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Favourite genres?
Pengling May 18, 2022
I was just curious about what everyone's favourite video game genres are. My apologies if there's a pre-existing thread about this that I could've added to - the forum-search only brought up some old threads about specific favourite games, rather than broader genres!

I prefer shorter games that I can revisit a lot, with few exceptions, so with that in mind, these are my favourite genres;

  • Platformers, such as Kirby, Donkey Kong Country, Bubble Bobble, The NewZealand Story, Tanglewood, Jazz Jackrabbit, and SuperTux. My all-time favourite genre. However, I don't enjoy most 3D-platformers or Metroidvanias as they're usually not my sort of thing, though there are occasional exceptions like New Super Lucky's Tale and Tails Adventures, respectively.

  • Cute shooters, like Star Fox, Pocky & Rocky, TwinBee, Fantasy Zone Gear, and Blazing Beaks.

  • Arcade-style racing games in the vein of Mario Kart or Super Tux Kart.

  • Maze/chase games like Ms. Pac-Man, Mappy, Pengo, BSD Games snake, and Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning.

  • Rhythm-games, like Bust-A-Groove, Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe, and Elite Beat Agents.

  • Multi-player titles. Bomberman, Duck Game, Worms (preferably the older ones - I think their strength is in their simplicity), Cannonhead Clash, and Among Us are some of my favourite examples. It's nice if a good-enough single-player mode is also available to organically teach the ropes, too.

  • Video-pinball games in the vein of Kirby's Pinball Land, Alien Crush, 3D Pinball: Pinball Power, or Zen Pinball/Pinball FX3.

  • Virtual pets, like Little Computer People, Dogz (the original desktop-buddy, not the unrelated titles released after the Petz brand was sold to Ubisoft), Tamagotchi, and Nintendogs.

  • Visual-novels of the adventure/mystery variety, such as the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy.

  • Stealth games like the first Metal Gear Solid, or the surprisingly good Nintendo DS movie tie-in Over The Hedge. Lugaru also probably fits into this category to some degree.

  • Beat 'em ups/brawlers such as Final Fight, Streets of Rage, or the arcade Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games.

  • Light horror in the vein of Five Nights at Freddy's, Bendy and the Ink Machine, and suchlike.

  • Puzzle games - Lemmings, Kirby's Star Stacker, Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Save Mary!, for example.

  • Anything weird and fun that doesn't really fit into the other categories, such as the dream-exploration of Yume Nikki, the light-gun-controlled platforming of Gumshoe, the hectic drink-delivery of Root Beer Tapper, the doomed-species-rescuing of Cosmic Ark, the random quick-fire oddness of WarioWare, or the mouse-driven skiiing and stunting of the venerable SkiFree, and so on and so forth.


I always enjoy seeing mixes of these sorts of titles, or an infusion of roguelite features into genres that I already enjoy (Spelunky and Blazing Beaks are excellent examples of this), too.

I'm interested in hearing what genres are favoured by others here on GOL.

Last edited by Pengling on 18 May 2022 at 10:01 pm UTC
denyasis May 19, 2022
I'm not sure, which is a horrible non answer, but I really am scratching my brain on this one. I don't know if I ever really thought about it seriously...

Scifi? I think that genre has a soft spot for me (Iwar2, Crying Suns) Fantasy would be up there, particularly traditional western (Morrowind, Dominions 5).

Maybe builders too? Love Kerbal Space Program and RimWorld.

Actually, maybe it's ones where I can insert my imagination into the story/RP a little bit. That might be it.

Oddly I can pick one out I should like but dont seem to really quickly. Epic RPG's. They check all the right boxes for what I think I'd like, but I bounce off them now often than not. Only ever finished Planescape: Torment, but that may have been because it was amazing.
TimeFreeze May 19, 2022
Well thats a hard question especially since i play a lot of genres. But i would say:

Horror
Survival
Survival Horror
RPG's
Jump&Run
Platformer
Souls-like
Sandbox
Anime
Stealth
Immersive/Realism
GustyGhost May 19, 2022
For me it's been open world procedurally generated sandbox types. I don't like being given prefabricated objectives. In fact, I think my favorite genre doesn't exist yet. It would be the holodeck of Star Trek fame, where you just get dropped into an simulated environment and do whatever you want.
dr_jekyll May 20, 2022
- RPGs: I like slower Gameplay approaches, so mostly Realtime with Pause or Round-Based Combat etc.
- Strategy Games: mostly singleplayer, I am too bad for multiplayer , sadly AIs are also often bad
- Action-Adventures: though many of them are too hectical for me (at least now adays *getting old*)
- Adventures: though I would like to have more Adventures with a modern approach (more gameplay than just riddles) and a better story than most have

Overall I agree with some other people here, I am also still waiting for the perfect genre or the perfect game to be honest.
But this thread shows exactly what the problem (for developers) is, the tastes of people are simply too different.
Mezron May 21, 2022
  • Fighters


Favorite Games: Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Dead or Alive 2, Tekken 3

  • Brawlers


Favorite Games: Streets of Rage 2, Mother Russia Bleeds, X-Men: The Arcade Game

  • Top Down Shooter


Favorite Games: Starward Rogue, Shock Troopers/Shock Troopers 2nd Squad, Hotline Miami/Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, Ruiner

  • Rail Shooters


Favorite Games: Beast Buster, The House of the Dead/The House of the Dead 2, Area 51, Halo Fireteam Raven

  • 2D Platformers


Favorite Games: Shinobi/Shadow Dancer/The Revenge of Shinobi/Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master, Castlevania/Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, Slain: Back from Hell, Limbo, Typoman Revised

Last edited by Mezron on 21 May 2022 at 3:46 pm UTC
Kuduzkehpan May 21, 2022
V rising online (very hyper for this one these days with my cousins)
destiny 2
LoL
ghost recon breakpoint
the division 2
eldaking May 21, 2022
I am a very... specialized... player of games, I mostly play strategy and strategy-adjacent, followed by puzzles, and a few exceptions (some visual novels, a few metroidvanias, the very rare CRPG that clicks, some couch coop). Roguelites could be anything those days, so whether I like it depends on whether it is a strategy-roguelite or a shooter-roguelite :P

By strategy-adjacent I mean management/tycoon, city and colony builders, heavy simulations, digital board and cardgames, tower defense, wargames. Within strategy I tend to favor 4X, grand strategy and other big and sprawling games over the smaller and/or more abstract - Civ and Stellaris over Into the Breach and Chess, for example. For RTS I tend to prefer the "overly complex, single-player focused" over the fast and balanced multiplayer kind; for tactics games (not tactical RPGs, tactics games) I am quite picky. TD and wargames could easily be considered "proper" strategy and not just adjacent, but like boardgames they have their own distinct niches (i.e., they are made and marketed with different goals, audiences, design philosophies, etc) so I don't put them under the strategy genre.
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