Metroidvania (Search Action)

Metroidvania is a subgenre of the action-adventure game built around nonlinear exploration of an interconnected world whose sections are gated behind abilities or items the player must first acquire, so that a locked passage seen early becomes reachable only after the right upgrade is found.⁸¹² The term is a portmanteau of the video game series Metroid and Castlevania, and describes games made in the mold of 1994’s Super Metroid and 1997’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.¹⁵⁹ In Japan the same games are called “search action” (探索型アクション).¹¹³

The genre’s defining trait is a play space that is neither fully open nor a set of discrete levels: the accessible area grows over time as the player unlocks conceptual keys, standing in contrast to both linear and open-world design.¹² One writer characterized this as an “unlocking world” framework rather than a genre tied to any particular mechanic, noting that setting, combat style, and perspective are all optional to the form.¹² Common features include a labyrinthine automap, character progression through upgrades or role-playing-style stats, combat against enemies with health bars, and platforming as the primary means of traversal.¹¹¹⁵ One player-community definition frames the games as “semi-linear 2D platforming RPGs with a stylistic focus on environment and ambience as a means to further promote exploration”.¹⁴ Jeremy Parish, a journalist who helped popularize the term and wrote a book on the subgenre, has argued that Metroidvanias function in some ways as more accessible role-playing games that do not get bogged down in stats and menus, letting characters grow while exploring a vast world.⁸

Origins

The structural template descends most directly from Metroid, which debuted for the NES in 1986 and, unusually for its time, placed a 2D side-scrolling game inside an expansive, interconnected world that could be explored in any direction, requiring players to return to earlier areas with newfound abilities.⁶⁷ The ongoing adventures of bounty hunter Samus Aran differed markedly from Nintendo’s other major series, being dark and solemn with a looming sense of isolation and an alien sense of place.⁶ That atmosphere was inspired in large part by the first Alien film.⁶ Its sections lay gated behind power-ups such as the Morph Ball and High Jump Boots, forcing reliance on a labyrinthine map.⁸ The following year, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest took a similar approach, casting a cursed vampire hunter equipped initially with only a whip into the Transylvanian countryside and letting players unfurl the secrets of an arcane world in any direction along the X and Y axes.⁸ Nintendo’s Super Metroid refined the formula in 1994, introducing the automap function and subscreens that later games would copy.⁹¹⁵

Earlier antecedents predate the NES entirely: Brain Breaker, released in 1985 for the Sharp X1, brought together the base mechanics of a spaceship pilot crash-landing on a large open world and collecting items such as a jet pack and a laser rifle, appearing a year before Metroid.¹⁹ Games fitting the description had existed since the early to mid-1980s, though the term itself came into common use only in the mid-2000s.¹⁹

Symphony of the Night and the naming dispute

The game most often credited with codifying the modern genre is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, directed by Koji Igarashi and released for the PlayStation in 1997, which introduced a Metroid-like structure to the gothic action series and added inventory mechanics, a shop, and an experience system.⁶⁹ Observers took its resemblance to Super Metroid as self-evident, in part because its in-game automap used similar color elements and iconography.⁹ The game also brought a stronger, more RPG-like narrative to the series, with a small cast—outside of Alucard, speaking parts for a mere half-dozen characters—guiding the story along and layering the proceedings with mystery.⁹

Igarashi himself has repeatedly disputed the Metroid lineage. In a 2014 Game Developers Conference interview he said that his team’s intention was to make a game in the style of The Legend of Zelda, and that its resemblance to Metroid stemmed only from turning that design into a 2D platformer.² “The idea of exploring, and having locked gates that you need certain items or abilities to get through—a lot of those key features are already in Zelda games,” he told another interviewer, noting that Symphony was compared to Metroid simply because it was side-scrolling.³ He has proposed “Igavania” as an alternative label for his own work, a term used repeatedly in his interviews to reclaim the genre for himself.³⁴ Because Symphony debuted in mid-1997, more than a year before Ocarina of Time, its most direct Zelda touchstone would have been A Link to the Past for the Super NES.⁹

The word itself was not coined by Igarashi. Journalist Jeremy Parish, who helped popularize it, has stated he picked it up from former 1UP.com coworker Scott Sharkey, who used it to describe the handful of Castlevania games that adopted a Metroid-like exploratory design.⁹¹⁰ At the time the term emerged, around 2001, it described four games: Symphony of the Night and the handheld titles Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow.⁹²¹ Parish has said he used the word “frequently, loudly, and indiscriminately” to spread awareness of a game format that in the early 2000s seemed in danger of vanishing forever.⁹ Igarashi followed Symphony with five more 2D “Igavanias” for Nintendo’s handhelds between 2002 and 2008.⁴ When he left Konami he was told he could not use the Castlevania name, which made the existence of the fan term “handy” for describing his plans.²

Indie revival and legacy

After a period in the early 2000s when the format seemed in danger of vanishing, the rise of independent development turned it into a commodity.⁹ The 2004 freeware release Cave Story, created single-handedly by Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya, wore its influences openly; Amaya said in a 2010 interview, “More than anything else, I love Metroid”.⁶⁷ A wave of indie titles followed, including Axiom Verge (2015), created entirely by Tom Happ with a mysterious sci-fi aesthetic and abilities such as a gun that generates glitches in the world ⁶⁷, and Guacamelee (2011), which fused the Metroid structure with brawler-style combat and a lighthearted, meme-filled tone.⁶⁷

Designers have credited the form with forcing the creation of a memorable, believable world. Happ described the “Metroidvania” style as “the side-scrolling equivalent to an open-world 3D game,” comparable to titles such as Tomb Raider, Horizon Zero Dawn, or Batman.⁶⁷ Thomas Mahler of Moon Studios, developer of Ori and the Blind Forest (2015), said the form “forces you to create a connected, believable world that you can invite your audience into,” because players remembering the levels is part of the core design.⁶⁷ Chris McQuinn, a designer on Guacamelee at Drinkbox Studios, said the genre’s level design offered “so many opportunities to create clever nods and winks” through which a personal connection could be made with players.⁶⁷

Later entries stretched the genre’s flexibility: Metroid Prime (2002) turned discovery into a 3D experience, Shadow Complex (2009) explored an American dystopia and reinvigorated the form on Xbox Live Arcade, and Ultros (2024) built its power-up progression around planting and growing alien flora.⁸¹⁶ Ultros design director Marten Bruggemann described his goal as creating a “mental space of the world in order to navigate it,” and cited Super Metroid’s environmental storytelling as inspiration for the level design.⁸ Animal Well’s solo designer Billy Basso built his 2024 game around soft blocks on progression that ingenious players can bypass by combining household-object tools, seeking to cultivate “what if” moments.⁸ Notable modern examples include Hollow Knight (2018) and its sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025), Dead Cells (2017), Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (2024), Animal Well (2024), and Blasphemous (2019).¹³¹⁶²⁰ Igarashi returned to the form with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a spiritual successor to Castlevania funded through Kickstarter beginning in 2015 and developed with Inti Creates, retaining the same focus on gothic horror, customization, item drops, and exploration.³⁴ Fan projects and homages have kept extending the template, among them Touhou Luna Nights, a 2D “search action” game by Team Ladybug in which the maid Sakuya wields time-controlling abilities.¹

The term has drawn persistent criticism for being opaque to newcomers, since it depends on familiarity with two named franchises rather than describing an interaction, prompting proposed replacements such as “Platform-Adventure,” “unlocking world,” and Parish’s own preferred “search action”.¹⁰¹¹¹² Critics have noted that the label is inaccurate on its face, since it invokes the entire Metroid series but only specific later Castlevania titles, the earlier games having been action platformers.¹¹ Some designers have also worried that Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night became so influential that they stifled the subgenre, with many later works copying their upgrade-as-key structure rather than iterating on it.¹⁷