Dating Sim



""You're kidding. They make non-porn versions of games like that? Wow. That's... really sad.""

- Junko, Megatokyo #1174

The Dating Sim is a type of game designed to set up goals, usually in the forms of schedules and stats corresponding to social skills, which must be achieved to discover a story focused entirely around the Character Development of the player's chosen girl/guy, get into his/her pants, or both. This leads to Multiple Endings, though some Dating Sims make it possible to see several of these "endings" in a single playthrough.

Some Dating Sims have been made into harem anime, though the result is usually nothing special due to the removal of sex and the fact that the narrative can no longer focus on any single character.

Because there is almost no market for true Dating Sim games outside of Japan, it's a frequent misunderstanding among western gamers that "Dating Sim" is the general term for all ren'ai (romantic love) games. In fact, many romance games are Visual Novels, which is a much different game style. (See for example, the difference between the Ace Attorney series, which is very close to a Visual Novel style of gameplay, and the DOA Xtreme series, which is the closest thing to a true Dating Sim with mass-market appeal in the US.) If the game plays out like a Choose Your Own Adventure, that's a Visual Novel. If it feels like you're playing an RPG, trying to keep track of everyone's feelings about you and giving out presents, that's a Dating Sim.

"You became friends with Yosuke. Yosuke will now DIE FOR YOU."
 * Agarest Senki - where the level of affection between the protagonist and the chosen heroine will affect the outcome of the next generation protagonist.
 * Always Remember Me
 * Angelique
 * Amagami
 * Azure Dreams - a large component of the game was a dating sim.
 * Black Matrix
 * Bloody Bride: Imadoki no Vampire is a Playstation game, as well as one of the first complex dating simulations to receive a Fan Translation.
 * Brave Soul is a cross between Dating Sim and Eastern RPG genres.
 * Brooktown High
 * Casual Romance Club
 * Chrono Days
 * Chub Pan
 * Dead or Alive "Xtreme Beach Volleyball"
 * Dream C Club
 * First Kiss Story
 * The Flower Shop: Summer in Fairbrook
 * The Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook (A gender-flipped follow-up.)
 * Galaxy Angel gameverse
 * Gate Keepers
 * Getter Love!! (the * only* dating sim on the Nintendo 64.)
 * Graduation, probably the first officially-translated (though localized from the original Sotsugyou 2 Neo Generation which was Tokyopop was before it became Tokyopop).
 * Girl's Club (a 3D0 game, published in English in 1992)
 * Harukanaru Toki no Naka de
 * Harvest Moon games include Dating Sim subplots.
 * Hatoful Boyfriend
 * Heartache 101 Sour Into Sweet
 * Hourglass of Summer
 * Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 - The first game didn't have any Relationship Values, but this one has boatloads of it.
 * Jewelry Master Twinkle has elements of this. It's mainly a Falling Block Game, but at the same time, you have a girl talking to you. Depending on your performance, you will get different dialogue branches; at each fork, you can either get a good branch (green background) where you're winning her affection, an okay branch (blue background) where you're getting along okay, and a bad branch (red background) where you're turning her off. Do well enough and she'll change costume at the end, and unlock a new date where she gets a little more personal with you.
 * All games in the The Idolmaster Franchise, except Live For You.
 * KimiKiss
 * Kiniro no Corda
 * Love Hina Advance is a Game Boy Advance game, as well as one of the first fan translated games in this category.
 * Love & Order (An indie Romance Game about an attorney, with many life simulation elements, released in English during February 2011.)
 * Love Plus
 * Lovely Juliet (An episodic browser game, translated from French into English, with an emphasis on statistics.)
 * Lucky Rabbit Reflex
 * Magical Diary
 * Mai-HiME (Unmei no Keitouju) - Inverted as the game was made after the anime was such a huge success.
 * Matches and Matrimony: A Pride And Prejudice Tale
 * McKenzie & Co (Released in 1995 in English on computers.)
 * Meat Log Mountain: A homoerotic Dating Sim involving a doctor and his patients. Creators call it a "Bara Eroge"
 * Meine Liebe
 * Mini Gay Boyfriend (A worksafe Apple iOS Romance Game in English. Not quite Bara or Boys Love, and not a visual novel. A cartoon-esque Simulation Game.)
 * Mitsumete Knight (One of Tokimeki Memorial's Spiritual Successors)
 * My Forged Wedding (for iOS and Android devices)
 * Other Age: Second Encounter (Zeiva Inc's first non-freeware game, released in English in September 2010)
 * Otometeki Koi Kakumei Love Revo
 * Papa no Iukoto o Kikinasai
 * Persona 3 is half Dating Sim with the Social Link system, half dungeon crawler RPG (where the state of your Social Links helps determine which personae you can use and how much XP a persona gets when it's first fused.) Same with...
 * Persona 4, which also adds special techniques for your party members (such as taking a fatal hit for the protagonist or straight up kicking an enemy out of the fight) depending on how high their Social Link ranking is.


 * Pia Carrot
 * Pirates In Love (English version released for iOS in July 2011.)
 * The PK Girl
 * Princess Debut
 * RE: Alistair
 * Riviera: The Promised Land contains some Dating Sim subplots.
 * Romancing Walker (An RPG with relationship elements, created with RPG Maker 2000, and given a rather flawed English fan translation.)
 * Romantic Encounters At The Dome (Written in English in 1988 for various computers. Uses a text parser similar to vintage adventure games. Not adults only, but Not Safe for Work.)
 * Rune Factory
 * Rune Factory 3
 * Rune Factory Oceans
 * Sakura Taisen
 * Sentimental Graffiti
 * Shira Oka Second Chances
 * The Sims series: You can devote all, none, or some of your gameplay towards romance subplots.
 * Sister Princess
 * Sprung: A dating simulation released in English for the Nintendo DS in 2004, with a PG-13 level of content. It received poor reviews. During the lifespan of the DS, it often appeared in bargain bins and used game shelves.
 * Star Ocean: A series of Eastern RPGs that include a relationship-building system similar to Dating Sims, including the use of Relationship Values, leading to dozens of possible Multiple Endings for each game depending on how strong the relationships are between the various characters.
 * Summer Session: A dating simulation with a PG-13 level of content, originally written in English, and released in 2008.
 * Summon Night
 * This is an interesting series as the games vary in genre. The main entries in the series are SRPG's whereas the other games in the series are action games. However all of them incorporate Dating Sim elements with the standard multiple endings for the characters that join you.
 * Surviving High School: A dating simulation with a PG level of content, and mini-games. Originally written in English. It was first released on cellphones, and later released for iPod Touch / iPhone and DSiWare.
 * Thousand Arms (also an Eastern RPG)
 * Tokimeki Memorial was one of the first hugely popular and successful games in the category, paving the way for everything that came after.
 * However, no games in the franchise were officially translated outside of east Asia. Only the Nintendo DS versions of the first two Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side games have received unofficial localizations.
 * Tokyo Majin
 * This is exactly like the Summon Night series with the main difference being that virtually all of the games in this series are SRPG's but like Summon Night they incorporate Dating Sim elements with the standard multiple endings for all the characters that join you, in addition to some of the supporting characters.
 * True Love Story
 * Virtually Date Ariane (One of several virtual date Web Games, created by English speaking designers, with polygon graphics. It emphasizes moment-by-moment gameplay rather than story. Its content is Not Safe for Work, and the 3D graphics fall into the Uncanny Valley, especially during close-ups.)


 * X-Note (Zeiva Inc's second commercial game, with a fairly bleak story about psychic powers and unsolved mysteries.)
 * Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro na
 * This game-review blog has a decent assortment.

Parodies
"Yes: "Than it's alright if I XXX than?" No: "If you don't like me, I'll just XXX you!""
 * Excel Saga, naturally, did an episode parodying these. In a Running Gag, the male characters suddenly find themselves in a game with several options, the last generally being "Put It In."
 * "Who puts a BOMB in a DATING GAME?!!"
 * NOOOOOOOOOO! MY GRAPHICS CAAAAAAARD!
 * Il Palazzo, playing the game, gets a bad ending by killing the Patient Childhood Love Interest who wakes him up in the game, before even leaving for school.
 * In the last two episodes, Watanabe gets the dating sim option popup when he encounters Hyatt. He almost gets the good ending, too, but Excel interrupts.
 * Likewise, one episode of Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai featured a world that partially functioned as a Dating Sim (with an all-girl cast and drawn in a Moe style), to the point of Sasshi requesting a replay so he could end up with a different girl.
 * Galaxy Angel (ONLY the games; the anime is something altogether different)
 * Super Paper Mario parodies the genre in a pre-Boss Battle cutscene. When the boss, a geeky chameleon named Francis, meets Princess Peach, the game turns into a dating sim with Francis playing it and the player providing her responses. Princess Peach quickly becomes annoyed at the concept, and sics Boomer on the Nerr2Babe Interface - which has the side effect of nuking Francis' video card. Cue the boss battle, folks.
 * To both reiterate and answer the Excel Saga quote, Peach indeed had a bomb available.
 * Final Fantasy VII has an ongoing pastiche of one, which leads to dating one of four characters (one of which is The Lancer and extremely male) at a minor scene later on. Interestingly, all of them contain some character and plot development - Aerith's scene foreshadows Cloud's Tomato in the Mirror moment later on, Tifa's serves as proof that she Cannot Spit It Out, Yuffie's is the only one in which Cloud actually gets a kiss, and Barret's is part non-sequitur rant, part self-parodying Ho Yay, and culminates in Cloud being (bizarrely) accused of being a paedophile. Cloud's relationships with other characters also affect several other scenes, including one near the end of the game that may imply a sexual encounter with Tifa if her Relationship Values with Cloud are high enough.
 * In Genshiken, shameless Otaku Madarame spends almost a whole episode in a room alone with Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend Saki, trying to work up the courage to talk to her. This is emphasised by dream sequences in which he imagines her as a character in a Dating Sim, complete with Art Shift - and repeatedly ends up clicking 'Do nothing'. He bemoans in his internal monologue how real life has more choices than just three, and how it's not always obvious which one to make.
 * In Axis Powers Hetalia, Korea asks if China likes him. China is about to respond with no, but stops when he sees a little box above Korea that says that any response will lead to sex. Which is somewhat awkward considering the two are brothers.


 * Don't forget Gakuen Hetalia.
 * In Full Metal Panic!, Sousuke's classmates attempt to prepare him for a date by having him play a Dating Sim. His military-wired mind causes him to be blatantly honest to the girl, upsetting her and losing the game, much to his consternation.
 * A similar arc occurs with Vanilla in Galaxy Angel.
 * La-Mulana, upon acquiring certain MSX ROMs, lets you play what at first appears to be an MSX version of Tokimeki Memorial, and the heroine, Shiori, is talking about how she'd like to take her friendship with Taihei (your character) to the next level until . After the whole ordeal is over, another girl named Nijino runs up... And the whole thing starts all Syntax error in 1220
 * A recent DMFA bonus arc is an Affectionate Parody of this.
 * This is the main point of Experimental Comic Kotone.
 * Seto no Hanayome has an episode where San's Dad, Lunar's Dad, Shark Fujishiro, and Masa played one of these games in an attempt to understand girls' feelings so they can better relate to San and Lunar. It ends up failing in an epic fashion.
 * The World God Only Knows takes this to metafictional levels, featuring a Dating Sim Otaku who captures escaped spirits by applying his knowledge of dating sims and their sub-genres.
 * Done as a joke at a comicon in Japan, where Studio Pierrot showed a redubbed set of Bleach clips meant to be an advertisement for an upcoming dating sim.
 * There's two 'dates' in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, where you can go to the beach with either Paz or Kaz. You speak to them using the Co-Op battle cries, and then (if they like you) you can invite them into the cardboard box for quality time. They're parody, but both Paz and Kaz have different personalities which come out during the dates (Paz likes being complimented and treated gently, Kaz likes being punched and Big Boss staring at his crotch with the binoculars). Hilariously, you have to successfully seduce both to get the Hundred-Percent Completion conversation.
 * In the Strong Bad email date, Strong Bad creates the “Homestar Runner and Marzipan Extra Real Dating Sim XR” to simulate what he imagines what Homestar and Marzipan actually do on a date.
 * Fourth episode of the Haiyoru! Nyarani short flash animation. Nyarko is seen playing Lovecraft Plus. It's Inverted Dating Sim, the character has SAN among the character's stats, which are your resistance to Yandere Stalker with a Crush. Lose enough SAN and you end up with her forever, wallowing in your mutual insanity.
 * A Yuria 100 Shiki omake features the Yuria 100 Shiki Eroge. The first options all immediately lead to a sex scene except for the youngest female character, which immediately leads to the player getting arrested as a pedophile.
 * The Journal Comic Doodle Diaries featured a short parody of dating sims, starring the three main characters as the love interests.

Special Mentions

 * Oddly enough, GTA IV has this as a feature, complete with different places to go, activities to play, and different opinions with each and every girl. You can even meet them online on the internet and eventually have "hot coffee" with them. Your clothes, vehicle, driving skills, calling time, amount of calling (if you call too much, you're a stalker, but too little, and they'd think you'd forgotten them), all count in to how they view you. They remember what you have and where you go too. Each girl also has a totally different personality and interest, along with benefits if they like you enough. Even more surprisingly, you can also hook up with guys, although they are of the guy friend variety, like drinking or going to a strip club, but it's still the same basic feature. With all this, they also implement this feature directly into the storyline several times, along with the horrify ending with deciding.
 * San Andreas also had this feature (a stripped down earlier version), although it didn't tie too much into the story aside from stealing a access card from one.
 * The main point of these friends is to make the player's life easier: free transportation, Get Out Of Jail Free, guns, cars, lower wanted level...
 * Dating Sim elements are creeping into Western games more and more -- see Bioware's Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and The Witcher before that.
 * Flash games: a number of English-speaking fans have created stat-driven dating simulations using Flash. The "sim date" games emphasize gameplay over story or characterization. There are a number of games which use original characters and settings, both for male and female audiences. Others are based on popular series, such as Naruto.
 * Konata from Lucky Star plays these games A LOT. To the level of being Wrong Genre Savvy.
 * Mass Effect 2: Legion, a robot, purchased a dating sim based on a blockbuster romance film between two different aliens. His score is 15 (hopeless), humorously contrasted with the rest of his game scores (that consist of a million sniper kills on a generic FPS, et cetera).
 * Actually, the Mass Effect series also has some dating sim components itself. It's secondary to the general RPG and third-person shooter aspects of the game, but you actually can build relationships with various characters through dialogue choices (and some of these can become romantic), so I think it qualifies.
 * The awkward dialogue of Festival Days must be seen to be believed.
 * And last but not least, the granddaddy of them all: Leisure Suit Larry.