel purposeful when a new ability opens a route, a shortcut reduces travel friction, or new knowledge changes the meaning of an earlier space. Whether the journey between discoveries feels rewarding or tedious is a matter of pacing and player experience.
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Why the label has fuzzy edges
There is no single universally accepted checklist. A narrower convention treats Metroidvanias as side-scrolling action-adventures on a continuous map, where finding items makes previously blocked routes passable and motivates backtracking. A broader structural definition can include 3D games, and some accounts add role-playing elements while others do not. These are competing usages, not rules set by one authority.
Tom Happ, creator of Axiom Verge, discussed the narrower side-scrolling convention in a 2015 interview (Game Developer, “Metroidvania interview: Tom Happ”). A 2025-published excerpt from World Design for 2D Action-Adventures surveys the genre’s history and design patterns, including interconnected maps and ability gates (Game Developer, “Book Excerpt: World Design for 2D Action-Adventures”). Together, these perspectives help explain why games may share the core exploration-and-progression loop without agreeing on every surface feature.
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How to compare two Metroidvania-like games
Rather than relying on camera angle or a map screen alone, compare how each game handles the connected-world progression pattern:
- Interconnection: Do areas link together and become worth revisiting?
- Progression: Do new traversal abilities, items, or knowledge change which routes are available?
- Choice: Can players choose where to explore, or are they mostly following a fixed sequence?
- Ability use: Do new powers enable varied interactions, or mainly open one matching obstacle at a time?
- Navigation: How do maps, markers, landmarks, and visual cues help players remember routes and opportunities?
These questions are useful comparison points, not a formal scoring system. A game may fit a broad definition through its world structure and progression even if it differs from the classic side-scrolling convention.
Optional design background
Readers interested in the craft behind connected maps and ability gates can explore Game Developer’s excerpt from World Design for 2D Action-Adventures (read the excerpt).
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