Replacing MetroidVania
I’m going to talk about one of the sillier plights affecting us - the persistence of the term ‘MetroidVania’.
Intro
Of all the problems and challenges our industry faces, this one might be the smallest.
But I’m writing this on holiday and neither willing nor able to solve the bigger issues, so instead I’m going to talk about one of the sillier plights affecting us - the persistence of the term ‘MetroidVania’. Sometimes terms like this can serve as a useful placeholder - see for example the litany of titles branded “Doom Clones” until the term ‘First-Person Shooter’ was adopted - but this one has gone on for way too long.
Why has this clunky name stuck around so long?
It’s hard to know for sure, but my suspicion is that the term is still with us for in large part because it’s not entirely clear which aspects of the source material we’re referring to. ‘First-Person Shooter’ is a whole lot easier in this regard. Which parts of Doom does it refer to? The parts where you shoot things from a first-person persective. Simple. MetroidVania is not remotely this descriptive, as is to be expected from a portmanteau of portmanteaus. So first, let’s break down a few things that aren’t core to a MetroidVania.