The original Metroid and Castlevania both turn 40 years old this fall. As the two series most responsible for creating the “metroidvania,” we’re taking this occasion to take a comprehensive view of the popular genre. This is Metroidvania Week.
Metroidvanias have been around for decades, with numerous high points over those years. Super Metroid–which set the template for the beloved (and much-iterated-upon) formula–hit the SNES in 1994. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night–which established a bold, non-linear direction for the series and helped pioneer the genre–followed in 1997. Metroid Prime–which proved this kind of game could work in 3D–touched down on the GameCube in 2002. And Hollow Knight: Silksong–which put metroidvanias at the center of gaming culture for one of the only times in their history–hit in late 2025.
Though all of those titles have been and will be beacons for developers who came after, they were lonely lights. There were no other games released in 1994 that could join forces with Super Metroid; nothing to help Symphony of the Night make like its famous castle and turn the gaming world upside down. When metroidvanias had a moment in 2002, it was entirely driven by the Metroid series itself, as the GBA title Metroid Fusion launched the same day as Prime.
That wasn’t the case in 2018, the best year in the genre’s history. It was a year that stretched the boundaries of what a metroidvania could look like and play like, and how it could be built. There were original outings, new games in established series, and one very important port that brought a modern classic to a wider audience. The year’s metroidvanias took inspiration from other genres (souls-likes, roguelikes, character action) and even mediums (pinball). Not all of these games worked, critically or commercially, but the overwhelming variety on display made it the best and easiest time ever for new players to try the genre out.
Just take a look at this release calendar:
- January 23, 2018 – Iconoclasts
- February 6, 2018 – Dandara
- April 10, 2018 – Super Daryl Deluxe
- May 29, 2018 – Yoku’s Island Express
- June 12, 2018 – Hollow Knight (Switch)
- July 30 – La Mulana 2
- July 31, 2018 – Chasm
- August 7, 2018 – Dead Cells
- August 14, 2018 – Death’s Gambit
- August 21, 2018 – Guacamelee 2
- August 30, 2018 – The Messenger
- September 25, 2018 – Timespinner
- December 4, 2018 – Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom
From the first month of the year to the last, fans were regularly fed with new, exciting takes on the old formula. Players who turn to games for an engaging story were rewarded right off the bat with Iconoclasts. It was an unusually narrative-driven take on a genre that, by and large, had solely prioritized exploration up to that point, diving into themes like religion and authoritarianism. And, equally importantly, it let you hit stuff with a big wrench.
Dandara took inspiration from Dark Souls, with corpse runs and punishing difficulty. But it was most notable for its unusual control scheme. Instead of walking and running through the levels, you controlled the protagonist’s movements with angled leaps. Gravity had no power here: Dandara could shoot from the ceiling, stand on the walls, heal up on the floor, and survive fights by leaping between all three.
Yoku’s Island Express messed with metroidvania movement even further, dropping players into a map that was a sprawling collection of pinball tables. Yoku, a dung beetle tethered to a conveniently ball-shaped pebble, begins the game by taking over as the island of Mokumana’s mailman (er, mailbug). To deliver Yoku’s packages, the player needs to skillfully use the controller’s right and left triggers, which correspond to color-coded flippers and paddles built into the map. It’s a one-of-one game, with a fusion that feels intuitive but has never been repeated.
Chasm and Dead Cells also experimented with mixing and matching, bringing roguelike randomness to the metroidvania in unique ways. Dead Cells implemented procedural generation in the more straightforward way, taking a page from Spelunky, and asking players to make their way through a series of biomes whose map layouts changed each time you started a new run, building unique and powerful builds as they went.
Chasm was different. Bit Kid, Inc.’s action-adventure game generated a map at the beginning of a playthrough, and that map remained set until you rolled credits. It was still using procedural map generation, but to witness the array of possible changes, you would need to play the game more than once. It was a roguelike on a grander scale, where a “run” didn’t take 30 minutes; it took 30 hours. Dead Cells was more successful, spawning years of updates and expansions. But eight years later, Chasm remains a fascinating evolutionary dead-end.
The metroidvania genre having such a strong showing was possible, in part, thanks to 2018 being an unusually sparse year for big triple-A releases. Now, everyone remembers 2018 as the year that gave us Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, and Spider-Man. And those games were a lot of fun. But GoW hit in April, Spidey swung in to save the day in September, and Arthur Morgan hitched his horse in October. The rest of the year was pretty quiet, and summer was especially barren.
That dearth of big releases made space for indie metroidvanias to break out and, thanks to the Switch launching the previous year, we suddenly had the perfect console to play them on. Hollow Knight’s port to Switch on June 12 was an important step on its journey from popular, but niche, title to a franchise that could push indie competitors around the calendar like GTA 6. And August was absolutely packed. Dead Cells exited early access to widespread acclaim on August 7, Death’s Gambit attempted to replicate Dark Souls in 2D on August 14, Guacamelee! 2 punched out with outstanding kinetic fights on August 2, and, on August 30, The Messenger pulled off an incredibly cool genre twist, as linear Ninja Gaiden-inspired platforming gave way to non-linear metroidvania exploration. (And that’s not counting La Mulana 2 and Chasm, which barely missed the window with July 30 and 31 release dates).
Your favorite metroidvania might not have been released in 2018. It probably wasn’t. But one standout game isn’t what makes a moment. For a genre (or a scene or a medium), a moment happens when many creators are working, together and separately, to make new, exciting, boundary-pushing work. It’s what made 2018 a great time to be a metroidvania fan, and it’s what makes 1986’s release of the original Metroid so exciting in retrospect. Nintendo laid the building blocks for a genre, and Konami built upon it to create a truly special formula that is still popular decades later.
