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Dating Sim - TV Tropes
"Let's see; she's smiling, so option one should work — unless that throwaway line of dialogue back in Chapter 2 was hinting that she was actually a
Tsundere
and so I should choose number two...
hold on while I check the FAQ
."
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 DATE, get into their 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 Sim Date games 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 Gamebook, 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.
In recent years, there have been many Role Playing Games that incorporate dating sim elements. These dating sim elements are often referred to as Romance Sidequests in the RPG genre. Life Simulation Games and Farm Life Sims also tend to feature dating sim elements.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
Literature
Video Games
- 7 Sins - A French dating sim that revolves around you getting on top of the social ladder based on the Seven Sins. One of the ways to achieve this is of course by romancing girls to have sex with them. If you achieve this you can unlock some mini games. The game was only released in Europe and Brazil.
- Agarest Senki: The level of affection between the protagonist and the chosen heroine will affect the outcome of the next generation protagonist.
- Always Remember Me
- Amagami
- Angelique
- Apostle - A cross with Eastern RPG created by Kamichichi
- Azure Dreams - The game alternated between Dungeon Crawling / Roguelike gameplay and dating sim gameplay.
- Best Friend Forever - A cross between this and a Virtual Pet game.
- Black/Matrix
- Boyfriend Dungeon — A dating sim/dungeon crawler mash-up.
- Brave Soul - A cross with the Eastern RPG genres.
- Brooktown High - the Americanized Tokimeki Memorial.
- Chrono Days
- Crush Crush - A cross with the Idle Game genre.
- Cute Knight series:
- Dandelion - Wishes Brought to You -
- Date Everything!
- Dead or Alive "Xtreme Beach Volleyball"
- Dream C Club
- Dungeon Dreams 2
- Eversoul: The game is primarily a combat-oriented Idle Game, but one of its notable features is the Bond system and the girls' personal Love Stories, which can end up being platonic or romantic.
- Gacha Life: The Life mode is essentially a platonic dating sim. You can talk with, ask, gift, and answer Pop Quizzes from the NPCs (the preset characters) and increase your friendships with them.
- Galaxy Angel gameverse - real-time strategy meets Space Opera Harem Genre
- Gate Keepers
- Girl Café Gun
- Growing Up, albeit romancing your classmates is optional as you can still get their good endings by staying friends with them
- Harukanaru Toki no Naka de
- Harvest Moon (Natsume)
- Harvest Town has a Dating system which allows the player to invite their bachelor/bachelorette of choice out on a date in various locations to unlock story cutscenes, increase their Relationship Values and possibly get decoration rewards.
- Heartache 101 ~Sour Into Sweet~
- Himitsu no Hanazono (1992)
- HuniePop combines this with a Match-Three Game.
- Idol Days
- The iDOLM@STER games all include this, except Live For You and Shiny Festa.
- Island Saga
- I Was a Teenage Exocolonist includes tracking the Relationship Values of your Love Interests and boosting them by giving them gifts and bonding with them. However, dating them is optional since the flirt options are clearly marked so you can skip them while you can still earn them on the title screen regardless by maxing out their heart meters.
- Kimikiss
- Kingdom Days
- La Corda d'Oro
- Live Powerful Pro Baseball - The notable features of the Success and My Life modes where you date a girl for extra stat and morale boosts in the former, and build up for a marriage in the latter.
- Love And Sex Second Base
- Love, Ghostie - Where the player is a matchmaker for other dates.
- Love Plus
- Lunar Days
- Lunar Lotus Festival: A dating sim with Role-Playing Game elements and a fantasy setting, where a girl named Rhea has thirty days to find a guy to go to the titular festival with.
- Matches and Matrimony - A Pride and Prejudice Tale
- Meine Liebe
- Memory Days
- MiSide
- Mitsumete Knight
- Mr. Massagy - A very strange and quirky tale of a guy trying to get a date on Linger
- My Horse Prince
- My Time
- Namco High
- Operation Dance
- Palais de Reine
- Palia - You romance eligible villagers, doing quests, giving gifts, and flirting to boost your romance level with them.
- Persona 3 - Fusion with standard Eastern RPG, with Relationship Values that aid in Dungeon Crawling segments. And not every relationship is romantic.
- The PK Girl
- Redshirt (2013) - contains Dating Sim elements amongst various other life simulator aspects.
- Riviera: The Promised Land contains some Dating Sim subplots.
- Roommates
- Rune Factory:
- Save the Date
- Sakura Wars - contains a combination of Dating Sim elements and turn-based strategic mecha battles where Relationship Values dictate your units' fighting ability
- Scholomatch
- Sentimental Graffiti
- Shining Resonance depends heavily on its dating aspect to unlock character traits for your party members and to unlock the game's multiple endings.
- The Sims series - You can devote all, none, or some of your gameplay towards romance subplots.
- Soul Tide - Combined with Dungeon Crawling Eastern RPG elements. Dolls have a bond level that players can raise by giving them gifts and taking them on dates. In return, players gain bond stories and memory keys needed to "unlock" the girls' pasts that gives them stat boosts.
- Star Ocean - A series of Eastern RPGs that include a relationship-building system similar to Dating Sims.
- Stardew Valley - Having Dating Sim subplots in the vein of Harvest Moon, its direct inspiration.
- Storm Lover
- Story of Seasons games include Dating Sim subplots. These were formerly known as Harvest Moon.
- Sucker for Love - A dating sim where you romance Lovecraftian monsters, but a dating sim nevertheless
- Summertime Saga
- Summon Night
- Sweet33
- Swooning Over Stans: A Grunkle Dating Simulator- A fan made one for Gravity Falls, in which the player can date either Stan or Ford in a story taking place a year after the canon story’s end.
- Thousand Arms
- Tiny Life Like with The Sims, you can devote all, none, or some of your gameplay towards romance subplots.
- Volcano Princess
- Wonderland Days
- World's Dawn
- Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro Na
- Zodiac Axis
Visual Novels
- Ambition: A Minuet in Power
- Angels with Scaly Wings
- Backstage Pass
- Beauty and the War: X Playing Pieces - Notably, there is the option of going through the game single or switching between suitors, so you aren't locked into any particular romantic routes.
- Being a ΔΙΚ
- Bewitching Sinners
- C14 Dating
- Chasing Sunsets
- Chop Chop Fruit salad Mystery Jam DokiDoki Dating Sim THingy: A parody of the genre starring sentient fruit.
- Comic Party
- Coming Out on Top - A Yaoi and borderline Bara Genre romance game for computers, released by Obscura Soft.
- Hush Hush - Only Your Love Can Save Them: A full-fledged visual novel adaptation of Crush Crush starring the cast of the previous two games.
- Doki Doki Literature Club! - Presents itself as one of these, but quickly Genre Shifts into horror.
- Dōkyūsei - One of the first hugely popular and successful games in the category, paving the way for everything that came after.
- Don't Take It Personally, I Just Don't Like You
- Dream Daddy - where you, as a single father, date other single fathers.
- Edelweiss (2018): A dating sim set in the universe of Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, an Alternate History Game Mod for grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV.
- Eternum
- Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~
- Galaxy Angel II
- Hatoful Boyfriend: A satire parody where you date birds however, it ends up turning into horror in the hurtful route and the sequel Holiday Star which also develops into horror at the end
- Her Jentle Hi-ness: While not the main objective of the game there are quite a lot of different characters, male, female and nonbinary, for Eorina to become romantically involved with.
- Herotome
- Hooked on You - A Dead by Daylight spinoff
- How To Date A Magical Girl!
- Hustle Cat
- I Just Want to be Single!!! is an "anti-dating sim" where the socially-awkward, aromantic protagonist Aya has to convince her Unwanted Harem of eccentric schoolgirls she just wants to be friends. She has to keep her relationship levels high, but no so high the other girls fall in love with her.
- I Love You, Colonel Sanders!
- John Cena's Sexy High School Adventure!!!
- Just Deserts, an RPG combat game by Indonesian developer Vifth Floor.
- Kaichu - The Kaiju Dating Sim: Where the player controls a Kaiju who goes on dates to various national monuments and landmarks with other Kaijus, where they then proceed to destroy the monument or landmark during their flirting.
- Lovebrush Chronicles
- Love Curse: Find Your Soulmate - a junior in college is cursed with death if she doesn't find her soulmate.
- Lovers of Aether
- Lucky Rabbit Reflex
- Magical Diary
- Magical Warrior Diamond Heart
- Man Enough
- Minotaur Hotel - Though there's only one Love Interest.
- Monster Prom - A competitive dating sim in which up to 4 players can work together so everyone get a date or compete for the same date for the school's prom. Has a few released and planned sequels, some of which depart from the original dating sim formula but all of which include some romance options:
- Monster Prom: Second Term (a DLC for the first game)
- Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp (a direct sequel)
- Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip (a survival/resource management game)
- Monster Prom: Monster Retreat (announced, a strategy game)
- Monster Prom: Not Another Isekai (working title, announced)
- Monster Prom: Reverse (announced, a Gaiden Game of the original reversing the roles of the playable and dateable characters)
- My Candy Love
- Nameless: The One Thing You Must Recall -
- Nicole
- Otomania
- Otometeki Koi Kakumei Love Revo
- Our Lovely Escape
- Pizza Game: An intentionally subpar parody of the genre.
- Princess Debut
- RE: Alistair
- Shira Oka: Second Chances
- Slay the Princess - That is, if you decide not to slay her...
- Today, I'm Harvesting You!
- Tokimeki Memorial - One of the first truly successful "family-friendly" Dating Sims, proving that the genre didn't have to rely on porngraphic material, but could indeed court a more mainstream audience, thus parving the way for a wave of Tamer and Chaster entries into the genre (plus some of the older examples getting released in cleaner versions).
- True Love Junai Monogatari
- ValiDate: Struggling Singles In Your Area
- War: 13th Day - You have to go through each boy's Romance Arc to unravel the mind-boggling mystery of this trippy Visual Novel.
- Witches X Warlocks - a fantasy dating sim where the protagonist tries to find love all while studying for their finals coming up in seven days.
Parodies
Special Mentions
- Dating Sim elements are sometimes present in Western RPGs, especially when the player has some control and customization over the Player Character.
- 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.
- The Dawnguard DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has shades of this in the form of Serana. Throughout the questline, when her past and lineage are slowly revealed, you can be polite and understanding in your dialogue, or you can be forceful and rude. While you can't marry her, if you're polite enough, you can convince her to cure herself of vampirism if you ally with the Dawnguard.
- The awkward dialogue of Festival Days must be seen to be believed.
- Grand Theft Auto:
- Oddly enough, Grand Theft Auto 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, and 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 to. Each girl also has a totally different personality and interest, along with benefits if they like you enough — dating the lawyer Kiki, for instance, will allow you to get out of a wanted level of up to three stars.
A similar system is even used with some of the male characters. Although their activities are strictly of the guy friend variety, like drinking or going to a strip club, it's still the same basic feature, and you can get similar bonuses from being friends with them — your cousin Roman offers free cab rides, Little Jacob offers discounted weapons, etc. They also implement this feature directly into the storyline several times; you have two canonical girlfriends over the course of the game, while the ending you choose results in the death of either your dear cousin or your already mentally scarred girlfriend.
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas also had this feature, albeit a stripped down earlier version. It doesn't tie too much into the story aside from stealing an access card from one of your girlfriends, though you do receive rewards like special outfits and access to their cars.
- League of Legends held a temporary, client-based instance of this called Spirit Bonds during their 2020 "Spirit Blossom" lore event, centering around a Featureless Protagonist getting stuck the Spirit World of the game's mythology and encountering alternate versions of several playable champions on varying paths, most of them with a hint of romantic subtext. In order to advance the stories (and earn the in-game rewards for doing so), players would need to complete missions for the characters in the proper League game, including killing enough monsters, dealing tons of damage, avoiding death, etc.
- Man Enough is a 1994 FMV game that involves exchanging cheesy pick-up lines with beautiful women.
- 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).
- Mount & Blade is mainly a Strategy RPG, but it does have a rather complex courtship system that allows you to woo and possibly marry various ladies. Each lady has a certain personality that affects her opinion on certain matters (your character's Honor and Renown, tournament dedication, various bits of poetry you can recite, etc.). Of course, since the game takes place in a medieval setting, there's more to it than just winning her favor most of the time...
- The happiness level in some versions of Pokémon has more than a shade of this, with your Pokémon reacting well to "gifts" like Potions and Stat Ups and badly to failures in your cooperative battles.
- Sleeping Dogs (2012) has four women that you can go on a dating sidequest with. The reward for completing them is that collectibles will show up on your mini-map. The dates are all treated as flings rather than anything serious and two of the girls you date end up calling Wei out for his philandering ways.
- Yandere Simulator plays like an inverted Dating Sim. Instead of trying to woo "Senpai" (because the main character's Cuteness Proximity prevents her from even talking to the guy), she instead has to kill or otherwise sabotage her rivals to prevent them from successfully dating Senpai. However, you do get to play more straightforward Dating Sim minigames if you decide to matchmake your rivals with other boys to keep them away from Senpai as the matchmaking process involves you coaching these boys on what to say and give to the rivals to win their heart.
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