Game Types
Action | Action Adventure | Adventure | Role Playing | Simulation | Strategy | Sports | Other Notable Types
Action
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Platform Games
Set in vertical or 3D environments. Players move a character from platform to platform, moving through obstacles and/or battling enemies.
EXAMPLES
Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros.
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Shooter Games
The Player, in often violent situations but in some cases not, uses a range of weapons to Complete an objective.
These games are often classified based on their perspective, and game play.
First Person Shooters
Played from the perspective of the character
EXAMPLES
Call of Duty Franchise, Halo
Third Person Shooters
Played from a perspective were you can see the entire character.
EXAMPLES
Resident Evil, Dead Space
Light Gun Shooters
Uses a gun shaped controller that uses a light sensor. Have been
used as early as the 1920's
EXAMPLES
Duck Hunt, House of the Dead
Shoot 'em ups
Players often play from a vehicle in these games. They face large waves of opponents. They must attack and avoid enemy attacks as well as obstacles.
EXAMPLES
Space Invaders, Galaga
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Fighting games and Beat 'em ups
These games are focused on hand to hand combat. They will often include violent and exaggerated hand to hand combat.
EXAMPLES
Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter.
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Stealth Games
A more recent game type, that focuses more on subterfuge and precision strikes unlike shooters.
EXAMPLES
Hitman, Meatal Gear Solid, Sly Cooper.
Action - Adventure
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Survival Horror
These games focus on fear or scaring the player by using horror fiction elements like atmospherics, death, undead, blood and gore. Other elements of these games are low ammo quantity, or a number of breakable melee weapons.
EXAMPLES
Resident Evil, Silent Hill
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Metroidvania
This game type has a large explore able world map, but is limited by doors or other obstructions or portals. That can only be passed after obtaining tools, weapons, or abilities in the game.
EXAMPLES
Ori and the Blind Forest, Cave Story.
Adventure
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Text adventure
Early form of adventure games, AKA interactive fiction. The player would input commands while the computer describes what happens.
EXAMPLES
Zork, Colossal Cave Adventure.
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Graphic Adventure
These games became more common as graphics were introduced to games, replacing the text descriptions with visuals. Used typed commands, but as the use of the mouse grew they started using point and click commands. Paving the way for point and click adventure games.
EXAMPLES
The Secret of Monkey Island, Full Throttle.
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Visual Novels
This game type primarily features static graphics, most often in anime style. It uses the statistics a player builds to move the plot along.
EXAMPLES
Clannad, Everlasting Summer
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Interactive movie
This game type was invented around the same time as laserdiscs. It uses per-filmed full motion cartoons/live action, where the player will control a few things the main character will do.
EXAMPLES
The Walking Dead, Dragons Lair.
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Real - Time 3D Adventure
3D adventure games that use some things more associated with action games like freedom of motion, and Physics - based behavior.
EXAMPLES
Nightfall, Realmyst.
Role Playing
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Action RPG
This game type uses parts from action and action adventure games. Highly focuses on combat, and collection of treasure. Also removes attributes not having to do with combat and their effect on the character.
EXAMPLES
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Diablo III
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MMORPG
In this game type large numbers of players interact with an environment and each other in real time. These games started to appear in the mid to late 1990’s.
EXAMPLESFinal Fantasy XI, The Elder Scrolls Online
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Rogue Likes
This game type uses two-dimensional dungeon crawl that highly focuses on statistical character development and randomness. Has a text user interface, and often uses graphic tiles.
EXAMPLES
FTL: Faster Than Light, Crawl
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Tactical RPG
With its origins in tabletop RPG games, it includes some game elements from both strategy and RPG games.
EXAMPLESFallout Tatics: Brotherhood of Steel, Final Fantasy Tactics
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Sandbox RPG
This game type often includes a large open world, giving the player the ability to roam around freely. These games usually have the longest play time because of all the secondary content not related to the main story. These games also include a large number of NPCs and items to interact with.
EXAMPLESThe Elder Scrolls series, Fallout series
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Cultural Differences
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Western RPG
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Japanese RPG
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Choices
The player creates a character and follows a nonlinear story line making their own decisions along the way.
EXAMPLES
Mass Effect, Fable: The Lost Chapter
The player is in control of a preset party of characters, that they progress through a dramatically scripted linear storyline.
EXAMPLES
Final Fantasy series, The Legend of Dragoon.
Many games give the player many choices that will determine how the story plays out. Often these will determine how to take out an enemy or how to handle a situation. These choices will cause consequences that the player will be forced to deal with.
EXAMPLES
Fallout series, The Elder scrolls series
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Fantasy
RPG games because of their origin in Dungeons & Dragons and other pen and paper RPG games, they most often are set in a fantasy world, often having high medieval influences. Although this is the common setting there are many exceptions with games like Final Fantasy, and Fallout.
EXAMPLES
The Elder scrolls series, Diablo
Simulation
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Construction & Management Sim
In this sim type players are given the objective to build, manage, and expand a fictional community or project.
City Building
In these games the player is in the position of a overall planner of leader and has to meet the needs and wants of characters in their city by creating structure that provide food, shelter, healthcare, spiritual care, economic growth, and many others. In these games success is measured by the growing profit your city achieves and weather your citizens have a upgrade in their housing, health care, and goods. These games primarily focus on the economic system, but some will include some military development.
EXAMPLES
Sim city, Ceasar
Business
This type of sims usually simulate a economy or a business, were the player would manage and control it.
EXAMPLES
Zoo Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon
Government
This game type simulates the situations and politics that would go on in a country, but these games often don’t include warfare.
EXAMPLES
Commander in Chief, Masters of The World
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Life Sim
This type game focuses on controlling or living the life of an artificial character. This will simulate the things revolving a character, like its relationships. In these games it could also simulate an ecosystem.
Biological
This game type is usually an educational game, which allows the player to manipulate the genetics, survival, or ecosystem of the game.
EXAMPLES
Spore, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis
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Pet Raising
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Social
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Vehicle Sim
This game type is similar to the biological sims, but it focuses on the player and their relationship with a small number of simulated lives.
EXAMPLES
101 Shark pets, Simanimals
This game type simulates the interactions of many artificial lives.
EXAMPLES
The Sims, Shenmue
In this game type the players operate realistic simulations of many different kinds of vehicles.
Flight
This game type simulates the flying of airplanes. The most popular of these are combat flight sims.
EXAMPLES
Birds of Steel, Microsoft Flight Simulator X
Racing
In this game type the player is put in control of a high performance vehicle and the player will race against other players, AI drivers, of the clock.
EXAMPLES
NFS: Shift, Dirt Rally
Space Flight
This game type simulates the control of a space craft. Often these games are not labeled as sims, because the vehicle you control doesn’t exist and ignores the laws of physics, but real spacecraft sims exist.
EXAMPLES
Space Engineers, Orbiter
Vehicular combat
This game type the player must control a vehicle in a fast paced action, were they must destroy other vehicles driven by AIs or other players. These games usually give the player a wide range of vehicles to choose from. It also allows the player to leave the race path and fight other racers.
EXAMPLES
Twisted Metal, Mad Max
Strategy
This game type focuses on the player having to use carful and skillful thinking, and planning to win the game.
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4X game
This game type has four main goals: explore, exploit, expand, and exterminate. These games are often set in a large period of time in a historical setting, and give the player control of a civilization or species.
EXAMPLES
Endless Space, Sins of a Solar Empire
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Artillery game
In this games type 2-3 players participate in combat involving tanks.
EXAMPLES
Pocket Tanks, Death Tank
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Real Time Strategy (RTS)
When a strategy game is called RTS it suggests that there is continuous action in the game play. This means that the players will often have to make decisions while the game is in a constant state of change. These types of games often have things in them like building bases, researching technologies, obtaining resources, and producing units.
EXAMPLES
StarCraft, Company of Heroes
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Real Time Tactics
This game type is much like RTS games but doesn’t have parts of game play like resource micromanagement, base and unit building, and has less importance on the individual units. This game type also focuses more on battlefield tactics.
EXAMPLES
World in Conflict, Rome: Total War
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MMORST
Known as Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy games but MMORTS for short these games put RTS into a persistent world. Players are usually put in the place of General, King, or some other kind of leader that takes their army into battle and maintain resources needed for the war. The sever that the game is run on is most often run by the company that published the game, and the game will change all the time even when the player is not online.
EXAMPLES
Guild Wars, Rift
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Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA)
In this game type the player is one character on one of two teams. With the help of auto spawning computer controlled units you try to destroy the opponent’s main structure. With the units players must move down a set path to the enemy structure. The player’s characters will have special abilities unique to that character that will help with your team’s strategy.
EXAMPLES
League of legends, Smite
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Tower Defense
This game type uses very simple maps with set paths on them that computer controlled enemies move along. These paths lead to the player’s base and if enemies get there the player loses health. To stop them the player must build towers that have different abilities. Tower abilities vary, some just shoot at the enemy while others can slow them down or change their direction. The towers that the player kills the enemies which earn the player money that they can use to buy or upgrade towers.
EXAMPLES
Bloon Tower Defense, Plants Vs. Zombies
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Turn Based Strategy
This game type is very similar to RTS games but in these games the player is given an amount of time for them to think about and commit to a game action. Some of these games will only give the player a set amount of moves per turn.
EXAMPLES
Civilization V, Endless Legend
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Turn Based Tactics
In this game type the player must complete objectives with forces provided by the game, and will use realistic military tactics and operations.
EXAMPLES
XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Frozen Synapse
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Wargame
This game type focuses on strategic or tactical warfare in an environment. How the game plays depends on if the game is turn based or real time and if it focuses on military strategy or tactics.
EXAMPLES
Panzer General, Napoleon: Total War
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Grand Strategy Wargame
This game type is the same as a wargame but focuses on grand strategy (military strategy at the level of movement and use of an entire nation, state, or empire’s resources.)
EXAMPLES
Hearts of Iron, Sengoku
Sports
These games simulate sports. The player is put in control of a player or players on a sports team or similar character.
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Racing
The player races against other players, the clock, or AI controlled drivers.
EXAMPLES
Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Forza Horizon 2
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Sports Game
These games focus on the playing or the strategy behind traditional sports. Some put comic effect into the sport by satirizing it.
EXAMPLE
NHL 15, Steep
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Competitive
These games give a highly competitive experience without representing a traditional sport. These are often fictional concepts designed by developers.
EXAMPLES
Guinness World Records: The Videogame, QuakeWorld
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Sports Based Fighting
These are fighting games that only include the realistic fighting that is in fighting spots such as boxing, MMA, and WWE.
EXAMPLES
WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, UFC 2009 Undisputed
Other Notable Types
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Casual Game
These games are made to target the people who don’t want to spend much time and effort playing games.
EXAMPLES
Farmville, World of Goo
Music Game
In this game type the player uses a controller that maybe made to look like the instrument in the game, or a dance pad to input sequences or movements developed for a certain rhythm or song.
EXAMPLES
Guitar Hero, Dancing with the Stars
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Party Game
This game type is focused on multiplayer game play between many players. Often these games will have many mini games that have the players compete against each other
EXAMPLES
Mario Party, Pac-Man Party
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Programming Game
These games are a computer program often written in a domain specific language, where the player controls the actions of their character but has no direct influence on the course of the game.
EXAMPLES
Tanks
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Logic Game
These games require the player to complete tasks that require logic such as puzzles or mazes.
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Trivia Game
Trivia games give you a set amount of time to answer questions for some kind of reward.