Stat raising game

Many visual novels focus largely on story, with few game mechanics other than the occasional narrative choice. Other games have a stronger focus on stat-raising gameplay. Two popular genres of stat-raising games that often incorporate visual novel elements are raising sims and traditional dating sims.

Dating Sims

A screenshot from Always Remember me, showing a choice between several activities. To the side are the player characters main stats.

In modern EVN spaces, the boundary between a romance-focused visual novel and a dating sim is increasingly blurred, with many players and devs alike using the term to refer to visual novels where dating is the main focus. Traditionally however, dating sims have been their own genre of game, separated from visual novels by a heavy focus on stat-based gameplay.

Tokimeki Memorial ^[VNDB] and its sequels are oft-cited as the games that popularized dating simulators in Japan. As is common in the genre, they include a calendar-based system where the player chooses activities for each day, with the activities affecting the players stats. The games also includes a "bomb" mechanic where if you ignore a girl for long enough your relationship will "explode", negatively affecting your relationship with all of the girls friends. To get a good ending with a chosen girl therefore required not only pursuing her, but also careful management of your relationship stats with all of the girls.

Modern dating sims are usually a little less management-heavy than early games of the genre.

Common elements

• Multiple love interests, who each prefer different stats or combinations of stats
• Choosing daily or weekly activities (often via a calendar system or a map screen)
• Purchasable items, which can either affect the players stats or be gifted to other characters to raise relationship

Examples

The Dating sim tag on VNDB ^[VNDB]

• Tokimeki Memorial ^[VNDB] and it's otome spin off series Girl's Side ^[VNDB]
• Monster Prom, a multiplayer dating sim
• Always Remember Me ^[VNDB]. The sequel ^[VNDB] notably includes both a "pure Visual Novel mode" and a mode with dating-sim gameplay
• Gaokao Love 100Days ^[VNDB]

Raising sims

A screenshot of the stat screen in Princess Maker 2

Raising sims are games with a heavy, sometimes almost exclusive, focus on stat-raising gameplay. While many raising sims may share similar presentation to visual novels and sometimes include visual novel-like story segments, they are a seperate genre of game and the majority of gameplay is usually spent planning and managing stats.

The genre was codified by the Princess Maker series, including Princess Maker 2, where you play as an unseen protagonist raising your daughter, the games main character. The gameplay mainly consists of choosing various activities for your daughter such as working different jobs or attending classes (there is also optional RPG-like turn based combat gameplay). Each activity can either succeed or fail based on a combination of the daughters stats and her current stress level. An activity will often both raise and lower certain stats. The player picks one activity per week for 8 years of her life, from age 10 to 18. On her eighteenth birthday the game ends and the player sees one of over 70 endings based on the daughters future profession as determined by her stats (with examples ranging from "Princess" to "Nun", "Farmer", "Street Magician" and "Bondage Queen"). Later games in the Princess Maker series also included more visual novel-style story segments and over-arching plot.

While many raising sims focus on "raising" a child, this is far from a requirement. In the west the genre was popularized by Long Live the Queen, a raising sim made in Ren'Py. The player takes the role of a young girl who is to be crowned queen, if she survives to her coronation. This game includes many potential game overs, and frequent visual novel-style story segments including choices separate from the stat-raising gameplay.

Common Elements

• A large amount of stats
• Having to manage stat-raising with stress or health
• A large number of endings

Examples

VNs with raising sim elements on VNDB ^[VNDB] (Note that pure raising sims are not included in vndb)

• Princess Maker series
• Long Live the Queen
• Needy Streamer Overload
• I was a Teenage Exocolonist