A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by real-world environments while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players. Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.
A voxel is a three-dimensional counterpart to a pixel. It represents a value on a regular grid in a three-dimensional space. Voxels are frequently used in the visualization and analysis of medical and scientific data. They are also commonly used in video games, both as a technological feature, as in Outcast, and a graphical style, which was popularised by Minecraft.
Dating sims, or romance simulation games, are a video game subgenre of simulation games with romantic elements. While dating sims share a similar visual presentation with visual novels, they are distinct genres. Dating sims are largely dependent on statistical calculations to drive the plot, whilst visual novels focus on telling a branching story. Nevertheless, the term "dating sim" has become a generic term for romance-driven games in the West.
A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often grouped with puzzle games due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".
A video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than visual or narrative elements. This is independent of setting, unlike works of fiction that are expressed through other media, such as films or books. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of where or when it takes place. A specific game's genre is open to subjective interpretation. An individual game may belong to several genres at once.
An eroge, also called an H-game, is a Japanese genre of erotic video game. The term encompasses a wide variety of Japanese games containing erotic content across multiple genres. The first eroge were created in the 1980s, and many well-known companies in the Japanese gaming industry originally produced and distributed them. Some eroge are primarily focused on erotic content, while others, such as Key's Kanon, only contain occasional scenes in an otherwise non-erotic work. Games in the latter category are often re-released with sexual content removed for general audiences. Throughout its history, the genre has faced controversy for its use of explicit sexual content, and as a result has been banned from several console platforms.
Shining Force is a 1992 turn-based tactical role-playing game for the Sega Genesis console. It is the second entry of the Shining series of video games, following Shining in the Darkness. While primarily a traditional fantasy-themed game, it contains some science fiction elements.
CryEngine is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. It has been used in all of their titles with the initial version being used in Far Cry, and continues to be updated to support new consoles and hardware for their games. It has also been used for many third-party games under Crytek's licensing scheme, including Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 and SNOW. Warhorse Studios uses a modified version of the engine for their medieval RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Ubisoft maintains an in-house, heavily modified version of CryEngine from the original Far Cry called Dunia, which is used in their later iterations of the Far Cry series. The Dunia engine would in turn be further modified and used in games such as The Crew 2.
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon is a 2007 role-playing video game published by Square Enix for the Wii. It is an installment in the Chocobo series that focuses on Chocobo and his quest to free a town lost in time from eternal forgetfulness. It is a loose sequel to Chocobo's Dungeon 2 on the PlayStation.
Non-games are a class of software on the border between video games and toys. The term "non-game game" was coined by late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who describes it as "a form of entertainment that really doesn't have a winner, or even a real conclusion". Will Wright had previously used the term "software toy" for the same purpose. The main difference between non-games and traditional video games is the lack of structured goals, objectives, and challenges. This allows the player a greater degree of self-expression through freeform play, since they can set up their own goals to achieve. Some genres that have been considered non-games include language-learning software, digital tabletop games, puzzle games, simulation games, and art games.
A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may lack any objective, and are sometimes referred to as non-games or software toys. More often, sandbox games result from these creative elements being incorporated into other genres and allowing for emergent gameplay. Sandbox games are often associated with an open world concept which gives the players freedom of movement and progression in the game's world. The term "sandbox" derives from the nature of a sandbox that lets people create nearly anything they want within it.
Space flight simulation is a genre of flight simulator video games that lets players experience space flight to varying degrees of realism. Common mechanics include space exploration, space trade and space combat.
The 1990s was the third decade in the industry's history. It was a decade of marked innovation in video gaming. It was a decade of transition from sprite-based graphics to full-fledged 3D graphics and it gave rise to several genres of video games including, but not limited to, the first-person shooter, real-time strategy, survival horror, and MMO. Arcade games, although still very popular in the early 1990s, began to decline as home consoles became more common. The fourth and fifth generation of video game consoles went on sale, including the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color and the Sega Dreamcast. Notable games released in the 1990s included Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Tekken 3,Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Final Fantasy VII, Unreal Tournament, Star Fox, Half-Life, Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario 64, Pokémon Red and Blue, NBA Jam,Daytona USA, GoldenEye 007, System Shock 2, Civilization,Ridge Racer, Sonic Adventure, Gran Turismo, Super Mario Kart, Pokémon Gold and Silver,Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Super Metroid, Silent Hill, Dead or Alive 2, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro The Dragon, Fallout, Metal Gear Solid, Diablo, Virtua Fighter, Tomb Raider,Sega Rally Championship, Wing Commander,Super Smash Bros, Secret of Mana,Thief: The Dark Project, Age of Empires, Nights into Dreams, Panzer Dragoon, Gunstar Heroes, EverQuest, Chrono Trigger, Battletoads, Worms, Myst, Micro Machines, Streets of Rage 2,Baldur's Gate,Donkey Kong Country, Wipeout, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins,Lemmings, EarthBound, StarCraft, Banjo-Kazooie, PaRappa the Rapper, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Soulcalibur, Command & Conquer, and Dance Dance Revolution.
Universe Sandbox is a series of interactive space sandbox gravity simulator educational software video games. Using Universe Sandbox, users can see the effects of gravity on objects in the universe and run scale simulations of the Solar System, various galaxies or other simulations, while at the same time interacting and maintaining control over gravity, time, and other objects in the universe, such as moons, planets, asteroids, comets, and black holes. The original Universe Sandbox was only available for Windows-based PCs, but an updated version was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux in 2015.
The Powder Toy is a falling-sand game originally created by Stanislaw K. Skowronek. It is now developed and maintained by LBPHacker, Simon, jacob1 and other contributors on GitHub. The Powder Toy is free and open-source software licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.0. A total of 193 different in-game materials, each with custom behavior and interactions, are available in the game. In June 2024, The Powder Toy was released on Steam.
Noita is a platform roguelike game developed by Nolla Games. Players control a witch that can collect and cast spells in order to defeat enemies named after Finnish mythological creatures. The main game leads the player down a cave ending in a boss fight, although the game contains much more secret and supplementary content. It was released in early access for Microsoft Windows on 24 September 2019. Noita left early access as the 1.0 version was released on 15 October 2020.
