This term is a portmanteau derived from two beloved games that arrived on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the mid-1980s, Metroid and Castlevania, and is usually applied to 2D games in which the world is explorable in all directions (as opposed to classic platform games, in which you go from left to right). There are usually secret rooms and areas that can only be accessed once you've found some key or item later on, so players have to mentally map their progress and backtrack when necessary. In this way a good metroidvania world is like a story, with tension, foreshadowing, plants, payoffs and surprise reveals built into the very foundations. Try: Hollow Knight, Axiom Verge, Ori and the Blind Forest. One of the most popular indie game genres, the term roguelike comes from the 1980 game Rogue, originally developed by coders Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman.

With every new generation of consoles and components, video games grow closer and closer to replicating reality. From the glistening sweat on star athletes' faces in sports franchises like "Madden" and "NBA 2K," to the soft swaying of grass in samurai thriller "Ghost of Tsushima," game-makers are always leveraging the latest in granular detail to sell the immersive power of the medium. Tristan Cooper, who owns the Twitter account "Can You Pet the Dog?," never set out to create a social media juggernaut. Rather, he was just trying to point out what he felt was a common quirk of many high-profile games: While many featured dogs, wolves and other furry creatures as hostile foes of the protagonist, those that did feature cuddly animal friends rarely let you pet them. Cooper says the account was particularly inspired by his early experience with online shooter "The Division 2." "'The Division 2′s' apocalyptic streets were rife with frightened dogs that you could not console or help in any way," he wrote in an email to The Washington Post.

The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco is a valuable opportunity for games journalists to get their hands on forthcoming titles, and in a small room in a hotel near the Moscone Center in San Francisco, that's exactly what's happening. This particular room is packed with new Nintendo Switch consoles, on which press members play a handful of specially selected games, some never played by the public before. Instead, they're a curated selection of titles made by independent developers. This is the "Nindies," a showcase that's part of Nintendo's surprising push to make independent games a cornerstone of the Switch. According to Nintendo, 60 indie games will be coming to Switch in 2017--a mixture of original titles and ports from other platforms.

Devolver Digital is rolling out a new patch for its bullet hell roguelike video game "Enter the Gungeon." The PC version of the game already received the Supply Drop update this Thursday, while the PS4 version is getting the free patch next week. According to Eurogamer, the update has already made it to Steam, so PC players can download it free of charge this week. The Supply Drop update is described as colossal, for it comes with a lot of new content. In fact, there are almost 200 new rooms to explore with this update.