2025 was the year of the metroidvania, no question. While every genre saw a whole range of gems landing this year, fans of exploration-heavy platformers were positively feasting, with the centerpiece at the table being the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong. A massive, polished, smartly designed and pleasantly familiar game that saw little need to uproot the first game's well-tested formula.
The now-ubiquitous portmanteau we use to describe the genre is, in itself, a reference to it being fertile ground for cross-pollinating ideas. Metroid's exploration dovetailed nicely with Castlevania's gothic stylings and Symphony Of The Night's surprisingly in-depth RPG elements, which Hollow Knight dials down the in favour of death mechanics and boss runbacks from Dark Souls. In recent years, we've seen plenty more experiments, with last year's Animal Well winning no shortage of praise by trading combat for ARG-adjacent layers of puzzling and cipher-cracking.
