A Metroidvania is an action adventure game built around exploring one large interconnected map where new abilities unlock previously unreachable areas. The name is a portmanteau of Metroid, first released in 1986, and Castlevania, reshaped by Symphony of the Night in 1997.
Metroid established the template in 1986: a continuous world, gated by the tools you carried, where a locked looking ledge early on was a promise you would return stronger. Super Metroid refined it in 1994. Castlevania Symphony of the Night in 1997 applied the same structure to a single castle and added RPG levelling, equipment, and stats. Players blended the two series names, and the portmanteau stuck even though neither series owns the form anymore.
The defining pleasure is recontextualised backtracking. A double jump, a dash, a wall climb, or a form change does not just add power. It rewrites the map you already know, opening routes in rooms you cleared hours ago. Good entries teach the layout so well that late game traversal across the whole world becomes fast and fluent.
Most classics are two dimensional, but the structure ports to 3D and top down games as well. Hollow Knight and Ori and the Blind Forest carried the form to large audiences, and its influence now appears inside shooters, RPGs, and open world games that borrow ability gated exploration without using the name.
In play"Expect a lot of backtracking, because it is a Metroidvania and the dash upgrade opens half the early map."