Wanted to make a thread about Raising Sim games. For those out of the loop, it’s a type of game based on, well, raising someone, usually as a parental figure, though sometimes you play from the point of view of the given raising subject.
The term gets thrown around pretty loosely at times for stuff with stat building elements in a non-RPG setting, like city builders or The Sims, but I need to stress I do not mean games like these. I mean stuff more in line with Gainax’s Princess Maker series and the games it inspired. It’s a very specific niche I’ve been diving into lately and wanted to see if anyone knew of some I may have missed.
Tossing out some worth your consideration…
Princess Maker
A series of games created initially by Gainax (yes, the Evangelion people, and yes, they did make a EVA game where you raise Shinji and friends), the idea is you are a hero of some sort tasked to raise a special girl to possibly become a hero, but your guidance can lead to a whole mess of possible endings. It’s been Japanese only until recent years, where games have been “translated” and put on steam, and I use quotations because these versions are obvious machine translation slapdash jobs with terrible fonting. Apparently a more recent release has actual localizers working on it but I haven’t kept up with that.
Funny enough, Princess Maker 2 almost came out in the west back in the day, being localized by a small team that sadly couldn’t not keep up with the changing times of computer hardware progress and couldn’t released the finished localization, though that version is floating around online to this day and inspired a lot of non-Japanese devs to try the formula in the west. I’ve played it and had a great time, though there’s definitely some ick in there due to otaku culture being Like That, but you can dodge that on most runs (outside the um what of coming across the guy who sells breast enlargement pills).
Long Live The Queen
Probably the most popular example in the past decade or so. Hanako Games did a series before this called Cute Knight that’s pretty jank, from way early in their career. When they took another stab, they put more focus on stat complexity, with how much jobs and lessons affect stats positively and negatively, with tons of surprise checks to deal with. They also had a unique idea by giving the princess of the game a mission: Survive.
The premise is you are a princess who will one day take the throne, and there’s a lot of people who want you dead for that reason. You have to keep up appearances and build your skill sets, while also avoiding dangerous situations and possible assassination attempts on the subtle and blatant kinds. Caught a lot of attention for how easy a run could end with unexpected death, and there’s a spiritual successor out now from the team called Galaxy Princess Zorana that has the same structure but trading fantasy for sci-fi alien stuff.
Chinese Parents & Growing Up
Felt the need to bring these one up because the first is one of the more popular examples from the past decade, and the second is directly connected to it. Chinese Parents is a Chinese developed game about growing up in China, where you get the usual stat affecting gameplay with some additional minigames to spice things up, alongside a lot of guidance from parents.
It’s one of the rougher looking examples of the genre in modern times (it came out in the late 2010s), but was popular enough to inspired another team of industry devs to make their own version based more in US culture called Growing Up, even getting permission from the devs of Chinese Parents to use a lot of their gameplay ideas, but with a ton more polish. I have not played Chinese Parents, but I have played Growing Up and man, it’s addictive. Both also have a dating sim element, Growing Up in particular having a queer focus to it with lots of bi options and a few lesbian and gay characters where their sexuality plays a big role in their stories (since the game is set in The 90s, bringing up how homosexuality was looked down on in the US at the time much more).
I’ll post more examples at a later date, and very much welcome more examples from all of you! Kind of obsessed with these games and always looking for more.