Putting Obstacles In The Way…

You may not have heard of Metroidvania, but this gaming sub-genre probably applies to half the games you’ve ever played, and it’s still going strong

- Robin Valentine

It’s perhaps the clunkiest genre name in games, but many of the best titles ever made have been what we now call ‘Metroidvanias’.

The exploration of a sprawling yet intricately-connected world; the discovery of items and abilities that allow once closed-off paths to be opened; the hunt back through past areas for secrets and hidden treasures. These elements combine in the form of a magic formula, still as compelling in 2018’s Hollow Knight as it was in 1997’s Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night. It’s a genre given life as much by the creativity and passion of scrappy independent developers as by industry giants, defined and redefined by each new wave of creators. Read on, and discover how the Metroidvania changed gaming forever – and then stuck around to see the results.

The Metroidvania genre wears its origins proudly in its name. Though it was arguably not the first game to do what it did, Nintendo’s 1986 game Metroid is widely accepted as the main origin point for the Metroidvania. The second half of the genre’s name comes from Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night which 11 years later firmly established the template of what we think of as a Metroidvania today.

At the time the game released in 1997, it was an act of rebellion. The series’ entries to that point had largely been, like many of its contemporaries, linear and short. With the lack of replayability an ever growing concern, many series had opted to become more and more difficult, artificially extending their length with repetition of frustrating sequences. The result, Symphony Of The Night’s directors Toru Hagihara and Koji Igarashi observed, was that longtime, dedicated fans would still burn through in no time, overcoming any challenge put in front of them, while new players would find themselves stuck and disheartened.