Metroidvania - hate the term, love the term, or begrudgingly accept it, the term has come to loosely define games that have some sort of inspirational or mechanical link to Metroid or an era of Castlevania games. Being as games like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night were beloved in the 1990s, those games heavily inspired a lot of independent games made in the past decade.

On Nintendo Switch, a wealth of those types of games have come to the system. Some of them debuted on Switch. Some are ports of games that first debuted on the Wii U or on an Xbox or PlayStation platform. I put together a list of more than 25 games that, to me, are totally worth checking out on Switch if you’re hankering for some form of side-scrolling exploration platformers or, to keep it simple and short, if you’re looking for a new Metroidvania to play. Ranking this list probably would have been painful, so instead, here’s just a bunch of games alphabetically that are all awesome.