Metroidvania - van der Waard Art.com

Persephone van der Waard is a leading expert on Metroidvania, having researched the genre aggressively since 2017. From her master’s, postgrad and PhD material. This page highlights that work in its entirety (this same exact information can also be found—along with the rest of Persephone’s portfolio—on her About the Author page):

Update, 1/6/2025: I’ve combined everything in “From Master’s to PhD” and “Mazes and Labyrinths” into a single PDF document, doing so to allow for easy navigation using Adobe’s bookmark and in-text hyperlink system (below) (below): Persephone’s 2025 Metroidvania Corpus. Edited and assembled as “SFW” (no nudity), you can access the corpus through its source link to read/download it for free.

As part of Persephone’s Metroidvania Corpus, I’ve made updates to the original “From Master’s to PhD.” Said changes include: a full-fledged table of contents with section summaries, a whole new subsection (“Persephone’s History of Formulating Metroidvania”), a compendium for my Tolkien scholarship (which shares the same performative space*), multiple visual aids, and several new entries to my “Further Reading” subsection on Metroidvania, in particular. While there’s lots of theories and ideas being discussed, here, this survey will gloss over most of them (the ones closest to Metroidvania will get the most focus, of course; refer to the Paratextual Documents page on my website for a broader theoretical/exhibitory outline). The new corpus also contains excerpts from “What I Learned Mastering Metroidvania” (2024), my critique of Jeremy Parish from “Modularity and Class” (2024), and a final written response to Jeremy Parish.

*Not shown here, but found on the About the Author page (which also includes my nude galleries); i.e., the cartographic refrain, my work critiquing capital through its routine, neoliberal (videogame) abuse of police violence inside spaces of play where the player(s) can routinely map out and conquer, ad infinitum: Tolkien’s refrain (the High Fantasy treasure map) gentrifying war, and Cameron’s refrain (the Metroidvania/shooter) ringing a call-to-arms through neo-conservative revenge fantasy. We won’t have time to unpack that here, however. For a good summary of it, refer to “A Note About Canonical Essentialism” (2024). See, also: “Goblins, Anti-Semitism and Monster-Fucking” (2024) for a more recent interrogation of the idea, through Tolkien’s work.

Persephone’s Academic History: Sums up Persephone’s academic history in one paragraph, and gives a small list of vital definitions needed for the rest of the document: “ludo-Gothic BDSM,” “ludic Gothic,” “Gothic Communism,” and “Metroidvania.”
Persephone’s Work on Metroidvania
- Persephone’s History of Formulating Metroidvania: Explores Persephone’s entire history of formulating Metroidvania as a praxial device; i.e., from her humble beginnings as an undergrad in 2014, to her receiving in 2016 of an academic award that helped her get into grad school, the writing of her master’s thesis in 2018 and PhD in 2023, followed by additional scholarship (and books) penned afterwards.
- Summarizing Persephone’s Metroidvania Praxis: This portion articulates Persephone’s history of formulating Metroidvania as a theoretical device; i.e., by examining her research in theoretical language, connecting her earlier postgrad work (from 2018-2021) to her PhD (2023) and beyond. Very theory-dense!
- Metroidvania (definitions): Provides various definitions, all of them coined in the time before, during and after 2006 (the point when Jeremy Parish was writing about Metroidvania for 1UP.com). In short, it curates a broader history of the term prior to Persephone’s involvement and after her research began; i.e., as a gradient ranging from roughly 1997 to 2006 to 2014 and beyond.
- Further Reading by Persephone (on Metroidvania)
  - Metroidvania as closed space: Provides my entire Metroidvania corpus; also outlines Metroidvania’s function as closed space—i.e., to map out and explore for various reasons.
Tolkien Scholarship (extra)
- Further Reading by Persephone (on Tolkien): A list of every essay Persephone has written on Tolkien, ranging from “dragon sickness,” to rings/collars and vampire BDSM, to orcs and goblins/monster-fucking—and more!

Persephone’s Academic History

Persephone completed her BA in “English: Language, Literature and Writing” at Eastern Michigan University in 2016. She attended Manchester Metropolitan University from 2017 to 2018, for her master’s in “English Studies: the Gothic,” then completed her master’s thesis on Metroidvania, back in America: “Lost in Necropolis” (2018). She independently researched her PhD (the thesis volume/Volume Zero from Sex Positivity) from December 2018 to July 2023, publishing it in October 2023. Apart from Gothic Communism, Persephone’s PhD focuses a great deal on Metroidvania; i.e., as a therapeutic healing space vis-à-vis ludo-Gothic BDSM, as well as expanding on Barbara Creed’s 1993 notion of the monstrous-feminine.

ludo-Gothic BDSM

My [2023] combining of an older academic term, “ludic-Gothic” (Gothic videogames), with sex-positive BDSM theatrics as a potent means of camp. The emphasis is less about “how can videogames be Gothic” and more how the playfulness in videogames is commonly used to allow players to camp canon in and out of videogames as a form of negotiated power exchange established in playful, game-like forms (theatre and rules). Commonly gleaned through Metroidvania as I envision it, but frankly performed in any kind of Gothic poetics—i.e., to playfully attain what I call “the palliative Numinous,” or the Gothic quest for self-destructive power as something to camp.

ludic-Gothic

Gothic videogames. “The ludic-gothic is created when the Gothic is transformed by the video game medium, and is a kindred genre to survival horror” (source: Laurie Taylor’s “Gothic Bloodlines in Survival Horror Gaming,” 2009).

Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism

Coined by me, Gothic Communism is the deliberate, pointed critique of capital/Capitalism using a unique marriage of Gothic/queer/game theory and Marxist ideas synthesized by sex-positive workers during proletarian praxis. Meant to end neoliberal/fascist Capitalism in order to bring about anarcho-Communism, this liberation occurs through sex-positive labor (and monsters) reclaimed by sex workers (which Derrida called “spectres of Marx” in his eponymous book on hauntology as a Communist “ghost” that haunted language after the so-called “end of history”).

Metroidvania (my definition, short version)

Metroidvania are a location-based videogame genre that combines 2D, 2.5D, or 3D platforming [e.g., Dark Souls, 2009] and ranged/melee combat—usually in the 3rd person—inside a giant, closed space. This space communicates Gothic themes of various kinds; encourages exploration* depending on how non-linear the space is; includes progressive skill and item collection, mandatory boss keys, backtracking and variable gating mechanics (bosses, items, doors); and requires movement powerups in some shape or form, though these can be supplied through RPG elements as an optional alternative.

*Exploration pertains to the deliberate navigation of space beyond that of obvious, linear routes—to search for objects, objectives or secrets off the beaten path (source: “Mazes and Labyrinths,” 2021).

The entire series glossary is available on this webpage.

Note: Refer to “Revisiting My Masters’ Thesis” (2021) for more information about Persephone’s MA (and initial postgrad work). If you want to read the original peer review notes, they’re on Google Drive (source: Persephone van der Waard’s “Markers’ Comments for Persephone’s Master’s Thesis (10/27/2018).”

Persephone’s Work on Metroidvania

If you want to ask Persephone a question about any of this material, you can do so on the r/Metroidvania Reddit page promoting her Metroidvania work.

Persephone is a leading expert in Metroidvania, which has been her center of research since 2017 (for a good summary of her work, refer to her postgrad research in the “Mazes and Labyrinths” abstract). Unlike “survival horror,” which saw regular publication in print by Japanese and American companies since the 1990s, “Metroidvania” wasn’t used in mainstream sources until the mid-2010s (after the age of printed media had begun to die out). As such, it was largely ignored by academics when Persephone was at MMU; i.e., where she had access to the university Gothic and game departments, neither of which knew what “Metroidvania” was:

I noticed these limitations myself when trying to marry the Gothic to videogames in my own graduate work as cutting-edge. It was a tactic my supervisors and academic superiors resisted, simply because videogames were either totally outside of their realm of experience, or “Metroidvania” wasn’t something that had been academically connected to games within their own fields. That is, speedrunning as a practice/documentary subject was just taking off online in 2018 (Twitch had only existed since 2011); likewise, “ludic-Gothic” wasn’t even a decade-old term at the time, was something that ambitious academics strove to stake new claims within while leaving much to be desired (source: Persephone van der Waard’s “The Map Is a Lie,” Volume Zero, 2023).

Likewise, Bernard Perron mentions “survival horror” tons, but completely ignores Metroidvania in his 2018 book, The World of Scary Video Games*: A Study in Videoludic Horror—not one mention of it, in over 400 pages:

the same year I wrote my thesis on Metroidvania, Bernard Perron would sum up the broader Gothic rush in videogame academia in The World of Scary Games: A Study in Videoludic Horror (2018) sans mentioning Metroidvania once […] Not only does Perron make no mention of Metroidvania at all, neither do any of the other scholars he cites; nor did my supervisors know what Metroidvania were when I was researching it (nor I, with me finally settling on a concrete definition in 2021; re: the “Mazes and Labyrinths” abstract). Indeed, Metroidvania—despite being an older genre than survival horror**—remains a thoroughly underrepresented area of Gothic videogame studies, and Gothic videogames remain ripe for continued study within our own lives. Indeed, I had to connect the two myself when recognizing a knowledge gap regarding Metroidvania [within] videogame studies at large; and I have continued to do so as a postgrad writing about mazes and labyrinths in Metroidvania; i.e., as a niche area of study to expand upon within my own daily life beyond academia—by writing about or illustrating Metroidvania outside of conferences, but also interviewing Metroid speedrunners for fun in my “Mazes and Labyrinths” compendium (ibid.).

*Also, people who separate “video” and “game,” instead of simply saying “videogame,” are weird.

**Metroid and Castlevania are both older than Sweet Home (1989).

(artist: Jeremy Parish)

And last (and perhaps least), Jeremy Parish—a bit of an archivist snob and intellectual vacuum—(source: Persephone van der Waard’s “Modularity and Class,” 2024)—largely poo-pooed Metroidvania’s value despite flirting with it, in the 2000s. All three cases really stuck in Persephone’s craw, so she decided to dedicate her life’s work to the genre. Take that, nerds!

Again, Persephone wrote her master’s thesis on Metroidvania in 2018, and her independent PhD/thesis volume in 2023 (which dedicates largely to Metroidvania), and she’s written about Metroidvania extensively since. Below are her histories for formulating the term/writing its parent series, as well as definitions for Metroidvania and further reading by her about Metroidvania before, during and after writing her PhD (re: quoted from her book series, Sex Positivity).

The History of Formulating Metroidvania

Note: Much of this summary lifts directly from “The Map Is a Lie: the Quest for Power i nside Cameron’s Closed Space (and other shooters)” (2023), which you can read in Persephone’s PhD proper.

Persephone did not invent Metroidvania; she merely developed it far beyond what others were willing to do; i.e., with an emphasis on critical thinking and applied knowledge through activism, developing Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism through ludo-Gothic BDSM: as a performative matter of calculated risk—one ever-and-always keeping universal liberation/rape prevention in mind; re: the whore’s revenge, thwarting profit as normally compelled against nature by the state (the latter antagonizing the former “as monstrous-feminine” through one-way monomythic police violence [via state monopolies and trifectas, but also capital’s heteronormative, settler-colonial and Cartesian qualities] in the neoliberal age). Her researching of/writing about Metroidvania (and reclaiming it from its neoliberal copaganda function) ties directly to her grad school experiences, and those all started with her aforementioned undergraduate award. We’ll start, there, and explain its relevance to Persephone’s evolving work, as we go (the rest of this portion will be written in the first person):

Please note as we proceed: The focus on this corpus will be on Metroidvania’s place in my larger body of work, not just my PhD. That being said, my PhD’s body—excluding the paratextual documents and extraneous essays on either end—divides roughly in two, discussing canon and camp with equal importance (from Volume Zero):

This book wasn’t written/illustrated for Academia, but if it were and I was seriously treating it as my PhD to defend, I would argue that it addresses a knowledge gap regarding the synthesis of Gothic theory with anarcho-Communism, gender studies, ludology and Marxist argumentation: “Capitalism dimorphically sexualizes all work to some degree, including sex work, resulting in sex-coercive media and gender roles via universal alienation through monstrous language; this requires an iconoclasm to combat the systemic bigotries that result—a (as the title reads) ‘liberating of sex work under Capitalism through iconoclastic art.’ Gothic Communism is our ticket towards that end (source: Sex Positivity, Volume Zero: Thesis Paragraph: “Capitalism Sexualizes Everything,” 2023).

The basic struggle outlined above can be described simply as canon vs camp, which is what iconoclasm per my arguments essentially is. As I describe it, to camp canon is to recultivate the Superstructure (re: Marx) to foster a more sex-positive and liberatory mindset; i.e., one whose Gothic reinvention turns workers away from Capitalist Realism and towards a post-scarcity world: without genocide, and which uses the language of the imaginary past to achieve development. Metroidvania’s role in that is camping canon through ludo-Gothic BDSM, the chapter containing it taking up about half the “camp” portion of my PhD (thus roughly 25% of the entire document). It’s not the sole focus of my PhD’s arguments, but embodies a pretty big chunk of their application. —Perse

[My award letter from EMU, MA from MMU, and me in 2018 sitting on a copy of Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human (2011) borrowed from the school library (the photo was taken by my-partner-at-the-time, Zeuhl, for a school project of theirs).]

There was no money involved, but the letter did help me gain entry to MMU (which was a whole ordeal, to say the least; Persephone van der Waard’s Quora answer to “How easy is it to get into Manchester Metropolitan University?” 2019) when I went there for my master’s degree in English Studies: the Gothic, in 2017. In short, I had an adventure where the things gained is largely open to interpretation: “This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found [herself] doing and saying things altogether unexpected. [She] may have lost the neighbors’ respect, but [she] gained—well, you will see whether [she] gained anything in the end” [source].

A transcription of the letter for EMU’s 2016 Distinguished Student in Literature Award (above, left):

The literature program is happy to give the 2016 Distinguished Student in Literature Award to [Persephone] van der Waard. Those of us who have the good fortune of encountering [Persephone] in our classrooms—and for lively conversations in our offices—have come to know [her] as a superb student and voracious reader who pursues knowledge with indefatigable curiosity. Department faculty describe [Persephone] as a “strikingly original” and “capacious” thinker and thoroughly enjoy the outpourings of [her] lively intellect and exceptional intellectual curiosity. It is wonderful, one faculty writes, “to work with a mind so incredib[ly] eager to learn.”

[Persephone] excels as an attentive and nuanced reader of literary texts and expert sleuth of textual histories. [She] has an impressive ability to synthesize disparate material, making surprising connections between wide-ranging ideas and experiences. [Persephone] as one faculty remarks, “is not afraid to take tangents or draw comparisons that at first look random but end up opening up a new vista for reflection.” We have been equally delighted by the fine scholarly essays and research papers [Persephone] has produced in our classes. Faculty describe [her] writings as “eloquent, carefully organized,” “astonishingly adroit,” comparing, for instance, Tolkien’s image of greed with Shakespeare’s reflection on Shylock’s materialism, via a close reading of Max Weber’s idea of rationality and modern notions of money as status.

We anticipate a bright future for [Persephone] and wish [her] the best for [her] future scholarly exploits. [Persephone] is most deserving of the Distinguished Student in Literature Award, and we are grateful to have [her] as a student in our department. We’ll be reading [Persephone’s] writing one day, and probably teaching it.

As far as I understand it, EMU’s Distinguished Student in Literature Award is fairly exclusive; i.e., handed out once per year by the English faculty board to a single student. It is not a cash prize, but recognition of said student’s academic talent by the department, and one that doubles additionally as recommendation, beyond letters. I did not apply for it. Indeed, I had no idea I had even received it; i.e., my then-girlfriend had just dumped me, so I was thoroughly absorbed in the loss of someone special to me I dubbed “my fairy queen” (from having recently read A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Craig Dionne’s Shakespeare course). I set about mourning as I had been taught: writing bad bereavement poems from having studied British Romantic poetry under Laura George, Shakespeare under Craig, eco poetry under Elizabeth Daumer, and Paradise Lost under another professor, among others (I’d recently switched from a linguistics major to an English major, a semester in).

Basically, I had begun delving into my undergrad as intensely as I could; i.e., thoroughly determined to try and numb the pain of heartache, which for me at that point was kind of a new thing. I wasn’t really a dater—had transferred to Eastern after a seven-year hiatus (originally getting my two-year associates from Washtenaw Community College, in 2007). Upon doing so, I suddenly found myself away from home and back in school; i.e., seemingly marooned at the not-so-tender age of 29, only to suddenly fall for a younger zaftig attendee named Constance (not her real name). We’ll explore that story in Volume Three, but the gist goes something like this: sexually frustrated yet surrounded by fresh-out-of-school 18-to-20-year-olds wearing yoga pants, I met Constance during my commute, fell in love, shaved my Marx-style beard (captain frowny face, above), got used for sex, and did anything I could to recover. In short, I married my work.

Let’s just say I spent a lot of time with my professors, afterwards. By making appointments to see them at their offices, I did so to not only better understand the work assigned to me, but do the best work possible for my superiors. I’d also pulled out my brother’s copy of The Hobbit and was reading it again (as I had done to nurse a previous heartache), which gave me the idea to write my essay for Craig Dionne, “Dragon Sickness: the Problem of Greed“ (which he really liked, telling me so while standing side-by-side at the urinals in Pray-Harrold’s upstairs bathroom).

Some time passed—with me working on translating someone else’s graphic novel* for fun—when Sandy Norton stopped me in Pray-Harrold (the building housing Eastern’s English department). She did so to tell me in passing that I had been chosen for an award by the English faculty department. “I don’t care,” I replied, and proceeded to explain how I’d lost my girlfriend and that’s all I cared about at the time (love is blind). “Nicholas, you’re a terrific intellectual and have a great heart,” Sandy replied, holding me by the shoulders. “One step and one day at a time.”

*Midsummer Love: The Erotic Tales of Madikken the Milkmaid (above, 2016), which the original author tried to screw me out of, and which I fought for the rights of the character in 2019 after he tried to bury the project/leave it half-finished. I won, and currently reserve the rights to pursue the project however I wish; i.e., to rewrite and reillustrate the novel as I see fit.

Later, I would say something similar to Christine Neufeld, who told me, “This award’s a big deal! It’s not just something we give out to anyone! With that and your grades, you can go to any school you want! Pick one!” And so I did, planning the rest of 2016 and eventually 2017 (while staying at Sandy’s for part of that time) to go to MMU—the Centre for Gothic Studies in Manchester, England—because I really wanted to study the Gothic (and no place state-side offered a course). Partly, Sandy had mentioned “Gothic” to me, several times—an idea I continued to nurse until I set my heart upon it; i.e., during an independent study crafted and executed under non-tenured lecturer* David Calonne (from Volume Zero):

Working under David Calonne, I was only just learning about the Numinous vis-à-vis Rudolph Otto and H.P. Lovecraft and came across an article by Lilia Melani, “Otto on the Numinous” (2003), citing the Gothic as the quest for the Numinous: “It has been suggested that Gothic fiction originated primarily as a quest for the mysterium tremendum” (source). Something about it appealed to my then-closeted kinkster as having previously been titillated by Cameron, Lovecraft and Nintendo (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write), but also the videogames I was playing at the time: Metroidvania (shortly before I went overseas, my best friend Ginger recommended Axiom Verge and Hollow Knight to me, which I eventually made the topic of my master’s thesis). Eager to go to grad school and learn more about this exciting thing called “the Numinous,” I looked for places that taught “the Gothic” and was directed by various educators to MMU (source)

*Because Eastern was constantly milking its tenured professors for time and labor, the latter were more than happy to tell me (in no uncertain terms) to go find someone else. Being non-tenured, David was far less strapped for time; also, his mentioning to me in 2016 of Louis Borges’ “Garden of the Forking Paths” (upon seeing my Cthulhu t-shirt, in class) inspired me to accompany him to his car while chatting about Borges and Lovecraft (the former one of my mom’s favorite authors and the latter someone my grandfather used to read to me as a child). Eventually I learned that Borges was influenced by Lovecraft’s writing—enough, anyways, to write a short story, “There Are More Things” (1975)—whose synchronistic relationship I explored while giving a symposium talk on both men vis-à-vis Frederic Jameson: “EMU 2017 Symposium Script: Frederic Jameson and the Art of Lying” (2017).

Unbeknownst to me at the time, this entire process comprised a series of then-unfortunate-events-but-eventually-happy accidents. Basically I had attended my graduation ceremony in December 2016, but learned in early 2017 that I wouldn’t be receiving my diploma that April: I actually needed four more credits to graduate than had previously been told to me by the English department! Thanks to a miscommunication between said department and the general college (who was trying to milk me for money by having me take expensive gym classes, short notice), I had to find the credits needed to graduate after having already planned my trip to Manchester! The ensuing independent study with David saw me writing the paper, “Method in His Madness: Lovecraft, the Rock-and-Roll Iconoclast and Buoyant Lead Balloon” (2017), which inspired me to pursue the Numinous (as a subject of study) all the way to the faraway, magical city… of Manchester, England (fun fact: I originally went there determined to study under Xavi Reyes and do scholarship for S.T. Joshi’s Lovecraft journal, but after dealing with both men, I decided to write about Metroidvania, instead)!

Think of the award letter, then, as a statement of merit—one supplied by older wizards giving this gay little hobbit a much-needed kick in the pants (or that awesome twister plucking Dorothy Gale from her Kansas farm before sending her magically off to Oz). It inspired me just enough to keep going, thus have an adventure (or three) worth writing about. After a fairly long back-and-forth (re: Quora), I flew out on September 11th, 2017, to start my journey. While there, the fortuitous nature of my delay became clear to me: I met my second ex (re: Zeuhl, from my book series), dating them the entire stay and afterwards… only to have them leave me for a crush of ten years, who they’d marry spontaneously in 2019 (a month after I returned from a IGA [International Gothic Association] conference in Chicago: “Always More: A History of Gothic Motion from the Metroidvania Speedrunner“)!

(source: “Welcome to IGA 2019: Gothic Terror, Gothic Horror”)

It wasn’t all bad. Yes, Zeuhl abandoned me and expected my loyalty afterwards. All the same, they still taught me loads about non-binarism, trans people and queer culture; introduced me to Foucault, Dennis Cooper and Derrick Jarman, and set up this website for me; and—for better or worse—also showed me some dating tips and tricks (about fucking online) that led me to meeting my third and fourth exes (Jadis and Cuwu, for those of you keeping track). While that sounds understandably terrible, it proved essential towards my development as a postgrad; i.e., I continued my research on Metroidvania while on lockdown during Covid, and began networking for what ultimately became my Sex Positivity book project. Reeling from trauma and hard-fought knowledge, I set about pursuing the project in earnest, July 2022 (after Cuwu left me for a dog trainer also named Nicholas* with a similar sized penis); writing initially about TERFs in media, I quickly expanded Sex Positivity to a concept I dubbed “Gothic Communism” (source: “My Logo for Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism!” 2023), and to Metroidvania as I researched it.

*I tentatively came out as trans on June 1st, 2022, but made it official on August 7th (source: “Coming out as Trans!”). Sex Positivity began in earnest, July 22nd, 2022 (source: “Sex Positivity versus Sex Coercion, or Gothic Communism: Manifesto”). I chose “Persephone” as my new name—not after the Greek goddess of death (though that is cool), but from the kung fu maids in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2003). The idea was to camp Communism with Metroidvania, but also queer studies at large (re: “Making Marx Gay,” 2024). “We camp canon because we must!”

Summarizing Persephone’s Metroidvania Praxis

Despite playing Metroidvania my whole life (e.g., “Super Metroid and Why It Matters (to Me),” 2020), and having met David Calonne in 2016, my work on the genre technically started on January 2018; i.e., when I chose the topic (and supervisors) for my master’s thesis (and landed on Metroidvania instead of Lovecraft). By October 2023, I had written my PhD, which discussed the evolution of the term as I understood it, and how I wanted to apply it to my ongoing work, post-postgrad (from Volume Zero):

Before the thesis proper, my essay “Notes on Power” discussed the paradox as being the performative nature of power doubled, including monsters but also their decaying lairs as monumental sites of immense, god-like power dressed up through the Gothic language of the imaginary past; the Metroidvania is a Gothic castle full of Gothic monsters, but also Gothic ghosts (echoes) of older and older castles reaching out from novels and cinema into videogames. Regardless of the medium, though, Clint Hockings’ adage, “Seek power and you will progress” (source: “Ludonarrative Dissonance,” 2007) means something altogether different depending how you define power as something to seek, including unequal arrangements thereof. As a child, teenager and woman, I sought it through the palliative Numinous in Gothic castles of the Neo-Gothic tradition carried over into videogames (which I learned about in reverse: videogames, followed by the Numinous/mysterium tremendum as introduced to me by Dr. David Calonne). Of these, I explored their Numinous territories in response to my own lived trauma and subsequent hypersexuality—i.e., as things I both related to the counterfeit with and sought to reclaim the counterfeit from as a tool to understand, thus improve myself and the world by reclaiming the castle as a site of interpretative Gothic play (of kinks, fetishes, and BDSM); i.e., this book that you’re reading right now is a “castle” to wander around inside: a safe space of exquisite “torture” to ask questions about your own latent desires and guilty thoughts regarding the “barbaric” exhibits within as putting the ghosts out from my past on display (the Gothic castle and its intense, “heavy weather” theatrics generally being a medieval metaphor for the mind, body and soul, but also its extreme, buried and/or conflicting emotions and desires: a figurative or sometimes literal plurality depending on the person exploring the castle) [source].

In short, Metroidvania are yet-another place to camp canon with in the Neo-Gothic style (to put “Gothic” [the historical late medieval period, aka the Renaissance] in quotes, faking and camping it); i.e., by fabricating giant imaginary worlds to explore a variety of things during ludo-Gothic BDSM, but especially imperiled emotions and Numinous sensations, monomythic intimations of tyrannical regression, concentric environments and illusions (mise-en-abyme, or castles-in-castles/”the belly of the beast”), and various anachronistic, psychosexual devices conducive to liberation through calculated risk: as a complicated, warring matter of performative imprisonment and escape without exit, told playfully in “Gothic” space-and-time. It’s what Bakhtin and I call “castle narrative,”

Toward the end of the seventeenth century in England, a new territory for novelistic events is constituted and reinforced in the so-called “Gothic” or “black” novel—the castle (first used in this meaning by Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto, and later in Radcliffe, Monk Lewis and others). The castle is saturated through and through with a time that is historical in the narrow sense of the word, that is, the time of the historical past […] the traces of centuries and generations are arranged in it in visible form as various parts of its architecture […] and in particular human relationships involving dynastic primacy and the transfer of hereditary rights. […] legends and traditions animate every corner of the castle and its environs through their constant reminders of past events. It is this quality that gives rise to the specific kind of narrative inherent in castles and that is then worked out in Gothic novels (source: The Dialogic Imagination, 1981).

but which I—since my master’s thesis—have tried to take beyond novels or cinema and into Metroidvania as, itself, not restricted to the computer screen (re: Zimmerman’s magic circle); i.e., as what Jasper Juul would call “half-real,” but with a twist—not between fiction and the rules, as he argues, but as I argue: between fiction and non-fiction, onstage and off, during ludo-Gothic BDSM while negotiating power for ourselves versus the bourgeoisie. Capital abuses Gothic media to foster illusions that reinforce and perpetuate Capitalist Realism during the neoliberal era (the time of videogames); we learn from these refrains (re: Tolkien and Cameron’s High Fantasy and Metroidvania/shooter) to camp canon, thus break Capitalist Realism with: to imagine a better world beyond capital while inside it; i.e., while using neo-medieval language often concerned with our world’s end as suggested by previous imperial collapse (and encroaching barbarism) “faked with intent.” The Otranto manuscript, for instance, was originally presented as a historical artifact that Walpole “discovered” and passed off as “genuine” (admitting it was fake, a year later). So often, the ancient castle shows up like an alien vessel (the liminal hauntology of war), becoming something to face and understand our smaller place inside a larger cannibalizing structure: capital’s boom-or-bust, dressed up as “Gothic.” It’s a found document, intimating destruction as something to avoid by fucking with it “in small.”

Through the state, things never change; through us, Gothic reinvention changes the historical-material future tied to the past as, to some degree, imaginary and playful, thus potent through its connection to our labor having infinite value the state will try to exploit through fantasy. All Metroidvania work like this; i.e., they summon what resists discovery yet can never fully disguise itself, then gives us the awesome, torture-dungeon means to articulate that however we like, and in ways that are easy enough to understand (through thresholds and tolerances we can change, generally through exposure to “pain” and “fear” in campy forms). Furthermore, abjection, chronotopes, hauntology and cryptonymy are all major Gothic theories, and whose praxial usage (among others) I summarize for someone on r/Metroidvania regarding Metroidvania as “Gothic” (and which I’ve proofread slightly here):

As for “Gothic,” it means many different things, and concerns just as much a mode of expression as an aesthetic or specific thesis argument (the two were not separate, in the Neo-Gothic period). It boils down to the excitement from interrogating a lineage of “Gothic” things; i.e., a palimpsestuous voice of fakery and the neo-medieval taboos associated most famously with Horace Walpole and The Castle of Otranto (1764): the first Gothic novel, whose effect survives in Metroidvania doing something similar through a different media type (videogames versus novels of the Ancient Romance-meets-quotidian). I’ll give you a taste of things in relation to my own work.

My master’s thesis, for example, essentially argued that, despite being “speed games” that can be played a variety of ways, Metroid-style Metroidvania are built for that due to their maze-like space; i.e., their metaplay upholds a Gothic effect; e.g., Radcliffe’s distinctions of terror and horror*, Bakhtin’s chronotope and the saturation of a “black castle” with through-and-through reminders of the historical past (dynastic primacy and hereditary rites), and Chris Baldrick’s own notion of Gothic effect from his introduction to The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (2009): “For the Gothic effect to be attained, a tale should combine a fearful sense of inheritance in time with a claustrophobic sense of enclosure in space, these two dimensions reinforcing one another to produce an impression of sickening descent into disintegration” (source).

*From “On The Supernatural In Poetry” (1826, published posthumously):

Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them […] and where lies the great difference between terror and horror but in the uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreaded evil? (source).

A good rule of thumb is, the Gothic rules its narratives through proximity with power, obscurity and decay as something to “quest for” in a variety of stories; i.e., Rudolph Otto’s the Numinous, aka the mysterium tremendum. Jerrold Hogle takes this further, arguing how “Gothic,” since the Neo-Gothic period of the 1700s, furthers Kristeva’s abjection process through a middle-class fear-fascination relationship with the imaginary past (re: “The Gothic Ghost of the Counterfeit and the Process of Abjection,” 2012; referenced through Dave West’s “Implementation of Gothic Themes in The Gothic Ghost of the Counterfeit,” 2023); i.e., the ghost of the counterfeit (from my book series glossary): “this abject reality or hidden barbarity is a hauntological process of abjection that, according to David Punter in The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day (1980), ‘displaces the hidden violence of present social structures, conjures them up again as past, and falls promptly under their spell’ (source). I would add that it is a privileged, liminal position that endears a sheltered consumer to the barbaric past as reinvented as consumable.”

For Hogle and me, then, the Gothic is rooted in fakery as a poetic, theatrical means to interrogate the present arrangements of power and illusion (the status quo and Capitalist Realism); i.e., through hauntological (retro-future) poetics, cryptonymy as a matter of concealment pointing to oppressed materials (darkness visible), abject (us-versus-them) content, and the chronotope* speaking to ancient revenge (Gothicists fear a return of the imaginary past tied to present structures). Metroidvania have all these devices, though each arrangement is different: “This castle is a creature of chaos; it may take many different incarnations.” Even so, the palimpsest is there, haunting each variation with older has-beens and new possibilities alike.

*I refer to these constantly throughout my book series (often vis-à-vis Castricano’s cryptomimesis and Hogle’s “narrative of the crypt”; re: from Castricano’s 2001 book of the same name, and Hogle’s “The Restless Labyrinth: Cryptonomy in the Gothic Novel,” 1980). Refer to Sex Positivity‘s Paratextual Documents page to see them outlined in full.

In a nutshell, the Gothic is a place to regress, in neo-medieval language we can play with; i.e., doing so with ludo-Gothic BDSM and Metroidvania helping workers interrogate the decay of the present space and time (and presence of trauma): vis-à-vis ongoing but repressed socio-material issues in and out of themselves; e.g., Ellen Ripley and settler colonialism in the Alien franchise (the language of Amazons and Grendel’s mother, from Beowulf onwards). There’s also the idea of mappable (cartographic) space in Metroidvania as “terrifying”; i.e., per Manuel Aguirre’s infernal concentric pattern upending Campbell’s monomyth: “[…the infernal concentric pattern has] in Gothic one and the same function: to destabilize assumptions as to the physical, ontological or moral order of the cosmos [… It is like a Mandelbrot set:] finite, and yet from within we cannot reach its end; it is a labyrinth that delves ‘down’ instead of pushing outwards” (source: “Geometries of Terror, 2008).

[…] To conclude, Metroidvania—regarding Metroid and Castlevania, onwards—is inherently Gothic because all of these devices are in effect, be that spatially, thematically and/or textually per the ludo-aesthetic arguments taking place (through play, appearance and expression; e.g., fighting or surviving monsters not just as literal things, but a staged theatre evoking mood—Walpole’s gloomth or [Creed’s] monstrous-feminine, for instance). They breathe power and decay to interrogate both the end of nuclear (“Roman”) mastery (the fall of the king and patrilineal descent tied hauntologically to Capitalism), and the expected, subsequent rise of anxiety through doomed inheritance. Inside the Imperial Core—among a displaced, projected tomb thereof—the latter’s unearthing or otherwise sudden appearance, like Dracula’s castle, speaks to apocalypse (revelation), survival and taboos in the presence of fearsome power abjected onto state enemies or doubles; i.e., the “exquisite torture” of what cannot immediately kill us, mid-fantasy, yet speaks paradoxically to things caused by capital (and its inherent inequities, division and alienation) that most certainly can; e.g., rape fears, cannibalism, live burial, and so on (source).

Capital alienates and sexualizes everything. The whole point of my PhD, then, is to combine a polity of Gothic theories and poetics that—once reunited with, during the dialectic of shelter and the alien learning through reinvention and play—challenge capital, including Metroidvania; i.e., in a holistic manner conducive to universal liberation; re: through Gothic theatre and play using Metroidvania during ludo-Gothic BDSM to achieve praxial catharsis for workers by dismantling the state with Promethean spaces of play (reversing the monomyth [thus profit] during the infernal concentric pattern, chasing the fire of the gods). All these theories are at work, but I often stress or focus on them differently throughout my book series. That’s essentially “the gist” of it, here, and all we have time to outline refer to my essays from “Further Reading” for a more detailed exploration of these topics vis-à-vis Metroidvania).

And that’s a quick crash course on Metroidvania and how I conceived it, from 2017 to 2023 (and beyond)! It’s as much a story about my life, “there and back again,” as it is my academic ideas in isolation; i.e., my work is holistic and doesn’t try to separate academic concepts from everyday life. Instead, it tries to synthesize the two, combining them and cultivating good daily social-sexual habits to best achieve praxial catharsis: to engender rebellion and break Capitalist Realism with ludo-Gothic BDSM (re: Volume One).

Rebellion is a question of effort over time, for which my work on/with Metroidvania certainly qualifies; i.e., it didn’t spring into existence, ex nihilo, but took considerable effort, information and energy exerted on/coming from me over an extended time period. Furthermore, I don’t expect my thoughts on Metroidvania as a vector for this process to magically “convince” people, overnight—education doesn’t work like that, and those in Plato’s cave will eagerly attack those coming in “from outside” (re: The Matrix‘ blue pill/red pill analogy, which sadly has been co-opted by fascist groups, like all punk culture has). Instead, if my mistakes and breakthroughs (such as they are) help people think more critically about media—i.e., to raise emotional/Gothic intelligence and class, culture and racial awareness about the world through said media (re: Volume One)—then frankly it was time well spent! It’s my contribution to the Cause, one I don’t have to convince everyone about; I just have to put something out there that makes some kind of difference. Even if it “doesn’t work” and only directs people’s interest and money towards the other workers I collaborate with (see: “Acknowledgments“), that is still a good thing. Burning Rome is a group effort and stripping is not consent; tip your sex workers (re: “Book Sample, Volume One: ‘Paid Labor,'” 2024)!

(artist: Fired Up Stilettos)

Metroidvania (definitions)

The definitions “Metroidvania as closed space” and “Metroidvania” (in pink) chronicle my entire research on Metroidvania; they can be found in my book glossaries, but also on my old blog (“From Master’s to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania,” 2025).

Metroidvania has multiple definitions. Here, Persephone supplies the most important (chief among them being her own, of course); re (from Sex Positivity‘s glossary):

Metroidvania

A type of Gothic videogame, one involving the exploration of castles and other closed spaces in an ergodic framework; i.e., the struggle of investigating past trauma as expressed through the Gothic castle and its monstrous caverns (which is the author poetically hinting at systemic abuses in real life). Scott Sharkey insists he coined the term (source tweet: evilsharkey, 2023)—ostensibly in the early 2000s while working with Jeremy Parish for 1-UP.com:

However, the term was probably being used before that in the late ’90s to casually describe the 1997 PSOne game, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night; records of it being used can be found as early as 2001 (this Aria of Sorrow Amazon review is from 2003, below).

So whereas “survival horror” was often used in official published material (and as early as 1999)

“Capcom made up the survival horror genre because the company didn’t feel that the Resident Evil games really fit in any existing category” (PSM 58).

this worked because it all belonged to Capcom. Conversely “Metroidvania” was effectively the combination of two IPs owned by different Japanese companies, Nintendo and Konami. For that reason, Jeremy Parish explained to me (many years later—in 2019, below), the term was almost* never printed in any official capacity during the 1990s and early 2000s:

*”Almost” being the key word, here. Discussions of it were being printed in some capacity—just never to sell games. Instead, they were done to turn one’s noses up at grassroots language; e.g., Game Informer Magazine: “For Video Game Enthusiasts,” Volume 16, Issues 9-12 (2006): “Though some jaded [emphasis, me] gamers dub Symphony’s gameplay formula ‘Metroidvania’ due to its resemblance to Nintendo’s beloved franchise…” (source). Published sources then and now (or those nursing a print-only nostalgia; e.g., Parish) have always treated the term with weird disdain, and describe anyone who used it as “jaded” (except Parish and company, of course—classic double standard, there).

By 2006, though, Parish explains how he’d written a personalized definition; i.e., for a series of blog posts at 1-UP.com, which he archived for years afterwards on his now-defunct website, GameSpite:

“Metroidvania” is a stupid word for a wonderful thing. It’s basically a really terrible neologism that describes a videogame genre which combines 2D side-scrolling action with free-roaming exploration and progressive skill and item collection to enable further, uh, progress. As in Metroid and Koji Igarashi-developed Castlevania games. Thus the name (source: “GameSpite | Compendium of Old and Useless Information,” 2012).

Jeremy has since removed the archive (and it’s not on the Wayback Machine). However, during our conversation, his baffling disdain for the word was in full force (no doubt inspired by its vague, umbrella, grassroots qualities). He seemed annoyingly blasé about it, too—acting as Metroidvania’s de facto minter/singular representative while, at the same time, completely disowning it; i.e., seemingly embarrassed by it while pushing towards physical publication (of his admittedly fine book series, Works*): utterly convinced that Metroidvania was worthless, disinterested in its theoretical aspects—and ever-the-archivist in love with the printed word and profit motive—largely preferred the value of anything canonized by the two parent companies. In other words, he couldn’t care less, yet seemed determined to bury the concept and have me print that, for all he cared:

*The physical copies are spiffy enough, but you can see the entirety of it—narrated by Parish, himself—on his YouTube channel. The “Jeremy Parish Fan Club” webpage even organizes the long-running series not just by book, but by episode per game per book. It’s pretty comprehensive and consistent, if meat-and-potatoes.

(source: Reddit, “From Master’s to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania,” 2025)

Jeremy did not appreciate what I wrote about him and his work as an archivist, or his lack of anything intellectual to add through his work. He seemed convinced that I’d approached him in bad faith, only to drag him six years later while plotting about it, ahead of time! How dastardly. The truth is, I was fairly indifferent towards him at the time, and didn’t get around to even delving into my research concerning him until about eight months ago (re: “Modularity and Class,” 2024). But the more I looked into his work and opinions, the more I found them to be lacking on multiple fronts. I think it says something to his character/thin skin that, upon receiving valid criticism (positive and negative), he insinuates I “planned it all from the start” and merely “wanted clout” (despite waiting six years to publish my findings and not tagging him at all, on social media; i.e., he wandered into the subreddit merely to whine that I didn’t aggrandize him). My dude, if I suddenly realize I don’t like the work you do over half a decade after speaking with you, you can’t really begin to argue what my intentions were at the time (white straight male fragility, amirite?). Go soak your head! —Perse

Ignoring my personal feelings about Jeremy (and his weird, hipster/weeb’s vendetta against Metroidvania [and allergy for portmanteaus] by trying to eliminate and discredit a phrase he didn’t even invent), he was absolutely right about one thing: that “Metroidvania” was never used in any official capacity through the ’90s or early ’00s; it was purely a grassroots term. In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that “Metroidvania” saw wider use in the Internet’s indie market: PC Gamer (Tom Senior’s “The Best Metroidvania Games on PC, 2022), Engadget (Richard Mitchell’s “‘Metroidvania’ Should Actually Be ‘Zeldavania,'” 2014), Game Developer (Christian Nutt’s “The Undying Allure of the Metroidvania,” 2015), Giant Bomb (“Search Action*,” 2024) and Wired (Bo Moore’s “An Anime-Inspired Platformer…” 2015).

*The Japanese term for “Metroidvania,” demonstrating how—even in 2024 (the last time Giant Bomb updated their post)—Japanese audiences and authors avoid using the term.

(source: “Retronauts episode 104: Chronicling metroidvania [lower-case, them]” (2018)

Since then, Parish and Sharkey have continued discussing the term throughout the years, always taking credit for “Metroidvania” while oddly disparaging it in the same breath; e.g., The Retronauts Jeremy Parish, Scott Sharkey of 1UP and Chris Kohler “discussing an obsolete video game sub genre: ‘Metroidvania'” (source, reupload: Rumblfish, 2008), or “Retronauts episode 104” (above) insisting Metroidvania is “a genre near and dear to the hearts of the Retronauts East crew” while, again, knocking and outlawing* it every chance they could before, during and after this point. It’s like watching a bunch of abusive husbands battering their housewife, then love bombing her to death. It’s very weird behavior (what we fags call “the Straights,” and which I describe further as “white straight guy disease”; i.e., the kind of mean-spirited and cold, calculating invigilation behaviors exhibited by smug Egyptologists: calmly dissecting Cairo and putting its corpse parts in jars after Napoleon came and raped the city to hell and back).

*A petulant, entitled and prescriptive trend shared by others—e.g., Joshua Rivera (“Let’s talk about one of my least favorite words in the video game lexicon: metroidvania”; source: “Stop Calling Games ‘Metroidvania,'” 2019)—but actually valued by Koji Igarashi:

When Igarashi took the reins of the Castlevania series, one of the team’s primary goals was to increase the amount of time that players would spend with the game. Several options were considered, including adjusting the difficulty or changing the ending of the game to promote multiple plays. In the end, the team decided to increase the amount of exploration.

“We really wanted to extend the life of the game,” said Igarashi, “and the one game that popped up in our heads was Legend of Zelda, an exploration-filled action game. Pretty much our entire team, including myself, were huge fans of the game, and we wanted to make something very similar. So now you know the origin of inspiration actually wasn’t Metroid.”

Even so, Igarashi is happy that his Castlevania games are associated with Metroid, although he didn’t actually learn of the term “Metroidvania” until around two years ago, when he noticed fans posting about it on Facebook. “I like the name and I respect it,” said Igarashi, “and I like the meaning behind it. It fits very well, so I’m actually kind of honored that Metroid, the name, is attached to Castlevania, and that it morphed into this one word, so I like it very much.”

Of course, back in the late 1990s when Igarashi and his team were creating Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – the game that established today’s familiar formula – the term Metroidvania didn’t exist. So, what did they call it? As Igarashi told us during the Q&A session, it wasn’t very flashy. “We didn’t really have a code name for it. It was very basic and plain and we just called it ‘2D exploration action game.’ There was really nothing special about it, so there you go” (source: Mitchell’s “‘Metroidvania’ Should Actually Be ‘Zeldavania,'” 2014).

Yeah, and according to Larry the Architect (from Will Farrell’s spoof of The Matrix: Revolutions, 2003), Frogger (1981) was originally supposed to be called “Highway Crossing Frog.” Doesn’t mean it was a good idea (“Search Action” isn’t any better)!

My own postgrad research (re: “Mazes and Labyrinths”) has expanded/narrowed the definition quite a bit:

*Exploration pertains to the deliberate navigation of space beyond that of obvious, linear routes—to search for objects, objectives or secrets off the beaten path (source).

Also from “Mazes and Labyrinths”:

Mazes and Labyrinths: I treat space as essential when defining Metroidvania. Mazes and labyrinths are closed space; their contents exist within a closed structure, either a maze or a labyrinth. A classical labyrinth is a linear system with one set, unicursal path towards an end point; a maze is a non-linear system with multiple paths to an end point [classical texts often treated the words as interchangeable].

Metroidvania, etymology: As its most basic interpretation, Metroidvania is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania, specifically “Metroid” + “-vania.” However, the term has no singular, universally-agreed-upon definition. Because I focus on space, my definitions—of the individual portmanteau components—are as follows:

“Metroid” =/= the franchise, Metroid; “Metroid” = that franchise’s unique treatment of closed space—the maze.

“-vania” =/= the franchise, Castlevania; “castlevania” equals that franchise’s unique treatment of closed space—the labyrinth.

At the same time, “Metroid,” or “metro” + “-oid” means “android city.” “Castlevania” or “castle” + “-vania” means “other castle,” “demon castle,” or “castle Dracula.” The portmanteau, “Metroidvania” ≈ “android city” + “demon castle” + “maze” + “labyrinth.”

Further Distinctions: There are further ways to identify if a Metroidvania space is a maze or not. As I explain in my 2019 YouTube video, “Metroidvania Series #2: Mazes and Labyrinths“:

What ultimately determines a Metroidvania’s maze-ness are three sequences: the start, the middle, and the end. The start is what I consider to be the collection of essential items—power-ups you’ll need to use for the entire game. Mid-game is the meat of the experience. The end sequence makes the win condition available to the player.

I mention item collection relative to these sequences because they are a core element of Metroidvania play, hence determine what kind of space the player is dealing with. In Metroid, for example, the Morph Ball, Bomb and Missiles are essential, and the player can acquire all of them rather quickly. Apart from those, however, there are few items you actually need to complete the game. One of them is Ice Beam, which is required to kill metroids, thus gain access to Mother Brain (the game’s end condition). Large portions of the game can be played without it, though. Like many Metroid power-ups, it is a mid-game collectible.

Item collection allows the player to leave the start and enter the middle. This section, I argue, determines whether or not a Metroidvania is a maze. If the majority of the game allows for sequence breaks, RBO (reverse boss order) and low-percent, then it is a maze; if not, it is a labyrinth. A Metroidvania can be either (source: the original script on Google Docs).

In terms of appearance, a Metroidvania’s audiovisual presentation can range from retro-future sci-fi to Neo-Gothic fantasy. Nevertheless, their spaces typically function as Gothic castles; replete with hauntological monsters, demons, and ghosts, they guide whatever action the hero must perform when navigating the world and dealing with its threats.

[…] The Metroidvania Spectrum

Apart from newer games, my definition also highlights the spectrum actualized and inhabited by older titles over the past thirty-odd years:

Castlevania — Castlevania-style — cross-franchise hybrids — Metroid-style — Metroid

The extreme poles are represented by either parent franchise. These franchises appeared in 1986, and introduced a signature space to videogames:

- - Metroid space = nonlinear, multi-directional mazes, with chimeric boss keys
  - Castlevania space = linear, single-direction labyrinths, with singular end-stage boss gates

More towards the middle, you have franchise sequels or spiritual successors whose space behaves similarly to either parent franchise:

- - Castlevania-style Metroidvania, which borrow spatially from Castlevania
  - Metroid-style Metroidvania, which borrow spatially from Metroid
  - Cross-franchise hybrids, which borrow spatially from both parents

Since 1986, videogame mazes and labyrinths have generally become associated with monsters and locational phobias (re: live burial, isolation, exposure). Mazes and labyrinths are structurally fundamental; Metroidvania developers can draw upon them (and their supernatural inhabitants) without pointedly referencing Metroid or Castlevania. You’ll know it when you see it; you might even call it something else (ibid.).

Table of Contents

Persephone’s Academic History

Persephone’s Work on Metroidvania

The History of Formulating Metroidvania

Summarizing Persephone’s Metroidvania Praxis

Metroidvania (definitions)

Further Reading by Persephone (on Metroidvania)