Sarcasm aside, whatever the main genre of the 2D Zelda games is, it doesn’t really have a name, or certainly not one that’s caught on with the general public. I actually tried discussing this subject a few years ago, and in the time since, I feel like the style has proliferated even more, with a ton of new indie games falling into that bucket. I think that’s great, as a big fan of the genre, but it would certainly be nice to have an easier way to refer to that type of game, for a variety of reasons.
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So let’s start with my proposed name from a few years ago: Top Down Action-Adventure, or TDAA (I think I’ve been using Top Down A-A in the tags on this site too). In retrospect, I don’t dislike that name. Part of me thinks it’s a little wordy now, but that’s part of why you can just abbreviate it to TDAA. After all, it’s not like people usually spell out “First Person Shooter” or “Role Playing Game”, they just write (and even usually say) “FPS” or “RPG”. It’s fine.
It does feel a little overly specific, maybe, but those are all of the elements that make a 2D Zelda game a Zelda game. Take away the adventure part and there are a whole lot of dungeon crawlers and hack-and-slash games and such that apply; remove the action and you could technically include stuff like the 2D Pokémon games or Sokoban/block-pushing puzzle games in the genre. Those were essentially my arguments last time, and I think they mostly hold true now?
But I have actually played a few games from last year that made me reconsider that, though. Those games were Furniture & Mattress LLC’s ‘Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure’ and Cicada Games’ ‘Isles of Sea & Sky’. Writing reviews that cover a single game really in-depth has been a bit tough for me, so instead, let me work some discussion and recommendations of them into a larger related topic; that might be a little easier.
First, ‘Arranger’, the debut work of a small new studio, although if you browsed their site that I linked to, you’ll notice some solid prior credits under their individual belts (including ‘Carto’, ‘Braid’, and ‘Guacamelee 2’). On first glance at any photos of the game, two things immediately come through: the game’s beautiful art style, with a lot of vibrant colors, lush, painterly settings & landscapes, and cartoony character designs that really pop; and you’ve got a little green-wearing protagonist moving through a tile-based fantasy world using swords to fight fantasy monsters. That absolutely seems like a Zelda game, and one with a fantastic sense of style.
Of course, watching even a second of gameplay (including the trailer) IMMEDIATELY shows you that the game plays entirely differently from any 2D Zelda game. See, you don’t actually move your character through the world; you move the world around them to get player character Jemma from place to place. Every map is a separate sliding tile puzzle, where you move each row or column around all together, and everything loops back around once it goes off the side.
So for an example, if you want to interact with a character two spaces to your right, you can’t just mash the “move right” button because the world will move like a conveyer belt underneath both of you, and they’ll remain two spaces to your right. You instead have to rethink your basic movement to get around here; the correct solution here would instead move one row up or down and then move right so you can end up beside your target.
It’s a fun system to navigate through, once you get the hang of it. For instance, after leaving the starting town, you suddenly realize you can quickly warp through parts of the new forest map, because rather than go up fifteen spaces to traverse a long hallway, you can go down one and suddenly loop around to the other end of the line. From there, they introduce new puzzle elements, like static tiles that get in your way, or enemies who have to be defeated by navigating a separate sword tile into them (there’s no items to pick up or inventory to store things; what you need for each map is present somewhere).
It’s a basic idea, but the devs do a good job on coming up with fun iterations on what you can do here. It’s a good game, and the main complaint I have is that it’s a little short. That will probably vary a little by how much you get stumped and how much you hunt for sidequests, but it won’t get much higher than ten hours. Of course, having a game that you can easily complete in the evenings of a regular week is also appealing.
From the gameplay side, I could have probably done with a few more puzzles… but I also am not the one charged with coming up with new iterations and variations on these mechanics, so perhaps that’s easier said than done. And on the whole, it’s probably a little better to cut things short rather than overstay your welcome. Especially since there’s an actual story here, so you do want your players to see it through to the conclusion (Also on the weaker end, I’d describe the story as “generally fine”, maybe a little too familiar at times. But it also did have its good moments, and I can imagine it hitting your emotions well if you’re in the right mindset.). But on the whole, ‘Arranger’ is a very creative game and a good time, so I’m glad I gave it a whirl!
Backtracking to the other path of our original fork in the road, we have “Isles of Sea & Sky. I’m not sure if you clicked through to Cicada Games’ site and saw the trailer there, but here’s a direct link to that trailer if you didn’t. I’m not sure what your first thoughts are on seeing the game in motion, but mine was “this looks like a long-lost Zelda game from the Game Boy”; that era and style meant a lot to me growing up, so I was instantly intrigued (I’m also a sucker for gorgeous pixel art too, so that helped as well).
Of course, there are some obvious departures from that Zelda comparison to help set ‘Isles’ apart, too, from the mythological Polynesian setting to the total lack of any combat. Like, ‘Arranger’ is also a puzzle game first and foremost, but it does essentially make “combat puzzles” where you need to direct a weapon into an enemy to move on.
‘Isles’, meanwhile, is entirely block-pushing puzzles. It’s actually funny, because as I said earlier, part of my goal in trying to find a name for the 2D Zelda-style genre was to find a way to distinguish it from those types of games, but ‘Isles’ proves that they’re also not entirely separate beasts by combining them seamlessly. I suppose it’s like the top-down hack-and-slash or dungeon-crawler games; 2D Zelda games often have combat and dungeons to explore and blocks to push and puzzles to rearrange. But the thing making the genre distinct, what ties all of the games I’m describing together, isn’t having all of those, it’s something else.
Some of that difference is that ‘Isles’ introduces an inventory back into the mix. Whereas ‘Arranger’ would drop new items on you to solve specific puzzles, all of the upgrades in ‘Isles’ are permanent things that you keep on your person. You might see a puzzle early on that seems impossible to solve because it would require, say, walking over a trap, only to later find an item that lets you ignore that type of trap. Oftentimes, this item will be in the same island as the puzzle, calling to mind the Zelda dungeons that drop a new item on you in the middle that opens up the rest of the dungeon for exploration. But occasionally it will even be something you find elsewhere and bring back later.
On a related note, the game is fairly open in how you can explore it too; new islands on the overworld will be gated off by star counts, but once you’ve opened those, you’re free to explore and find side areas. There are major islands that are mostly self-contained, but also plenty of smaller side-islands with only one or two rewards (think the castle secret stars in ‘Mario 64’). And even within the context of the main islands, there’s usually a main throughline to follow to “complete” it, with chances to branch off and find smaller puzzles with their own prizes. You may or may not be able to solve every puzzle you find right when you see it the first time, but backtracking is encouraged and expected.
One concern I often see with this type of game design is “what if I don’t realize I can solve a puzzle and leave it too early”, since that can be a frustrating way to wind up in a dead-end. The solution in ‘Isles’ is “there are generally so many open ends for you to explore that it’s actually tough to become completely stuck”. I actually left the Island labeled 2 because I didn’t understand something kind of major and wound up leaving to look for a new item that I assumed I needed; instead, I found enough Stars to open up Island #3 and completed most of it anyway, before hitting another dead-end that related to what had gotten me stuck on Island #2 and returning with my new info.
Completing everything is a difficult challenge, but you can reach the end of the story and roll credits with less than that (I wasn’t testing the lower end, but I’d imagine it’s somewhere around 70% or so? I went well above the minimum to complete most areas of the map, but there were still usually a handful that stumped me and went unfinished, plus there was one island I more or less left immediately after doing the minimum because I found those puzzles frustrating). There is a story here too, although it’s fairly minimal and opaque, in part because it is completely wordless (much like the puzzles). It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it is compelling enough for what it's going for, and the beautiful pixel art cutscenes are at least a nice reward.
As someone who can be hit-or-miss on block puzzles games, I think ‘Isles of Sea and Sky’ is a pretty great one. The open-endedness is a great way around the potential for dead-ends; whenever I got stuck, there was another thread I could turn to pulling at instead to give myself a break. Items that change how you solve puzzles and allow for backtracking also feel like natural fits for this genre, opening things up in a similar way; I feel like some other game has to have tried something like this before and I’m just not big enough on the field to know about them, but even still, it’s rare enough to be noteworthy even before getting into how well it’s done here. And the story stuff and overworld threading everything together is all fun, since I’m usually not as big on solving puzzles for puzzles’ sake.
Coming here more from the Zelda side of things, it certainly wasn’t the direct successor that I thought it might be from my first impression. But it’s definitely like making the entire game into a series of puzzles from the better entries in the series, and I’m more than happy to recommend it, especially to anyone else interested in those elements! I think the pure puzzle people will like it as well; there are some solid mysteries here, and maybe the story minimum is low enough to be a little easy, but going for 100% will definitely have enough challenges to keep you thinking.
Okay, so with those sorted, playing them got me thinking a little bit about the name again. I wasn’t super happy with Top Down Action-Adventure/TDA-A when I came up with it. It’s fine overall, definitely functional, maybe could be a little snappier… but I always felt like there had to be a better option.
The other thing that got me thinking about this was that I actually have noticed one name for the genre picking up recently… and unfortunately, it’s Metroidvanias.
I don’t think it’s a dominant terminology yet, thankfully, but I definitely have seen several people using it; in fact, I regularly saw ‘Minishoot Adventures’ called one of the “Best Metroidvanias of 2024”, and… Yes, it’s a wonderful game, I played it after seeing it on some of those lists and loved it.* But it’s not a Metroidvania.*
*I’m not going to give ‘Minishoot Adventures’ as full a breakdown as the other two games, given that it’s main twist on the formula doesn’t add as much to the central thesis here. Maybe that can wait for a follow-up on Genre Mash-Ups? There’s something I haven’t discussed in a while.; But who knows when that will come. And besides, I think it is another indie game showcasing the modern growth of the genre, and just how much new voices are exploring and livening up the space. So I’d like to do a quicker shout-out now, while it’s at least a little relevant and before it gets too far away in the rearview mirror.
‘Minishoot Adventures’ is a game by French duo SoulGame Studio with an ingeniously simple premise: what if you took a traditional top-down Zelda game, and changed the player character from a little green swordsman to a little spaceship? It’s so basic that it’s almost shocking that it hasn’t been done before. All combat is changed from sword slashes to twin-stick shooting, all items become thematically-appropriate spaceship upgrades, damsels in distress become your comrade spaceships sending out distress signals, enemies becomes even larger alien-looking ships, defense becomes weaving in-between waves of bullets, and you even get some racing-based challenges to make use of your jet thrusters.
It’s almost comical how much mileage such a simple concept has when you fully commit to it. The combination just feels fresh despite each element being basically ancient, in video game terms. It also helps that the rest of the fundamentals are all so solid: the controls all handle smoothly, power-ups all feel meaningful and rewarding to find, the world’s level design is perfect for a Zelda game, and the game’s clean and bold cartoon-y artstyle perfectly fits the universe, keeping all the action legible while providing environments and ship designs that stand out.
This recommendation feels so short in comparison to the others, but what else can I say? It’s a simple idea that’s exactly what it sounds like, but executed perfectly and explored thoroughly. If that sounds at all appealing to you, then it’s worth checking out, I think!
Look, there’s a lot of overlap between whatever this genre is and Metroidvanias. I’ve noted as much multiple times in the past, including literally shooting down one of my proposed genre names in the past because the terminology didn’t really include a way to differentiate between the two, and I think that’s important.*
*Also, it’s not like there isn’t a long history in this sort of line-drawing between kinda-similar fields when it comes to genre naming; I remember the discussions on Roguelikes versus Roguelites. I think this distinction is at least as worthy of highlighting.
I think my opposition comes down to “what you think the genre of ‘Metroidvania’ conveys”. The similarities between the two of them are obvious. Both of them are much more non-linear, usually with abilities and gear that you unlock to open up the world more and more (often by returning to former dead ends), and more open to exploring or sidequests than more traditional 2D games in similar styles (whether that’s platforming games with a camera from the side or top-down dungeon crawlers and the like).
I think my concerns of combining the two of them come down to two main points. First, I simply think that Platforming is too strong of a component of Metroidvanias as a label to ignore, and I think it’s a useful distinction to keep. This is actually more of an issue for Metroidvanias themselves than TDA-A games; 2D platformers are still, first and foremost, a linear genre.
I love the more exploration-heavy games, but I think it’s hard to argue against that conclusion. Like, just using Switch sales as a quick reference, since that will be relatively standardized (via Wikipedia): ‘Metroid Dread’ has become the best-selling game in the franchise, just passing 3 million sales. Meanwhile, ‘Super Mario Bros. Wonder’ has sold over five times as many copies as ‘Metroid Dread’, to say nothing of ‘Super Mario Maker 2’ (almost triple), or the remakes of ‘DKC: Tropical Freeze’ (about one-and-a-half times) or ‘New Super Mario Bros U’ (over six times). Even ‘Kirby Star Allies’ and ‘Yoshi’s Crafted World’, two titles that have seen fairly middling responses from their series’ fanbases, have apparently outsold ‘Dread’.*
*And I’m not even sure there is a second Metroidvania to add to our consideration here, unless you expand the definition to include the 2D Zelda games (which still sold worse than the 3D ones) or the (also 3D) ‘Metroid Prime Remastered’ (which, sadly, would not crack the top fifty best-sellers on the console even if you doubled its sales). ‘Metroid Prime 4’ is new enough that we haven’t gotten an official sales update, but estimates seem to be “healthy, but probably still below ‘Dread’ for now”. And of course, if we are expanding into the 3D space, on the other side of the equation,‘Super Mario Odyssey’ has sold roughly ten times as many copies as ‘Dread’ or ‘Prime 4’...
But let’s move outside of Nintendo to the indie space, the other major source of 2D Platformers these days. I think the Metroidvania side is much better represented there, but it’s still not like we’re lacking more linear platformers at the top there either, between ‘Shovel Knight’, ‘Celeste’, ‘Pizza Tower’, ‘Spelunky’, ‘Super Meat Boy’, ‘Cuphead’, ‘Limbo’, ‘Braid’... There are some heavy hitters on the non-linear side, like the ‘Hollow Knight’ games or the ‘Ori’ series, but it’s nowhere near as evenly split as I thought it would be from my gut reaction. I feel like Indie platformers have a reputation for being mostly Metroidvanias, but the more that I think about it, I actually wouldn’t be shocked if the top-seller list there was almost as heavily-tiled towards the traditional linear side as Nintendo’s list.
Anyway, my biggest concern is that I think the classification of “Metroidvania” helps keep this subgenre from getting completely overwhelmed by the larger “2D Platformer” parent genre, but my second point is related: I think that some degree of platforming is important to the genre itself. I’ve been thinking about the idea of 3D Metroidvanias for a while, at least as far back as my ‘Blue Fire’ review, and it feels like the genre has started to grow lately; I’ve been sitting on a half-finished recommendation of ‘Psuedoregalia’ for a while now, maybe I’ll finish that one day and hash out my thoughts on the matter even more.
Since 3D worlds are usually much less linear than 2D ones by default, I feel like I see a lot of “this 3D game is non-linear, so is it a Metroidvania?” discussions centered around open world games, and I kind of feel like there needs to be something distinguishing the two labels a little. Like, a lot of open world games will require you to revisit past areas, but it feels different, and less… Metroid-like than your games like ‘Blue Fire’ and ‘Pseudoregalia’. In short, I think the importance of platforming to the gameplay is a big part of that distinction.
That, in turn, has made me even more hesitant to describe 2D games without platforming as Metroidvanias. As I said back in my review of it, I think you could make a case for a top-down game that relies on jumping and navigating different levels, like ‘Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’. Maybe another 2D game will emphasize movement in a different way that feels platformer-esque… but ‘Minishoot Adventures’ had a non-zero amount of that in its gameplay, and it still felt a little too far away for my tastes.
Despite my objections to this specific term/usage, I still agree that this burgeoning area needs a name, I just want it to be something more distinct. I’ve been running through some ideas on that front, and I may as well talk through what’s on my mind:
Top-Down Action-Adventure
This was what I landed on last time, and coming back to it years later… I don’t hate it, but it also hasn’t grown on me in the way that I hoped it would. It’s descriptive, but doesn’t really roll off the tongue. Not to mention that it's really wordy; yeah, you can abbreviate it “TDAA” or “TDA-A”, but that still feels a little long. I was kind of relying on piggybacking off of the pre-existing Action-Adventure part too, which I sometimes see shortened to A-A. I thought that might help with recognition, so that people who were unfamiliar would see the “A-A” part and go “Aha, this is some sort of modifier on the Action-Adventure label!” But that hasn’t really gotten more widespread either, so it’s not doing much here.*
*I also thought there was an outside chance this would happen with the “Top-Down” part, as that’s a tag on Steam and it seemed like it could grow into something common enough that it needed shortening, but alas, no.
All in all, not bad for a first attempt, but I still feel like we can do better.
Search-Action
I’ve heard this term used as a replacement for the name “Metroidvania” before; there’s actually some resistance to the game in discussion and development circles for a few reasons. I can understand it, honestly; I sometimes feel like the name pushes too many other new games in the genre a little too much into the dichotomy of “We either gotta set this in a desolate planet full of hostile lifeforms, or a gothic castle full of fantasy monsters”. And those two choices aren’t necessarily bad, nor ill-fitting of the genre’s mechanics… but some more variety would be nice. And maybe picking more really unique settings would inspire some fun ideas, like new abilities or other innovations. I’m sure there are a lot of other reasons people would prefer a different name.
Despite those misgivings, I also don’t mind “Metroidvania” as a genre name all that much, and honestly, it seems way too entrenched at this point to try. I was going to propose repurposing the “Search-Action” name for this style of game instead since the overlap in the two styles is pretty clear, or even using it for the umbrella term of both styles together. I’d much prefer a more general name serve that purpose than Metroidvania.
But looking into it more, it seems like “Search-Action” is mostly a term from the Japanese side of discussions on the genre, and is generally used as a direct replacement for the term. I don’t know how wide-spread “Search-Action” is over there or how its usage compares to “Metroidvania”, and as someone who doesn’t speak Japanese, I don’t really think I could find all of that out myself. But setting a term up to mean two slightly different things depending on the language or background of the speaker seems like dooming it to fail, so uh, maybe we’ll just leave it where it is.
Zeldalike
This was another idea that I kicked around last time, but ultimately rejected for a few reasons. As mentioned, naming an entire genre after a specific game can indebt it a little too much to that initial game, in a way that might hinder creativity. At least “Metroidvania” is a compound name, pushing you toward either Metroid or Castlevania rather than only one series. The Legend of Zelda already looms so large over this area that it might be better to not encourage it even further.
And moreover: Zelda games have even moved away from this style. Sure, we’ll still occasionally get entries in this style, like ‘Echoes of Wisdom’, but the main line of the series at this point is the more Open World-styled ‘Breath of the Wild’ and ‘Tears of the Kingdom’. If only on a practical level, naming a genre after a series of games that’s been kind of shifting away from that genre for years now seems like a surefire way to confuse people.*
But on the flipside: naming a genre after a major entry in the style sure seems to help a name stick: “Soulslike”, “Roguelike”, shoot, even “Sokoban”, which I didn’t even realize was named for a specific series until researching this piece. And Zelda is a widely-known series, which helps it serve as an easy reference point to help spread the term. It’s not like the 2D entries in the series aren't already a major reference point for this type of game already, so maybe it’s unavoidable and we just need to lean into it.
And since we’re already seeing another “named after a series” genre name seep into the space anyway, maybe this is just the tradeoff that has to be made? I’d honestly prefer to call them “Zeldalikes” over “Metroidvanias” to help maintain the bits that make them unique. Still, that split in 2D versus 3D Zelda games might be worth addressing pre-emptively, to help prevent the same sort of drift in definition that we’re seeing now happening again in the future.
2eldalike
And this is my stupid proposal to retain that distinction between the 2D and 3D Zeldas. Is it a little cheesy? Maybe. Look, you only get so many lucky coincidences like “we need to specify that we mean 2 rather than 3 with our Z-word”, I say take advantage of it. How is it pronounced? Probably just “Zeldalike”, maybe “2DZeldalike (all one word)”. Most of these discussions happen in writing rather than verbally, we can sort that part out over time.
And really, even if it’s just said “Zeldalike”, it’s not the worst thing. Most examples of this style of game that are cropping up are still 2D after all. The 3D entries can just be “3D Zeldalikes” until there are enough of them to merit their own discussion. I’ve seen a few things like that, but it’s not an overflowing crowd just yet.
But on that note, I’m kind of shocked there aren’t more indie games inspired by ‘Ocarina of Time’ and such yet. Maybe it just needs more time? After all, it originally took a little while to get to that point from ‘Mario 64’; meanwhile, the indie game scene even took a few years to get to 3D Platformers from the 2D-heavy years. But the indie 3D scene really feels like it has come into its own lately, so maybe this is the next space that really starts to bloom? Something to keep an eye on the next few years.
Unlocking World
This one was another name I picked up while looking around at competing names for Metroidvania, originally proposed by Robert Green at Game Developer. Again, I don’t know that I like it as a Metroidvania replacement since I like where that term is on the whole. But I do like “Unlocking World” too, and think it could be useful!
Would it be a good way to refer to this style of Top-Down Action-Adventure game that we’re focusing on? Maybe. I do worry that it’s a little too generic to get at what makes this type of game special, but that also makes sense. Like, I’m trying to come up with a name to set this genre apart from Metroidvanias, but instead I’m just repurposing a name that was originally devised to rename Metroidvanias themselves. Of course there’s some tension there, the name is just about a shared feature of the two styles.
I do still like the idea though, and I think the term could still be of use. It might be better just to treat it as a larger umbrella term for a broader range of games, like “platformers” or “shooters” or “racing games”, or something like that. In this case, it would be a sort of “competing design philosophy to Open World Games”. So for example, the term would include all of Metroidvanias and {Top-Down A-A Games} and… er, Metroidbrainias? (I don’t know that I love that term either, but I do get it and understand what it’s going for, at least, so a new name feels less urgent; also, I don’t know that I get to complain about it being too twee, since I proposed “2eldalikes”)
So yeah, I will probably be working the “Unlocking World” concept into my own thinking and writing, but I’m probably not using it as the specific term we’re looking for here today.
Top-Down Metroidvania
Look, I’m not a fan of using “Metroidvania” to describe this type of game, but it may be too late to change the currents on this one, especially for just one person. So this will be my “strategic retreat” position on the matter: if we’re really going to do this, can we at least throw a modifier in there to differentiate things a little? Yeah, if you look on something like Steam, a lot of these games will have both “Top Down” and “Metroidvania” tags, but I’m saying put it all into one thing, “Top Down Metroidvania”. It’s not too dissimilar from how there are “2D Platformer” and “3D Platformer” tags, in addition to labels for each of those elements separately.
I’m not sure what this would mean for classic Metroidvanias, though. I suppose that label is already pulling double duty to some extent, as the class of 3D Metroidvanias grows, but it would feel funny if we needed to retroactively come up with a term for “Actual, Classic Side-Scrolling Metroidvanias” as everything else crowds out the field. This is another reason why I would rather see a separate label entirely, rather than just letting the genre become a supercategory…
Top Down Adventure
I also proposed this one last time before moving in a different direction. One of my concerns back then was that I thought the “Action” part was necessary to include, but as I mentioned this time, I’m moving away from that thinking now. Another benefit I noted last time was that the term was already in use as a tag on itch.io, and I’m happy to report that this usage is still going strong four years later! Organic usage and longevity are both strong points in its favor.
Another big benefit here is that, while the phrase is only slightly less wordy than my “TDA-A” proposal, it does shorten to a three-letter acronym. I waved off length concerns last time since four letters doesn’t seem that much more cumbersome, but I do think “TDA” just looks much better than “TDAA”, for some reason. It also feels like the other big genre abbreviations are usually three letters (RPG, FPS, RTS…), and while I’ll sometimes see two-letter ones catch on (BR, AA, VN…), most of the four-letter ones I can recall seeing regularly are usually modifiers of an existing three-letter one (like ARPG or JRPG). And even in cases where the abbreviation isn’t common, the unabbreviated name seems to land at two or three words (Beat-em-up, point-and-click, LifeSim, Match-3…) that can be shortened into a concise phrase that rolls off the tongue.
Two- or three-word labels and abbreviations really do seem to be where language seems to gravitate to, for whatever reason. You either go for a two-word name or a three word name that can be shortened in some way. The only way you can go longer than that and hope for it to catch on (outside of those aforementioned subdivisions of existing three-letter names) is if you can shorten the name even further (like “MOBA” being pronounceable as a single word, or “Explore Expand Exploit Exterminate” becoming the pithier “4X”).
Either way, shortening to “TDA” feels like a big point in “Top Down Adventure”’s favor, and I think it preserves all the ideas I’d like the name to reference.
The Conclusion?
So which of these is the best? I still don’t know, really. A big part of language is just using different things and seeing what sticks, so it probably will take some time just to see what I settle into. Also, a big part of language is being able to communicate ideas, so other people’s input is helpful.
Just on my own side, though… I think I’m going to try and make “TDA” and “Top-Down Adventure” work for now. I actually feel a lot better about this one than I did with the extra “A” in there, despite being a small change. So that’s the one that I’ll be using in my articles for the foreseeable future as well.
But after talking it through, I also don’t really mind “Zeldalike” or “Top-Down Metroidvania”. If that’s where other people’s language shifts going forward, I’d happily follow suit. I’d take either of them over plain old “Metroidvania”, for sure. Yes, those two genres are similar, but I also think it’s worth maintaining some separation there, both for this genre’s sake and existing Metroidvanias. I’m more committed to that idea than I am to any of these specific terms, so hopefully something else catches on. But until something else steps or my thinking develops in a different direction, I’ll be going with TDA.
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