LogFAQs > #957621853

Welp my answer to this thread is:

2D Action (2d zelda, 2d mario, pong, gradius, spelunky, guitar hero)
3D Action (3d zelda, 3d mario, wolfenstein 3d, katamari, minecraft, f-zero gx)
Puzzle (tetris, portal, myst, jackbox, virtual chess)
Math Sim (final fantasy, pokemon, rogue, sim city, cookie clicker, dating sims, animal crossing)

Yeah maybe the 2d / 3d action division feels weak, but they do feel completely different in my mind--if someone's describing a new action game to me, the absolute first thing I wanna know off the bat is, is it 2d or 3d?

But probably what I've been most interested in in the thread, is how to divide up non "action" games...

...My initial temptation is to divide them up into Puzzles and RPGs...but the big problem is, where do sports managers and sim cities go? They feel like role-playing, but they also feel like puzzles. What if there's a Final Fantasy based on sports manager mechanics, surely that should be in the RPG genre...

I decided the key difference is numbers. If there are a lot of numbers that get bigger or get compared to each other, that's not a puzzle game. We'll call it a new genre, Math Sim.

Then the final boss is dating sims--but wait, dating sims presumably all have a lot of numbers behind the scenes, right? So that belongs in Math Sim! Nice.

Then the final final boss is Animal Crossing--but again, it's mostly making numbers get bigger.

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