What Makes a Game a Metroidvania? A Useful Definition Beyond the Label

TLDR: What is a metroidvania?

A metroidvania is an exploration-focused action-adventure game in which gaining new abilities or tools opens routes through a connected world. The defining pleasure is not simply finding a key for a door. It is becoming more capable, remembering where that capability might help, and returning to discover that an old place now contains a new path.

If you are wondering what is a metroidvania in practical terms, picture this loop: explore until you find an obstacle, continue elsewhere, earn an ability that changes how you move or interact, then use it to reach somewhere that was previously inaccessible. Combat, platforming, puzzles, statistics, loot, and bosses can all support that structure, but none of them defines the genre alone.

The central metroidvania loop

The genre is best understood as a loop rather than a visual style. A typical sequence looks like this:

Explore a connected area and learn its landmarks, hazards, and branching routes.
Notice an obstruction you cannot yet overcome, such as a wide gap, unusual barrier, hostile environment, or mechanism you cannot activate.
Find a new movement ability, weapon function, transformation, tool, or piece of knowledge.
Use that capability to open a route, reveal a secret, create a shortcut, or approach an earlier obstacle differently.

Nintendo’s material for Metroid Dread illustrates this structure directly: particular obstacles are associated with weapons or abilities, while the map helps players identify places where a newly acquired capability may be useful. The result is a world whose earlier rooms remain relevant instead of becoming discarded scenery.

Designer Koji Igarashi has similarly discussed the familiar metroidvania model in terms of exploration, an expanding toolset, and access to places that were formerly unreachable. His discussion of metroidvania design with Game Developer is useful because it focuses on how progression changes the player’s relationship with space, not merely on whether a game resembles an older title.

Five features that usually make a game a metroidvania

There is no binding checklist, but most clear examples combine several closely related features.

1. A connected world worth learning

A metroidvania world is usually organized as a network of rooms, regions, junctions, and shortcuts rather than a simple procession of disposable levels. Areas may look separate, but their routes eventually fold back into one another. Learning those relationships is part of progression.

The player does not need to memorize every room. Recognizing major landmarks, nearby exits, safe routes, and unresolved barriers is usually enough. If navigation is the part you find difficult, this approach to building a mental map of interconnected game worlds turns exploration into a manageable set of remembered clues.

2. Abilities that function as access tools

A useful upgrade does more than increase damage by a few percent. It changes where the player can go or what the player can do. A movement technique might cross a gap, a transformation might fit through a narrow passage, and a weapon upgrade might interact with a special barrier.

These upgrades create ability gates. Unlike a conventional locked door, an ability gate can have broader consequences throughout the map. One new action may solve several obstacles, improve combat options, make travel faster, and expose secrets that were visible long before they were reachable.

3. Meaningful revisits

Backtracking is common, but walking through an old corridor is not automatically interesting. The revisit becomes meaningful when something has changed: the player has a new ability, understands a clue, can activate a shortcut, or is now strong enough to take a dangerous route.

Good backtracking recontextualizes a place. A ledge that once marked the end of the road becomes an invitation. A suspicious wall becomes a lead. An awkward trip through several rooms may collapse into a quick connection after a shortcut opens. The map is the same, but the player reads it differently.

4. Exploration as progression

In many games, exploration is an optional source of collectibles. In a metroidvania, exploration is normally one of the main ways the campaign moves forward. Finding a route may matter as much as winning a fight. Navigation, observation, and memory are therefore active skills rather than downtime between encounters.

5. Some freedom to choose where to investigate

A metroidvania does not need to be completely open. It can contain a strongly guided opening, mandatory upgrades, or major objectives in a planned order. What matters is that the connected world regularly presents possibilities: several exits, unresolved barriers, optional discoveries, or more than one promising lead.

Why is it called metroidvania?

The name combines Metroid and Castlevania. Bandai Namco’s developer overview describes the label by reference to Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, two touchstones commonly used to explain the genre.

The Castlevania side is particularly associated with Symphony of the Night. Konami lists its original release date as October 2, 1997 and highlights transformations, hidden weapons, secrets, and a large adventure. Those elements helped make it a natural reference point for games combining exploration with a growing range of character capabilities.

The name is useful shorthand, not a claim that every game must copy those series. It also does not provide a rigid formula. A 2025 PLAYISM roundtable featuring Igarashi explicitly characterized “metroidvania” as a vague term, which helps explain why reasonable players can disagree about borderline cases.

What a metroidvania does not have to include

Several features are strongly associated with the genre without being requirements. A metroidvania does not have to be:

A 2D side-scroller. A connected, capability-gated world can be built with other perspectives and dimensions.
An RPG. Levels, equipment, statistics, and loot can add build choices, but exploration can work without them.
Extremely difficult. Demanding bosses and precise platforming are design choices, not genre requirements.
Focused primarily on combat. Movement, environmental puzzles, stealth, or other interactions can carry the progression loop.
Built around one enormous continuous map. Distinct regions can still form a coherent network through hubs, passages, transport systems, and shortcuts.
Completely nonlinear. A game can guide players through major milestones while leaving room for optional routes and discoveries.

Likewise, obtaining keys does not automatically make a game a metroidvania. A colored key that opens one matching door is a simple access condition. An ability that changes movement, combat, and access across several regions has a much stronger metroidvania function.

How metroidvanias overlap with nearby genres

Genre labels overlap because they describe different parts of a game. “Metroidvania” usually describes world and progression structure, while labels such as platformer, action RPG, or roguelite may describe controls, combat, character systems, or run structure.

Nearby label	Typical emphasis	When it becomes metroidvania-like
Action-platformer	Movement challenges and real-time action, often across discrete stages	When movement abilities progressively unlock routes through a connected world
Soulslike	Commitment-heavy combat, dangerous traversal, recovery after failure, and shortcut-driven spaces	When character abilities, rather than access keys or player skill alone, repeatedly open substantial new routes
Roguelite	Repeated runs with some form of variation or persistent growth	When exploration of a persistent or repeatedly learned world also revolves around capability-gated access
Zelda-like action-adventure	Exploration, tools, puzzles, combat, and structured objectives	When new tools systematically reopen routes across a strongly interconnected world
Action RPG	Real-time combat combined with statistics, equipment, or character builds	When exploration and ability-based access are central rather than secondary to combat growth

These are tendencies, not courtroom definitions. A game can belong to several categories at once. The more useful question is not “Which single box is correct?” but “Which label best tells a player what they will spend their time doing?”

Backtracking versus recontextualized exploration

Backtracking gets a bad reputation when it means crossing unchanged spaces solely to satisfy a distant objective. Metroidvania design works best when the return trip carries new possibilities.

A revisit feels purposeful when at least one of these things is true:

Your new ability opens a visible but previously unreachable path.
A shortcut makes the return faster than the first journey.
An earlier clue now makes sense.
The same ability has uses in movement, combat, and environmental interaction.
The route contains optional discoveries, not just the next mandatory doorway.
You can choose between several remembered obstacles instead of being sent to exactly one lock.

This is why good metroidvania maps feel like places rather than level menus. Familiarity accumulates. You learn where regions meet, which journeys are risky, and which unresolved landmarks deserve another look.

Useful metroidvania vocabulary

Ability gate

An obstacle that requires a capability such as a movement technique, transformation, weapon property, or environmental protection. The strongest ability gates feel like natural parts of the world rather than arbitrary locks.

Soft gate

A barrier that discourages progress without making it absolutely impossible. A difficult jump, dangerous enemy, environmental hazard, or obscure route might stop a new player while allowing an expert to pass early.

Shortcut

A newly opened connection that reduces travel time between known places. Shortcuts reward exploration even when they do not lead directly to a new ability or objective.

Sequence break

Reaching an area, upgrade, or objective earlier than the expected progression order. This may involve advanced movement, a hidden route, an unusual interaction, or simply a path the designers deliberately left flexible. Sequence breaking is not required for a metroidvania, but the genre’s connected maps and overlapping abilities often make it especially appealing.

Why players disagree about the label

Disagreement usually begins at the edges. One player may require a mostly continuous world and extensive ability gating. Another may accept separated regions if their routes reconnect and upgrades repeatedly change access. Some emphasize movement abilities, while others include knowledge, tools, or combat powers that serve the same navigational purpose.

The label becomes less helpful when it is reduced to one surface trait. Side-scrolling does not settle the question. Neither do boss fights, map completion percentages, gloomy ruins, save rooms, or difficult combat. Those can shape the experience, but the deeper test is how the world responds to the player’s growing capabilities.

The quickest test for recognizing a metroidvania

When deciding whether the label fits, ask three questions:

Does the game ask me to understand and revisit a connected place?
Do new capabilities meaningfully change which routes I can use?
Is discovering and applying those capabilities central to progression?

If the answer is yes to all three, “metroidvania” is probably a useful description. If only one applies—perhaps the game has a large map but purely linear progression, or it grants new attacks without changing exploration—the resemblance is weaker.

That is the definition worth carrying into your next game: a metroidvania is not merely a platformer with corridors or an action game with backtracking. It is a game where growing capability transforms a connected world. When an old obstacle turns into a new possibility, the genre is doing what it does best.