I started to use the Japanese term “search action” rather than Metroidvania unironically, sue me.
Yeah, it sounds silly, but it’s descriptive and feels less limiting to me than “a game that looks like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night”. I love those two, but lots of games do the big interconnected map with ability gates, and they’re not that close to them.
Some of those even don’t have a map made of blue rectangles! Only like 90% of them.
Really, if we can do with genre names that are not built like that in general, all the better. I’m not going to the library to read a FrankenDracula or a DuneFoundation or whatever.