No need to apologize. My advice is to get some metroidvanias and play them (Metroid, Castlevania, Hollow Knight). Play the jam submissions, there's a few that really embody the classic metroidvania games, like Hickory and A Clockwork Kumquat. The others are great too but they're either experimenting with different concepts or are not complete enough to showcase the genre (my entry falls into that category unfortunately)