A Landscape of Knowledge Games

Summary

Against 'Metroidbrania': a Landscape of Knowledge Games 12 Nov, 2025 Cards on the table: I hate the term 'metroidbrania'. I think many people who use the term seem to hate it, too; as Kate Gray writes on a Nintendo Life feature listing some of these games, the word "makes [her] feel like someone with a hobby so dorky that [she] can't talk about it with normal people." I'd put it forth that the term doesn't just sound dorky, and it's not just hard to explain (given that first you have to explain what a metroidvania is – itself a fraught bit of terminology). I'd say it's all but useless, too. If you duckduckgo for 'metroidbrania', the main results are three listicles that'll give you the following corpus of games: Outer Wilds Return of the Obra Dinn The Sinking CIty Sherlock Holmes (as in the whole Frogwares series) Heaven's Vault The Forgotten City Overboard! Her Story, Telling Lies Sorcery! (???) Tunic The Witness A Monster's Expedition Animal Well Myst Blue Prince Antichamber Leap Year Taiji Gone Home (!???!?) Rain World Fez Chants of Sennaar You'll never convince me that these games form a coherent genre, or even that you can group them under a general umbrella term. At best, most of those are what I'd call "thinky games" – a broad aggregation of deduction, knowledge, and puzzle games that would include everything from Zork to Myst to cryptic crosswords to Ultros. I think the reason why is that the term was originally coined to mean "games with open-ended exploration" – similar to a metroidvania – but using knowledge gating instead of traditional ability gating. In a "true" metroidbrania, what you know is the only real form of progression; a player who already knows all the secrets can start a fresh save and immediately go through the motions of beating the game, skipping over most of the game. The problem there is that there's very few games that actually meet this description. Out of the list above, the only ones I'd put in that list are Animal Well, Outer Wilds...