Progression and learning: an analysis of metroidvania games for education

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze some of the few games found in academic databases that implement the metroidvania subgenre and that were developed and used for educational purposes. This investigation was based on the assumptions of other research that aimed to verify the presence of games of this subgenre in the literature on education, that is, in their relationship with game-based learning. Such research detected few studies on this topic and served as the basis for this work. Furthermore, we sought to understand what in fact constitutes a metroidvania game and carry out a more in-depth analysis of the few papers that were found in the various academic databases consulted. Directly, only seven works met the criteria established in the searches undertaken here and analyzed with greater rigor. Of these papers, three dealt with the concepts of metroidvania games and their application in education and another four dealt with the development of games in the subgenre for learning. During this analysis, it was found that there are interesting and relevant educational potentials in metroidvania games and further investigations into exploring these potentials in an even more comprehensive way are recommended.