Amare is coming to a visual novel near you

Romantic crawlers, amare games, and more in Naughty List News #42

Aug 15, 2021

A consortium of developers of the “otome” genre of visual novels announced this week that they have coined a new term to describe their products: “amare”.

These developers want to signal that the types of games they make have become more inclusive since they first started appearing in the early 90s. While “otome” is Japanese for “maiden”, “amare” means “to love”. The new term can be used to describe games that have a similar tone and feel and it doesn’t constrain the games to a specific audience.

They have explained their thinking in an infographic in this Tumblr post. And as luck would have it, Blerdy Otome wrote about inclusivity in the otome games fandom at around the same time.

I think this is a great development overall. This new term groups games with similar themes together, which should help them find a broader audience.

Romantic dungeon crawler Boyfriend Dungeon is already a smash hit ⚔

Boyfriend Dungeon is a game where you plunder the dungeon and take your weapons on dates. This unusual combination of dungeon crawling and dating sim raised eyebrows when it was first announced, but it looks like the gamble has paid off.

Tanya X. Short, Captain of Kitfox Games, reports that the game is selling extremely well and is already turning a profit:

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort

we sold as many copies of Boyfriend Dungeon in 1 day as we did in the first week of Moon Hunters (2016)... plus we didn't take any outside funding for it, so it's all for Kitfox, baby! 🎉

I like to think this proves the central thesis of this newsletter: there is a huge untapped market for these types of dating sims! I hope the studio will take the right lessons from this early success and continue making games that feature romance as well as action.

Boyfriend Dungeon is available on Steam right now.