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A Metroidvania is an exploratory video-game subgenre built around a connected world, blocked routes and new abilities or knowledge that let you reach places you could not access before. You explore, notice barriers, find a capability or clue, then return to earlier areas with a new way to progress. Combat, platforming, role-playing systems, camera perspective and map design can all vary; the defining pattern is how exploration and gated access work together.
What makes a game a Metroidvania?
The most useful definition describes the player’s experience rather than a checklist of mechanics. A Metroidvania gives you a world that links back on itself. Instead of moving through wholly separate stages in a fixed order, you revisit familiar rooms and regions. A locked door, an unreachable ledge, a dangerous passage or an apparently impassable obstacle creates a question: what would let me get through here?
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
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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 |
| 3 |
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Voidwrought Collector's Edition - PlayStation 5 | $69.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
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The History of Metroidvania: Decade One--1980-1990 | $29.00 | Buy on Amazon |
Progress comes when exploration supplies the answer. That answer may be a new movement ability, an item, a tool, or knowledge about how the world works. Once you have it, the earlier obstacle is no longer merely scenery. It becomes a route to another area, an optional reward or a shortcut connecting parts of the map.
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- Encounter a barrier. You find a route, object or passage that is currently inaccessible.
- Explore elsewhere. The world offers another path, room or challenge where progress remains possible.
- Acquire a capability or clue. A new ability, item or piece of understanding changes what you can do.
- Return with a purpose. You remember, mark or recognize an earlier barrier and go back to test the new capability.
- Reinterpret the map. The newly opened route exposes more of the world and creates further questions.
That loop is why discovery matters as much as defeating enemies or reaching the next numbered level. The player’s mental map grows alongside the character’s capabilities.
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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).
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The five defining features
1. A connected, revisitable world
Areas in a Metroidvania form a network rather than a queue of unrelated stages. Rooms, zones or regions connect through doors, corridors, elevators, tunnels or other transitions, and the game expects you to move between them more than once. A shortcut opened in one direction may make a later trip faster, while a newly accessible passage can reveal that two apparently distant regions were part of the same structure.
Connectivity does not require a single seamless screen or an enormous map. A game can divide its world into distinct environments and still qualify if those environments belong to one navigable network and revisiting them is part of progression. The key question is whether the world itself is a persistent puzzle that you learn over time.
2. Gated progress
A gate is any obstacle that separates you from a route or reward until a condition is met. The condition is often a capability: a movement power, weapon function, tool or other item. It can also be knowledge, such as understanding a mechanism, recognizing a hidden interaction or learning the correct way to approach a hazard.
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The important design relationship is not simply “there are locked doors.” It is that the world places the lock before the solution, lets you discover the solution elsewhere, and makes the earlier location meaningful when you return.
3. Exploration and return trips
Backtracking is not an accidental detour in this genre; it is one of the ways the game communicates progression. You may pass a blocked ledge early, remember it, and later realize that a new movement option makes it reachable. Returning can uncover the main route, a shortcut, an optional challenge or a reward.
Good backtracking gives you a reason to revisit an area rather than asking you to repeat empty travel. A shortcut, a changed route, clear map markers or a newly revealed objective can reduce friction. The amount of return travel differs widely between games, so “lots of backtracking” is not a universal requirement. What matters is that earlier spaces remain relevant after your capabilities change.
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- Become intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran and explore an alien planet in this critically-acclaimed first-person adventure
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- Gain abilities and revisit areas to uncover the different routes and secrets hiding in a beautiful-yet-threatening interconnected world
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4. Discovery-driven progression
In a stage-based action game, the next level usually tells you where to go. In a Metroidvania, progression often depends on noticing relationships: a symbol that matches a mechanism, a passage that resembles a previously blocked route, or a newly acquired ability whose uses are not all announced immediately.
This does not mean the game must hide everything or refuse to provide objectives. It means the player’s understanding contributes to advancement. Learning the shape of the world, remembering a barrier and deciding which lead to investigate are forms of progress in their own right.
5. Flexible ingredients
Combat and platforming are common, but neither defines the genre by itself. A Metroidvania may emphasize precise jumps, tactical fights, environmental puzzles or role-playing progression. It may use a side-on view, a top-down camera or another perspective. It may provide a detailed map, a sparse map or no conventional map at all.
These choices affect how a particular game feels, yet they do not replace the core pattern of interconnected spaces and capability- or knowledge-gated access. Treat them as ingredients that can be combined in different proportions, not mandatory boxes that every game must tick.
How ability-gated exploration works in practice
Imagine finding a high platform that is just out of reach. The game does not need to tell you that a future movement ability will solve it. The obstacle becomes a mental note. Later, you acquire a capability that changes your jump, movement direction or interaction range. When you return, the old platform is no longer decorative: it is now a test of whether you understood the relationship between the upgrade and the environment.
The same structure works for items and knowledge. An object may open a particular lock; a tool may interact with a previously inert device; or a clue may reveal that a familiar-looking wall is part of a route. In each case, the world presents the question before it gives you the answer. The satisfaction comes from connecting the answer to the earlier question.
For players, this creates a practical habit: when you meet a barrier, record where it is and what it seems to require. When you gain a new capability, scan your remembered obstacles for plausible matches. This is not a completionist extra; it is the central way many games in the genre teach their geography.
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What the label does not require
Because “Metroidvania” is a descriptive label rather than a formal technical standard, its borders are flexible. William Pellen, a 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.” The statement captures the importance of world structure while also showing why developers may resist treating the label as a design rule. Read the PC Gamer interview.
Use the following dimensions to describe how a particular game applies the pattern:
| Dimension | What to examine | Why it changes the experience |
|---|---|---|
| Interconnection | How many regions link together and how often routes loop back | A denser network makes navigation and spatial memory more central. |
| Ability gates | How frequently new capabilities open previously blocked paths | Frequent gates make upgrades feel like keys to the world rather than simple power increases. |
| Backtracking | How much the game expects you to revisit earlier areas | Return trips can create satisfying payoffs or travel fatigue, depending on shortcuts and guidance. |
| Guidance and maps | Whether the game marks objectives, records barriers or leaves route-finding to you | More guidance lowers the memory burden; less guidance makes discovery more self-directed. |
| Activity balance | The relative emphasis on exploration, platforming, combat and role-playing systems | Two games can share the same structure while offering very different moment-to-moment play. |
A game does not need a particular camera, combat model, upgrade tree or map interface to belong in the conversation. Classification is most convincing when the interconnected world and gated exploration are central to what the player does, not merely optional features attached to a linear campaign.
Why is it called “Metroidvania”?
The word is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania. The British Film Institute describes it as a blend of those two franchise names and traces the genre’s development to the mid-1980s. Nintendo dates the original Metroid’s Japanese launch to 1986 in its retrospective series history. The BFI’s overview of notable Metroidvania games and Nintendo’s Metroid series report provide that historical framing.
The name identifies influential roots, not a claim that one game is universally accepted as the first Metroidvania. The answer changes according to how broadly someone defines the design: some histories emphasize particular mechanics, while broader accounts focus on interconnected exploration and gated progression. It is more accurate to separate the history of those ideas from the later shorthand used to describe them.
Metroid Dread as a lineage example
Metroid Dread is a current official example from the Metroid series. Nintendo’s report describes exploration and the discovery of new capabilities as recurring features of the series’ 2D design. In practical terms, Samus’s expanding capabilities change which parts of the environment can be reached, illustrating the ability-gated loop that the genre name evokes. Nintendo’s Metroid Dread Report Vol. 3 is the primary reference for that explanation.
One installment should not be treated as a complete specification for every game called a Metroidvania. The value of Metroid Dread as an example is that it makes the relationship between exploration, discovery and new capabilities easy to see within one of the name’s source series.
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Is Hollow Knight a Metroidvania?
Yes, it is commonly classified as a Metroidvania. The game presents Hallownest as a set of environments connected within a larger journey, and its progression relies on exploring that world and gaining access to more of it. Nintendo’s official Switch page describes the environments and the journey through Hallownest. See Nintendo’s Hollow Knight game page.
The qualification matters because the developers did not want a genre label to dictate the game’s design. Calling Hollow Knight a Metroidvania communicates useful expectations—interconnected exploration, revisiting locations and progression tied to access—without implying that every design choice follows a fixed template. The same approach works when discussing other games: explain the structural traits that justify the label, then describe where the game’s emphasis differs.
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When a store description or conversation uses the term, evaluate the game with these questions:
- Do locations belong to one connected world that you can revisit?
- Do abilities, items or knowledge open routes that were previously inaccessible?
- Will an earlier obstacle become meaningful after you gain a new capability?
- Does learning the map or recognizing connections contribute to progress?
- Are exploration and route choice more important than simply clearing a fixed sequence of stages?
If the answer to the first four questions is generally yes, the label is probably useful even if the game has unusual combat, a different camera or a light role-playing system. If a game only offers a few optional locked rooms while its main campaign remains a linear series of unrelated levels, “Metroidvania” may describe a minor feature rather than the game’s central structure.
Common misconceptions
“Every locked door makes a game a Metroidvania.”
No. A key that opens one door in an otherwise linear level is ordinary gating. The genre pattern emerges when gates are part of a connected world, the solution is found through exploration and earlier spaces remain important after your capabilities change.
“Metroidvania means side-scrolling platformer.”
Side-on action is strongly associated with the name, but perspective is not the defining test. A different camera can still support the same interconnected, gated exploration loop.
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“Backtracking must be constant and tedious.”
Revisiting areas is common, but the amount and convenience vary. Shortcuts, map support and purposeful rewards can make return trips efficient; another game may intentionally demand more memory and route planning.
“The label is an official genre standard.”
It is better understood as shared shorthand. Developers and players may apply it differently, so explain the specific features you mean instead of treating the word as a legal definition.
Further reading
For a focused history of the genre’s early influences, Jeremy Parish’s The History of Metroidvania: Decade One—1980–1990 is listed by Penguin Random House as a work tracing those origins and influences. View the publisher’s book listing. The listing does not establish current stock or edition availability, so check those details separately if you intend to buy it.
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