I'm not calling Metroidvanias "Search Action" games

I'm tired, boss. I'm tired of this particular piece of discourse.

Every goddamn low rent thinkpiece writer who types out the word "Metroidvania" eventually has the same thought, and you just need to get it out of your system. Yes, the name of this subgenre of videogame combining Metroid and Castlevania is not very descriptive, like the name of other videogame subgenres. Should we name it something different?

No.

I reject every alternative to the term Metroidvania, at least, all the ones I've heard, because they either exclude core games from what I guess we can call Metroidvania canon, or they're so broad they include games that aren't pertinent to the discussion. And I reject this notion that a name is invalid because it might take some homework to understand. Do you immediately understand what I mean by Romantic music without a whole bunch of context? I dunno, I think sometimes it comes from this embarrassment of gaming history. Musicians don't get embarrassed to say what they mean by Baroque music but we're supposed to be embarrassed because our thing was made in the 1980s instead of the 1800s or something. It's okay for something to take a little bit of work and explanation, that is fine and okay.

But I know, one of you is going to say something silly like, metroidvania is too broad a term. No. Bad. Don't make me get the spritz bottle. 

A metroidvania is actually very specific thing, maybe even too specific. The two capstone games in the canon are still the two greatest influences on the genre, those being Super Metroid and Symphony Of The Night. Like, imagine if near 80% of drama films cited Citizen Kane as its influence and they were all black and white and aped the directorial style of Orson Welles. And sometimes that can be frustrating, but it is also a shortcut to explain a complex set of related mechanics. If someone has played both Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night, and say "yeah, the game is like those" it's actually very intuitive to know what's meant. And don't say it's vibes-based, I'll get the spritz bottle, you don't know what you're talking about. There's an entire subreddit for god's sake and they came up with a somewhat formal definition. 

Games with guided non-linearity and utility gated exploration. My beauty. My one true love. My warmth in the cold nights. 

The community has been thinking about all this since 1994, Jeremy Parish has practically written a master's thesis with his Metroidvania Works series on the genre. Much like with Romantic music I can tell you it's compositions based on the Romantic Era in the 1600 where composers wanted to create expressive and dramatic and individualistic music but if you're going to write a paper on it, you're going to have to read stuff other people have written and listen to a lot of the works in the canon and see what deviates and what doesn't.

So no, you uncultured swine, you villainous cur. I will not be calling them Search Action games, I will not be calling them mapformers, and I will absolutely not be calling them exploratory adventure games. They're metroidvanias. Fuck you. I hope you get stuck in front of a double jump gate. I hope you need to look up a guide and feel dumb for not figuring out the solution right in front of you. I hope you get filtered by a long stretch of backtracking.

From Luna, without love. Don't ever speak to me or my son again.