Adult game genres

Which genre fits you

Adult game genres are easiest to choose by thinking about the last game you enjoyed and how much time you have. Answer the question that sounds most like you:

• You want a story and don't care about gameplay. Go for a visual novel. You read, choose and follow a route, and many are released in episodes.
• You get bored without goals, maps and a sense of progress. Try an adult RPG. Check whether it is exploration-led or combat-led, because difficulty varies a lot.
• You like short, clear loops with obvious goals. A dating sim fits: raise stats, plan dates, win the mini-game, repeat.
• You want to explore at your own pace. Sandbox games let you roam a town and choose the order of events, at the cost of some grinding.
• You mostly play on a phone or in a browser. Look at text-based interactive fiction and idle games, and check each entry's platforms first.

Genres mix: how we file games

Very few adult games are pure examples of one genre. We give each game one main genre, the one that describes most of your playtime, and list the rest as sub-genres on its page. The main genre decides which guide the game is ranked in; the sub-genres help you find it through filters in the game catalog.

1. Where does your time go? If most hours are spent reading, it is a visual novel, even if there is a map.
2. What drives progress? Stats and relationship meters point to a dating sim; quests, levels and combat point to an RPG.
3. What does the developer call it? We note the developer's own description, but we don't copy it when it doesn't match how the game plays.

Three examples of how that works in practice: Summertime Saga is filed as a sandbox but also counts as a visual novel and dating sim; Subverse is an RPG with tactical battles and shoot 'em up stages; Crush Crush is an idle game built around dating.