Metroidvania or Not: Introduction
Metroidvania is a genre in video games that generally refers to side-scrolling action games with exploration and combat. The term was originally coined to describe games within the Castlevania series that incorporates free-roaming / exploration elements a la Metroid games. However, since then, it has become a very broad term - some say too broad to even be meaningful or useful. In this series, I'll try to look into games that have at least some claims to be a Metroidvania game, and explore the different elements that they share (or not share) with the original.
List of elements
Links to sites / pages about Metroidvania:
Basic information
Name of game
Designer / Publisher
System
Year of publication
Mechanics
Style of combat
Use of magic
Combat-focus versus Platform-focus
Death mechanics
(Fall damage)
Progression
Levelling / Farming for XP
Farming for Gold / Item
Skill pick-up
(Skill-tree)
(Stats allocation)
(Crafting)
Exploration
Free-roaming
Gated by movement abilities
Gated by bosses
Type of world map
World generation
Auto-map
Additional game modes
Other elements
Playability with just keyboard