Dungeon crawler or looter shooter? Nine video game genres explained

Modern video games now exist in a bewildering mass of interconnected genres and sub-genres: here's your guide to the most interesting

This term is a portmanteau derived from two beloved games that arrived on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the mid-1980s, Metroid and Castlevania, and is usually applied to 2D games in which the world is explorable in all directions (as opposed to classic platform games, in which you go from left to right). There are usually secret rooms and areas that can only be accessed once you've found some key or item later on, so players have to mentally map their progress and backtrack when necessary. In this way a good metroidvania world is like a story, with tension, foreshadowing, plants, payoffs and surprise reveals built into the very foundations.