Following are some of the important computer game genres. For each one, try to think of some examples.
- Arcade games - where reaction speed is the most important thing.
- Puzzle games - where clever thinking is the most important aspect.
- Role playing games (RPG) - where you steer a character through a difficult world.
- Strategy games, either real-time (RTS) or turn-based - here the
player normally
only indirectly controls the character in the game but he does set out the strategies
that the characters need to follow. - Adventure games - where the story line is rather crucial.
- First-person shooters - which can be seen as the 3-dimensional
version of the old
arcade games. - Third-person shooters - where the player directly controls a game
character
through a hostile world. - Sport games - in which an existing sport, like soccer or baseball is simulated.
- Racing games - are in some sense a special type of sport game.
Because there are
so many of them they deserve a category of their own. - Simulators, like flight simulators. Such games try to
realistically simulate some
mechanism, like a plane.
When you first start making games, it is easiest to start with arcade and puzzle games. These only require 2D graphics and don't need to be very large to still be effective.
Adapted from notes by Mark Overmaars
