Metroidvania

Game genre theme

Explorable platformer. Action-adventure or action-platformer sub-genre with a lot of backtracking, a superficial sense of exploration to find locations to which you later gain access to via new abilities, tools, or such.

394
games
55
platforms
The name refers to original Metroid, Super Metroid, Caslevania: Simon's Quest and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The term having surfaced around the time of SOTN to categorize it and those that came before.

Traits:
* Fairly open environments, with ability to go off exploring in directions, though usually shortly impeded by an obstacle that you need some item or ability to progress through. Gives some focus to exploring and thus actually finding where you need to go.
* Presence of said items and abilities that somehow improve your mobility or allow you to open, disable, or destroy certain obstacles. Opening up previously blocked off areas. This includes just plain keys as the other abilities or items can work the same way as a regular key.
* Lots of backtracking because of #2, and gives off a sense of non-linearity because of #1 even when it isn't actually non-linear (it is not necessary player has choice in the order of area unlocking things).
* Usually only one overall level/map that spans an an excessively large region. Though can easily be spread to multiple maps (e.g. multiple worlds). Usually interconnected even in the latter case.
* Character power dictated by the equipment they have. This is least important feature, and the equipment could easily be provided as abilities instead.

Popular tags

actionadventure actionrpg dungeoncrawler environmentalpuzzle firstpersonshooter hackandslash platformer runandgun soulslike spectaclebrawler stealthgame survivalhorror tactical

Parent groups

Action-Adventure, Platformer

Games by year

838587899193959799010305070911131517192123 441122330

The first Metroidvania video game was released on January 1, 1983.

Konami, Nintendo and Capcom published most of these games.

Related site

Platforms

Windows 89
Linux 89
Mac OS X 21
NES 16
PS3 16
X360 16
PS4 13
Switch 12
Xbox One 10
PS Vita 8
Wii U 8
GBA 7
Nintendo DS 6
3DS 6
ZX Spectrum 5
MS-DOS 5
C64 5
PS 4
Wii 4
Flash 3
GameKing 3
GB 3
PC Engine 2
Atari 400/800 2
Famicom Disk System 2
Saturn 2
MSX 2
Amiga 2
Atari ST 2
SNES 2