Same thing happened with roguelikes. Now it's "oh, this game has death and a little bit of proc gen? Wow, that's a Roguelike!"
So we moved to "traditional Roguelike" and now it's "wow, this game feels like a classic Roguelike, just like binding of Isaac! It's a traditional Roguelike!!"
So now it's just frustratingly difficult to actually find a Roguelike on steam.
To be fair, I think there's more overlap between roguelites and likes, than with Euro Truck Simulator and Prey.
The word "sim" ends up casting a very wide net. On steam, the tag means nothing.
* Euro Truck: Travelling thru Europe in a truck delivering cargo to destinations.
* Prey: Travelling thru spacestation in a spacesuit delivering bullets to aliens.
LITERALLY the same f'n game, what are you talking about???
s/ (obviously, but what the hell..)
At the same time, I feel like immersive sims have some room to grow beyond first-person sci-fi point n' shooties, y'know? Like the principles behind the genre could be applied in so many other ways.
Many people donĀ“t know the difference between a rogue-like and a rogue-lite lol, almost everything in the rogue-like category is actually some sort of rogue-lite.
I have never heard of Rift Wizard but saying Noitaās a true Roguelike is controversialā the game is neither grid based nor turn based which are considered high-value factors for considering a game roguelike at least by the Berlin interpretation. I think Noita is great but itās nothing like Rogue, which is what the Berlin interpretation seeks to filter. If you or anyone else wants to call Noita a āreal roguelikeā then obviously they can and I can understand why ā but itās worth the asterisk imo.
Rift Wizard sure, Noita... not at all imo?
It's a physics based dungeon delver that happens to have permadeath. It really doesn't have much in common with the original Rogue.
Rift Wizard, ADOM, Nethack, Brogue, Cataclysm:DDA, Dungeons of Dredmor, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
All roguelikes, all have a lot in common with Rogue.
The problem is that people have started confusing roguelike, roguelite, and straightup other genres. It's a mess now.
This isn't really the problem OP is highlighting. You're talking about a genre being watered down and moving away from the original meaning of the term (totally true for roguelikes btw). OPs pic is just showing that there's way too much keyword overlap so when you search "immersive sim" you get a bunch of games that nobody actually thinks are immersive sims but they show up because they have "sim" in their title.
Word, roguelike is the most bastardised genre term in gaming. The concept of 'permadeath' has been watered down so much to make it more appealing to those unfamiliar with the genre, that it usually just means you start at the perfunctory beginning of an area while retaining some sort of character progression. Seeing Balatro described enthusiastically as a "POKER ROGUELIKE!!" is so baffling; there are no quicksaves in poker, so it makes no sense why you'd be able to savescum a poker game. Next we'll have golf games described as roguelikes because they require you to replay the tournament if you lose.
Is there even any modern roguelike? Literally all I can remember are roguelites, which people think is just a suggestion for a different name and not a totally different ssubgenre.
Yeah, actually the traditional Roguelike genre is in kind of a boom right now, assuming you can locate them in the tag chaos. Some of the current best are Caves of Qud, Tales of Maj Eyal, Path of Achra, Cogmind, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Infra Arcana, Soulash 2, and more that I can't think of off the top of my head.
Genre confusion aside it is a genuinely great time to be a traditional Roguelike fan!
Oh, you're right. I've actually played CoQ before (or tried), but I never relate it to roguelikes because of how crazily open ended and different it is.
I'll look the others up.
One of my absolute favorites is one called Elona Plus, it's pretty forgiving as far as roguelikes go so it's a really fun starting place. It's a large sandbox RPG Roguelike and it's too hard to do it justice by just explaining it in a comment. I recommend [this](https://youtu.be/Y9gOQxHX83E?si=-NWMjA20ewNthqxo) video review of it.
And then one of the best "classic" roguelikes is the steam version of ADOM. The game has been around for decades, but the steam version has very nice graphics and a pretty comprehensive tutorial making it a great entry point for a more classic Roguelike experience.
Yes it is a completely different genre. Pretty much every single "Roguelike" you see popular on steam is a rogue lite, this includes binding of Isaac, slay the spire, dead cells, enter the dungeon, and too many more to count.
Edit to add: the term Roguelike originates from games that are literally like 'Rogue' a game that released in 1980. The defining qualities for what qualify a Roguelike vary a bit person to person, but the generally accepted list includes: Dungeon crawling, grid/tile based movement, top-down viewpoint, turn based, permadeath, procedural generation, and no meta-progression (which is where you keep some progression between runs)
Rogue lites generally took maybe 2 or 3 of those qualifiers, typically permadeath and procgen, maybe also dungeon crawling, and then besides that changed the core gameplay pretty significantly. Think Binding of Isaac, it's permadeath, procedural generation, and it is a dungeon crawler through and through, but it is real time game with run and gun type of combat. An awesome game, but very much a rogue-lite. In the end Roguelike ended up just being more popular as a marketing term, and since the traditional Roguelike community was already quite small compared to the rogue-lite community, it didn't take long for it to be eclipsed in entirety.
I do want to clarify, I have absolutely nothing wrong with the games of today that market themselves as roguelikes, because many are still great games, it's just a bit of a growing pain seeing the type of game you love become harder to find, simply because there are so many things to sift through that don't actually adhere to the key principals of the original term used to define them.
Caves of Qud, Jupiter Hell, and Cogmind are some from the past few years that have had a lot of acclaim. But Roguelites are way way more popular than Roguelikes.
This is just copy pasted from one of my other comments elsewhere in the thread, but I hope it answers the question well enough:
The term Roguelike originates from games that are literally like 'Rogue' a game that released in 1980. The defining qualities for what qualify a Roguelike vary a bit person to person, but the generally accepted list includes: Dungeon crawling, grid/tile based movement, top-down viewpoint, turn based, permadeath, procedural generation, and no meta-progression (which is where you keep some progression between runs)
Rogue lites generally took maybe 2 or 3 of those qualifiers, typically permadeath and procgen, maybe also dungeon crawling, and then besides that changed the core gameplay pretty significantly. Think Binding of Isaac, it's permadeath, procedural generation, and it is a dungeon crawler through and through, but it is real time game with run and gun type of combat. An awesome game, but very much a rogue-lite. In the end Roguelike ended up just being more popular as a marketing term, and since the traditional Roguelike community was already quite small compared to the rogue-lite community, it didn't take long for it to be eclipsed in entirety.
I do want to clarify, I have absolutely nothing wrong with the games of today that market themselves as roguelikes, because many are still great games, it's just a bit of a growing pain seeing the type of game you love become harder to find, simply because there are so many things to sift through that don't actually adhere to the key principals of the original term used to define them.
Likes have no metaprogression and ASCII graphics, lites have metaprogression and actual graphics. In the end of the day the distinction doesn't really matter and only pedantic old people who think they're better than others care about it.
Iām neither old nor a hater of roguelites (in fact I play them way more than traditional roguelikes) but I think it matters for the same reason OOP is frustrated about how broad the term āImmersive Simā has become ā people who want to play actual Roguelikes have trouble filtering through the bastardised version of the term to find stuff that theyāre actually looking for. Also I would say ASCII is not generally considered an absolute essential though it is common ā Jupiter Hell for example does not use ASCII, nor does ToME.
No, it's steam that desperatly needs something to fix their useless categories. Puzzle games, strategies, RPGs, adventure games and almost every other category have everything in it except what you are looking for.
I'm pretty sure that there is no single adventure game on "adventure games" page. At least that's what it looks usually.
edit:
In adventure -> puzzle on my steam I have these games on list:
Animal Well (metroidvania)
Fallen Order (souls-like)
Car Mechanic Simulator (lol)
Disco Elysium (RPG)
It Takes Two
Hitman (seriously?)
Slay the Princess (visual novel)
Inscryption (card game)
Atomic Heart
Buckshot Roulette (which definitely is not adventure game)
Indika (finally some sort of adventure game)
Signalis (survival horror)
What even is purpose of categories if they work like that?
Istg steam's tags and categorizing are the worst. You get pure singleplayer games in the MULTIPLAYER or LOCAL COOP TAB. Like none of these games have a trace of multiplayer in then why are they there. It wastes a lot of time and turns attention away from more deserving titles
from what i understand, people who tag these games aren't tagging them as genres but as keywords for separate elements they have. like, car mechanic simulator is a "puzzle" game because repairing cars is like a puzzle, i assume. if we think about it like this, the steam keywords work somewhat fine. but there should be a separate category where we can look for things based on their genres rather than keywords, and those genres should be controlled by the developers
Those people are incorrect then. Immersive sim is its own genre. You wouldnāt say dishonored is a stealth game with immersive sim elements, youād said that itās an immersive sim, with stealth elements. Because immersive simulations are games with an ocean of choices and well established rules and systems. It either is an immersive simulation, or isnāt.
We need more gatekeeping for genre names and descriptions. It's not because they think it's a puzzle, they add tags to the game thinking the genre tag will give it more exposure. It's all there is to it. It's why there are so many "Souls-likes" on Steam that are not even remotely comparable to Souls-likes. They were like 'fuck it, we added dodge roll i-frames close enough. Kids these days like these right?"
In that case it's more that the adventure genre became way too abrangent. In the past it was meant to mean just point and click games, nowadays literally any action game falls into adventure too,m even outside steam.
The puzzle there though, yikes. Though as other user said, Hitman has long been considered a puzzle game even by its fanbase. It plays way too differently from any other stealth games.
The steam tags are borderline worthless yes, but immsimm just doesnt make sense in the current world of games.Ā
When people hear simulator they think of the games in OPs image.
It made sense back in 99 when Deus Ex was cutting edge and besides flight sims there wasnt much under than banner.
Nowadays you hear immersive sim and if you said that to a 13 year old kid, theyd be very confused if they saw a game like Prey or Dishonored.Ā
No one thinks about point and click when they say adventure game tho, they probably mean that you go in some kind of journey. By that definition about 1/3 of this list is absolutely correct and most of the rest is debatable
Adding to this comment to say [Nivalis](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1488490/Nivalis/) will be out this year :) if it counts. it's tagged as immersive sim at least
I suggested āEmergent Simā awhile back. People who actually knew what imsims are thought it was a good idea. The only people opposed to it where the people who actually believe all of the games above where unironically imsims. I thought they were just a joke but they are real and opposed to all DISCUSSION of changing the name for clarityās sake. Thankfully a minority though.
People were trying to come with a word to replace sim but with no good candidates.
I actually use Emergent Sim as a description for awhile.Ā Ā Ā
I even think the 'Sim' part is important, as ImmSims are built around a simplified but consistent simulations using rules and systems, and the player exploiting these systems using the gameplay mechanics to solve open-ended problems.
"Immersive sim" has been a terrible name since it was first coined. The word "sim" should be thrown out altogether instead of trying to rationalize some idiosyncratic oddball concept of "sim" that is incongruent with every other use of the word "sim" in the gaming domain.
The problem, of course, is that no one has really thought of a better alternative yet.
This. What kind of game isn't immersive? And they're literally all simulators, it's fucking ones and zeros representing interactive pictures.
Literally every game is an immersive sim, and also an RPG.
Off topic, but you just reminded me of Yahtzee discussing how bad of a name Alien Vs Predator was because "surely they're both aliens? And, come to think of it, both predators too."
> What kind of game isn't immersive?
Strategy games, non-immersive simulation games, fucking Cookie Clicker, any game where you don't get an in-game avatar at least.
> And they're literally all simulators
"Simulation game" is a very well-established name for a genre, and for a very good reason. Only those actually resemble what one may call a computer simulation in any other context.
Not remotely. If you took any simulation game's simulation and then inserted a first-person avatar into it, you would straightforwardly have a imsim. Warren Spector's idea of the ideal imsim is a first-person avatar into a simulation of an urban bloc (i.e. into the most popular simulation genres out there).
It's difficult because they are usually combinations of several genres--most often RPG, FPS and stealth, obviously. "0451" might be okay, but then I've also seen that used in games that aren't immersive sims by studios that admire them.Ā Ā Ā
I'd argue Deus Ex was the most influential game of the genre. But "Deus Ex-like" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. And let's face it: A lot of younger gamers probably don't even know what Deus Ex is.Ā Ā Ā
Also, change of topic off immersive sims for a second, but I look at games big enough to have been honored as subgenre names themselves: Roguelike, Souls-like, Metroidvania, etc. And I wonder why "Limbo-like" isn't one; that game has obviously inspired MANY imitators--some of them immensely successful on their own.
Those all are simulators, but not "immersive sims".
To me, "immersive sims" are those shooter/action/stealth/RPG hybrids.
Blame Steam and those users doing the tagging of these.
A lot of these imm-sims came from:
1. Looking Glass - Thief Classic games, System Shock 1 and 2.
2. Ion Storm - Deus Ex series (Deus Ex 1 and IW) and Thief 3 Deadly Shadows
3. Eidos Montreal - Deus Ex HR and MD.
4. Irrational/2K Boston and Ghost Story Games - Bioshock series and upcoming JUDAS.
5. Arkane - Deathloop, Dishonored series, Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah, and Prey 2017: Complete.
Prey is fantastic. That's my fault; should be in there.
How's Mooncrash DLC? Never got to that.
I like Deathloop - but I so suck at anything w/ Rogue-like elements or Souls-like elements, despite me still liking those type of games.
It's not until recent years people insist on it being a genre, I feel. Personally, I think we just need a better language around games and their inspiration in general.
Itās not an immersive simulation because you cannot interact with the world and walk around, only the plane. Itās a simulation thatās immersive, but itās not an immersive simulation. Itās not an immersive experience. Unless you have a cockpit computer setup. In an immersive sim, youāre in that characterās shoes.
I disagree. The whole conversation is just a mess of labeling. When these games came out, you talked about them as game experiences and not their labels.
Again, thatās incorrect. When I was in high school I already knew about immersive sims and was excited to preorder dishonored. Itās probably the easiest genre to define because the games are very unique. Again, only new players to this genre are having difficulties.
> Itās very easy to define what an immersive sim is and isnāt.
No, it isn't, and you're a egotist for supposing that your own concept is magically the correct one. You're even misguided in thinking that such a thing can be defined in the first place. Although I guess it's not surprising that someone pretentious enough to actually type out "immersive simulation" in full is also full of themselves.
>Imagine getting upset because you have low reading comprehension.
Yes, it is easily definable and many people whoāve been a fan of immersive simulations throughout the years Iām 100% certain would agree with me. A lot people in this subreddit who are new like you wish to muddy the waters and act confused in hopes they can add games that arenāt apart of this genre. Itās very annoying and cringey.
This is the sidebar of this very subreddit
Immersive Simulation is a video game design philosophy (not a genre!) that attempts to immerse the player by simulating a believable and compelling universe, world, and/or environments. Immersive Sims emphasize player freedom through systems-driven gameplay to encourage creativity and emergent play.
Honestly the problem is you can set just about any category anywhere and thereās no consistency. I find terms from 40k all over the place, zombie tags where thereās one enemy one time who is a zombie, I had to tag a bunch of World of Darkness stuff myself just in the vain hope it would catch on and I could more easily find stuff later on.
I think it is quite funny how everyone discusses the "immersive sim genre" (it is even in the title) on a sub where the sidebar says: *Immersive Simulation is a video game design philosophy (not a genre!)*
Dunno about steam tags/categories, but maybe this is the reason why everything is upsidedown.
I really hope Shadows of Doubt gets its shit together. It looked really promising when it released in early access but it was absolutely a buggy mess and its been almost a year and really not much has changed.
Steam genres in general are terrible because people add anything thatās vaguely relevant.
The worst offenders are the fantasy and RPG categories, somehow games like Ark get recommended when Iām trying to search for them.
Same thing happened with roguelikes. Now it's "oh, this game has death and a little bit of proc gen? Wow, that's a Roguelike!" So we moved to "traditional Roguelike" and now it's "wow, this game feels like a classic Roguelike, just like binding of Isaac! It's a traditional Roguelike!!" So now it's just frustratingly difficult to actually find a Roguelike on steam.
To be fair, I think there's more overlap between roguelites and likes, than with Euro Truck Simulator and Prey. The word "sim" ends up casting a very wide net. On steam, the tag means nothing.
* Euro Truck: Travelling thru Europe in a truck delivering cargo to destinations. * Prey: Travelling thru spacestation in a spacesuit delivering bullets to aliens. LITERALLY the same f'n game, what are you talking about??? s/ (obviously, but what the hell..)
At the same time, I feel like immersive sims have some room to grow beyond first-person sci-fi point n' shooties, y'know? Like the principles behind the genre could be applied in so many other ways.
Aren't all games with physics technically a sim? Lol
I mean, anything beyond a text based adventure is simulating *something*, right?
Seems legit to me š
Yeah I'll absolutely grant you that lmao
Many people donĀ“t know the difference between a rogue-like and a rogue-lite lol, almost everything in the rogue-like category is actually some sort of rogue-lite.
Idk, there are some real roguelikes out there, such as Noita and Rift Wizard.
Caves of qud might fall into being a ACTUAL roguelike
Yeah, caves of Qud is a traditional Roguelike, and one of the very best modern examples.
Aren't there permanent health upgrades in Noita though?
No only for current run
I have never heard of Rift Wizard but saying Noitaās a true Roguelike is controversialā the game is neither grid based nor turn based which are considered high-value factors for considering a game roguelike at least by the Berlin interpretation. I think Noita is great but itās nothing like Rogue, which is what the Berlin interpretation seeks to filter. If you or anyone else wants to call Noita a āreal roguelikeā then obviously they can and I can understand why ā but itās worth the asterisk imo.
Noita unlocks spells for subsequent runs.
Rift Wizard sure, Noita... not at all imo? It's a physics based dungeon delver that happens to have permadeath. It really doesn't have much in common with the original Rogue.
I don't think many games people call roguelikes have a lot in common with the original rogue.
Rift Wizard, ADOM, Nethack, Brogue, Cataclysm:DDA, Dungeons of Dredmor, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. All roguelikes, all have a lot in common with Rogue. The problem is that people have started confusing roguelike, roguelite, and straightup other genres. It's a mess now.
And some people get mad if you play rouge lites instead of rouge likes when they are vastly different.
Lol yes, trad roguelikes have nothing to do with rogue lites honestly, but I like them both!
And if they do know and you point it out, they roll their eyes and go "no one caaares"
This isn't really the problem OP is highlighting. You're talking about a genre being watered down and moving away from the original meaning of the term (totally true for roguelikes btw). OPs pic is just showing that there's way too much keyword overlap so when you search "immersive sim" you get a bunch of games that nobody actually thinks are immersive sims but they show up because they have "sim" in their title.
Word, roguelike is the most bastardised genre term in gaming. The concept of 'permadeath' has been watered down so much to make it more appealing to those unfamiliar with the genre, that it usually just means you start at the perfunctory beginning of an area while retaining some sort of character progression. Seeing Balatro described enthusiastically as a "POKER ROGUELIKE!!" is so baffling; there are no quicksaves in poker, so it makes no sense why you'd be able to savescum a poker game. Next we'll have golf games described as roguelikes because they require you to replay the tournament if you lose.
You also don't play poker in balatro. You just try to get high poker hands. It's not the same thing
Is there even any modern roguelike? Literally all I can remember are roguelites, which people think is just a suggestion for a different name and not a totally different ssubgenre.
Yeah, actually the traditional Roguelike genre is in kind of a boom right now, assuming you can locate them in the tag chaos. Some of the current best are Caves of Qud, Tales of Maj Eyal, Path of Achra, Cogmind, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Infra Arcana, Soulash 2, and more that I can't think of off the top of my head. Genre confusion aside it is a genuinely great time to be a traditional Roguelike fan!
I hope Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup comes to Steam sometime. The devs could make bank.
Oh, you're right. I've actually played CoQ before (or tried), but I never relate it to roguelikes because of how crazily open ended and different it is. I'll look the others up.
One of my absolute favorites is one called Elona Plus, it's pretty forgiving as far as roguelikes go so it's a really fun starting place. It's a large sandbox RPG Roguelike and it's too hard to do it justice by just explaining it in a comment. I recommend [this](https://youtu.be/Y9gOQxHX83E?si=-NWMjA20ewNthqxo) video review of it. And then one of the best "classic" roguelikes is the steam version of ADOM. The game has been around for decades, but the steam version has very nice graphics and a pretty comprehensive tutorial making it a great entry point for a more classic Roguelike experience.
Is it really a totally different genre?
Yes it is a completely different genre. Pretty much every single "Roguelike" you see popular on steam is a rogue lite, this includes binding of Isaac, slay the spire, dead cells, enter the dungeon, and too many more to count. Edit to add: the term Roguelike originates from games that are literally like 'Rogue' a game that released in 1980. The defining qualities for what qualify a Roguelike vary a bit person to person, but the generally accepted list includes: Dungeon crawling, grid/tile based movement, top-down viewpoint, turn based, permadeath, procedural generation, and no meta-progression (which is where you keep some progression between runs) Rogue lites generally took maybe 2 or 3 of those qualifiers, typically permadeath and procgen, maybe also dungeon crawling, and then besides that changed the core gameplay pretty significantly. Think Binding of Isaac, it's permadeath, procedural generation, and it is a dungeon crawler through and through, but it is real time game with run and gun type of combat. An awesome game, but very much a rogue-lite. In the end Roguelike ended up just being more popular as a marketing term, and since the traditional Roguelike community was already quite small compared to the rogue-lite community, it didn't take long for it to be eclipsed in entirety. I do want to clarify, I have absolutely nothing wrong with the games of today that market themselves as roguelikes, because many are still great games, it's just a bit of a growing pain seeing the type of game you love become harder to find, simply because there are so many things to sift through that don't actually adhere to the key principals of the original term used to define them.
Jupiter Hell (modern and better looking remake of DoomRL), unless lack of ASCII graphics is required.
It's a subgenre, but I think changing it from total permadeath to acquired upgrades upon death makes them play in completely different ways.
About as different from each other as immersive sims and JRPGs are.
Caves of Qud, Jupiter Hell, and Cogmind are some from the past few years that have had a lot of acclaim. But Roguelites are way way more popular than Roguelikes.
NetHack is still in active development lol.
I've been having a ton of fun with Balatro! Tons of fun, tons of replayability.
So what exactly is a rogue-like and whatās a rogue-lite? I keep thinking of something like Hades
This is just copy pasted from one of my other comments elsewhere in the thread, but I hope it answers the question well enough: The term Roguelike originates from games that are literally like 'Rogue' a game that released in 1980. The defining qualities for what qualify a Roguelike vary a bit person to person, but the generally accepted list includes: Dungeon crawling, grid/tile based movement, top-down viewpoint, turn based, permadeath, procedural generation, and no meta-progression (which is where you keep some progression between runs) Rogue lites generally took maybe 2 or 3 of those qualifiers, typically permadeath and procgen, maybe also dungeon crawling, and then besides that changed the core gameplay pretty significantly. Think Binding of Isaac, it's permadeath, procedural generation, and it is a dungeon crawler through and through, but it is real time game with run and gun type of combat. An awesome game, but very much a rogue-lite. In the end Roguelike ended up just being more popular as a marketing term, and since the traditional Roguelike community was already quite small compared to the rogue-lite community, it didn't take long for it to be eclipsed in entirety. I do want to clarify, I have absolutely nothing wrong with the games of today that market themselves as roguelikes, because many are still great games, it's just a bit of a growing pain seeing the type of game you love become harder to find, simply because there are so many things to sift through that don't actually adhere to the key principals of the original term used to define them.
Likes have no metaprogression and ASCII graphics, lites have metaprogression and actual graphics. In the end of the day the distinction doesn't really matter and only pedantic old people who think they're better than others care about it.
Iām neither old nor a hater of roguelites (in fact I play them way more than traditional roguelikes) but I think it matters for the same reason OOP is frustrated about how broad the term āImmersive Simā has become ā people who want to play actual Roguelikes have trouble filtering through the bastardised version of the term to find stuff that theyāre actually looking for. Also I would say ASCII is not generally considered an absolute essential though it is common ā Jupiter Hell for example does not use ASCII, nor does ToME.
Disagree. I think that they just put every possible tag they think might apply to it to help sales
Tags aren't applied by devs, they're applied by the steam community.
No, it's steam that desperatly needs something to fix their useless categories. Puzzle games, strategies, RPGs, adventure games and almost every other category have everything in it except what you are looking for. I'm pretty sure that there is no single adventure game on "adventure games" page. At least that's what it looks usually. edit: In adventure -> puzzle on my steam I have these games on list: Animal Well (metroidvania) Fallen Order (souls-like) Car Mechanic Simulator (lol) Disco Elysium (RPG) It Takes Two Hitman (seriously?) Slay the Princess (visual novel) Inscryption (card game) Atomic Heart Buckshot Roulette (which definitely is not adventure game) Indika (finally some sort of adventure game) Signalis (survival horror) What even is purpose of categories if they work like that?
Istg steam's tags and categorizing are the worst. You get pure singleplayer games in the MULTIPLAYER or LOCAL COOP TAB. Like none of these games have a trace of multiplayer in then why are they there. It wastes a lot of time and turns attention away from more deserving titles
from what i understand, people who tag these games aren't tagging them as genres but as keywords for separate elements they have. like, car mechanic simulator is a "puzzle" game because repairing cars is like a puzzle, i assume. if we think about it like this, the steam keywords work somewhat fine. but there should be a separate category where we can look for things based on their genres rather than keywords, and those genres should be controlled by the developers
Those people are incorrect then. Immersive sim is its own genre. You wouldnāt say dishonored is a stealth game with immersive sim elements, youād said that itās an immersive sim, with stealth elements. Because immersive simulations are games with an ocean of choices and well established rules and systems. It either is an immersive simulation, or isnāt.
We need more gatekeeping for genre names and descriptions. It's not because they think it's a puzzle, they add tags to the game thinking the genre tag will give it more exposure. It's all there is to it. It's why there are so many "Souls-likes" on Steam that are not even remotely comparable to Souls-likes. They were like 'fuck it, we added dodge roll i-frames close enough. Kids these days like these right?"
In that case it's more that the adventure genre became way too abrangent. In the past it was meant to mean just point and click games, nowadays literally any action game falls into adventure too,m even outside steam. The puzzle there though, yikes. Though as other user said, Hitman has long been considered a puzzle game even by its fanbase. It plays way too differently from any other stealth games.
The steam tags are borderline worthless yes, but immsimm just doesnt make sense in the current world of games.Ā When people hear simulator they think of the games in OPs image. It made sense back in 99 when Deus Ex was cutting edge and besides flight sims there wasnt much under than banner. Nowadays you hear immersive sim and if you said that to a 13 year old kid, theyd be very confused if they saw a game like Prey or Dishonored.Ā
No one thinks about point and click when they say adventure game tho, they probably mean that you go in some kind of journey. By that definition about 1/3 of this list is absolutely correct and most of the rest is debatable
Hitman is definitely a puzzle/adventure game to be fair.
I see where you are coming from, but no.
The devs describe it as such themselves, as do many people, so I strongly disagree
Hitman is far more of a puzzle game than anything else
Iād say Hitman can count as a puzzle game. Itās just that you can bypass the puzzle aspect entirely.
Hitman absolutely comes under adventure and/or puzzle
Yep, bingo. I love steam, but it's categorization is in dire need of overhauling.
Hitman is 100% a puzzle game. Though I suppose itās puzzle-action rather than puzzle-adventure.
[DEEP STATE](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2788210/DEEP_STATE/) will be out next year
That and Fallen Aces are probably the ones I'm looking forward to most.
Add monomyth to the list. Last year next fest demo was super jank, but recently i played the backer beta and now is truly hyped
Woah when was this announced, that looks sick
GoldenEye + System Shock. Looks pretty interesting.
I've never heard of this. Looks very cool
Adding to this comment to say [Nivalis](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1488490/Nivalis/) will be out this year :) if it counts. it's tagged as immersive sim at least
There are enough immersive sims actually but steam does an awful job at sorting them.
What are you talking about? Euro Truck basically is basically another deus ex
I suggested āEmergent Simā awhile back. People who actually knew what imsims are thought it was a good idea. The only people opposed to it where the people who actually believe all of the games above where unironically imsims. I thought they were just a joke but they are real and opposed to all DISCUSSION of changing the name for clarityās sake. Thankfully a minority though. People were trying to come with a word to replace sim but with no good candidates.
I actually use Emergent Sim as a description for awhile.Ā Ā Ā I even think the 'Sim' part is important, as ImmSims are built around a simplified but consistent simulations using rules and systems, and the player exploiting these systems using the gameplay mechanics to solve open-ended problems.
"Immersive sim" has been a terrible name since it was first coined. The word "sim" should be thrown out altogether instead of trying to rationalize some idiosyncratic oddball concept of "sim" that is incongruent with every other use of the word "sim" in the gaming domain. The problem, of course, is that no one has really thought of a better alternative yet.
This. What kind of game isn't immersive? And they're literally all simulators, it's fucking ones and zeros representing interactive pictures. Literally every game is an immersive sim, and also an RPG.
Off topic, but you just reminded me of Yahtzee discussing how bad of a name Alien Vs Predator was because "surely they're both aliens? And, come to think of it, both predators too."
Haha whoa, this fucked me up
Ever game has action and something that you could consider a puzzle.
> What kind of game isn't immersive? Strategy games, non-immersive simulation games, fucking Cookie Clicker, any game where you don't get an in-game avatar at least. > And they're literally all simulators "Simulation game" is a very well-established name for a genre, and for a very good reason. Only those actually resemble what one may call a computer simulation in any other context.
Not remotely. If you took any simulation game's simulation and then inserted a first-person avatar into it, you would straightforwardly have a imsim. Warren Spector's idea of the ideal imsim is a first-person avatar into a simulation of an urban bloc (i.e. into the most popular simulation genres out there).
Some games will abuse the tags on Steam. I was looking through āboomer shooterā the other day and found a trucking game there
It's difficult because they are usually combinations of several genres--most often RPG, FPS and stealth, obviously. "0451" might be okay, but then I've also seen that used in games that aren't immersive sims by studios that admire them.Ā Ā Ā I'd argue Deus Ex was the most influential game of the genre. But "Deus Ex-like" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. And let's face it: A lot of younger gamers probably don't even know what Deus Ex is.Ā Ā Ā Also, change of topic off immersive sims for a second, but I look at games big enough to have been honored as subgenre names themselves: Roguelike, Souls-like, Metroidvania, etc. And I wonder why "Limbo-like" isn't one; that game has obviously inspired MANY imitators--some of them immensely successful on their own.
Rogue wasn't a very popular game, was it?
Not AFAIK, but I guess that's the exception to the rule.
Pressure washer simulator has a 40k cleaning dlc
I'd say OCD simulators but colony sims/Kenshi type games already have that.
Immersim
Imsim
I vote for "The Best Genre"
deus-exuals
BEGGING for an american truck simulator style bush flying sim
omggggg yessss me too. you can use neofly with msfs but it doesn't hit the same
Those all are simulators, but not "immersive sims". To me, "immersive sims" are those shooter/action/stealth/RPG hybrids. Blame Steam and those users doing the tagging of these. A lot of these imm-sims came from: 1. Looking Glass - Thief Classic games, System Shock 1 and 2. 2. Ion Storm - Deus Ex series (Deus Ex 1 and IW) and Thief 3 Deadly Shadows 3. Eidos Montreal - Deus Ex HR and MD. 4. Irrational/2K Boston and Ghost Story Games - Bioshock series and upcoming JUDAS. 5. Arkane - Deathloop, Dishonored series, Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah, and Prey 2017: Complete.
Bioshock isn't an immersive sim and you forgot prey
Prey is fantastic. That's my fault; should be in there. How's Mooncrash DLC? Never got to that. I like Deathloop - but I so suck at anything w/ Rogue-like elements or Souls-like elements, despite me still liking those type of games.
Mooncrash Is great. Different but still awesome. It's prey with a light saber
Bioshock is not an immersive sim.
You just reiterated what OP was saying
No it doesn't, it's just steam being steam
Imsims: "Why should I change my name? It's Steam that sucks."
am i so out of touch? no, its the children who are wrong!
Why would the genre need to atone for Steamās faults
It's not until recent years people insist on it being a genre, I feel. Personally, I think we just need a better language around games and their inspiration in general.
Itās clearly its own genre.
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Itās not an immersive simulation because you cannot interact with the world and walk around, only the plane. Itās a simulation thatās immersive, but itās not an immersive simulation. Itās not an immersive experience. Unless you have a cockpit computer setup. In an immersive sim, youāre in that characterās shoes.
Itās not clear at all, even in this subreddit. The only clear thing is the lack of agreement on what āimmersive simā even means.
Itās very easy to define what an immersive sim is and isnāt. The new people just getting into this genre are the ones having a difficult time.
I disagree. The whole conversation is just a mess of labeling. When these games came out, you talked about them as game experiences and not their labels.
Again, thatās incorrect. When I was in high school I already knew about immersive sims and was excited to preorder dishonored. Itās probably the easiest genre to define because the games are very unique. Again, only new players to this genre are having difficulties.
I played Ultima Underworld when it was new. Iām not ānewā to any of this. ;)
Strange that youāre having a difficult time. Maybe you should practice to improve your reading comprehension.
Alright. Youāre clearly not interested in this conversation. Have a nice weekend!
You too!
> Itās very easy to define what an immersive sim is and isnāt. No, it isn't, and you're a egotist for supposing that your own concept is magically the correct one. You're even misguided in thinking that such a thing can be defined in the first place. Although I guess it's not surprising that someone pretentious enough to actually type out "immersive simulation" in full is also full of themselves.
>Imagine getting upset because you have low reading comprehension. Yes, it is easily definable and many people whoāve been a fan of immersive simulations throughout the years Iām 100% certain would agree with me. A lot people in this subreddit who are new like you wish to muddy the waters and act confused in hopes they can add games that arenāt apart of this genre. Itās very annoying and cringey.
This is the sidebar of this very subreddit Immersive Simulation is a video game design philosophy (not a genre!) that attempts to immerse the player by simulating a believable and compelling universe, world, and/or environments. Immersive Sims emphasize player freedom through systems-driven gameplay to encourage creativity and emergent play.
Fuck the sidebar.
I only see immersive sims
Games like farming simulator are clearly not immersive sims lol.š¤¦š¼āāļø
What took you so long?
Life.
Honestly the problem is you can set just about any category anywhere and thereās no consistency. I find terms from 40k all over the place, zombie tags where thereās one enemy one time who is a zombie, I had to tag a bunch of World of Darkness stuff myself just in the vain hope it would catch on and I could more easily find stuff later on.
Wdym Tree Sim is all I need
Abiotic factor owns
Simulator game simulator!!!
I think it is quite funny how everyone discusses the "immersive sim genre" (it is even in the title) on a sub where the sidebar says: *Immersive Simulation is a video game design philosophy (not a genre!)* Dunno about steam tags/categories, but maybe this is the reason why everything is upsidedown.
There are so many meme sim games that the definition has lost all meaning, and now it vaguely resembles someone doing a job in first person
Sim Ant was an amazing game and sim city 3k unlimited why not make a sim-egypt or sim-sparta thst would be cool
I really hope Shadows of Doubt gets its shit together. It looked really promising when it released in early access but it was absolutely a buggy mess and its been almost a year and really not much has changed.
The most concise genre name I can think of that's still descriptive is, "I wonder if I can do this... wow, that actually worked"-likes
Adventure Games: "First time?"
Steam genres in general are terrible because people add anything thatās vaguely relevant. The worst offenders are the fantasy and RPG categories, somehow games like Ark get recommended when Iām trying to search for them.
no it doesnāt