Action Adventure & ARPG Subgenres Key WIP
Brief explanations of the different subgenres or spinoffs of the Action Adventure & ARPG genres, which will be featured in the family tree on the Charts page. Some of these have been around for a long time, some I've seen mentioned in fan communities, and others I came up with on the spot while making it.
When it comes to non-linearity (mainly in the overarching structure of the game so not just sub areas or dungeons), it tends to vary a lot between games even in the same series so I didn't consider it as a staple of any subgenre in particular here, but for the AA & ARPG genres as a whole, partial non-linearity with some guiding of the player in the right or expected direction seems to be the norm. See each game entry for more info on this.
Note that it is assumed that any game fitting into one of these is also an Action Adventure or ARPG game. I am not talking about turn-based Rogue-likes or level/mission-based and linear Stealth games for example.
Action Adventure:
Zelda-likes or Wonder Boy/Monster World-likes:
Considered as the default AA formula on this site though I'm aware that it changes in some ways between Zelda games and that the MW series didn't really become part of the AA genre until Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap/Monster World II. These games feature an overworld and dungeons split to the world structure, usually with self-contained dungeons that don't require revisiting at a later point to progress, while the overworld is more interconnected and serves as a hub. They also tend to feature NPCs, towns and shops (elements originally inspired by RPGs (Ultima and Wizardry), Adventure games (Zork) and ARPGs (Hydlide)). See the front page for a full Action Adventure definition.
Other examples: Adventure, AD&D: Cloudy Mountain, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dragon Slayer (ARPG), Gemstone Warrior, Alcazar (hub map)?, Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu (ARPG), Valkyrie no Bouken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu (ARPG), Space Hunter (sort of), Metal Gear 1-2 & Snake's Revenge (stealth), King Kong 2: Yomigaeru Densetsu (ARPG), The Magic of Scheherazade (ARPG, TB hybrid), Golvellius (all versions, sidescrolling segments), Neutopia 1-2, Faria: A World of Mystery & Danger! (sort of, ARPG), Crystalis (ARPG), StarTropics 1-2 (sort of), Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest/Seiken Densetsu, Golden Axe Warrior, Cowboy Kid?, Landstalker (isometric), King Colossus (ARPG)?, Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru/For the Frog the Bell Tolls (sort of), Illusion of Gaia, The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang?, Gauntlet IV (quest mode), Soleil/Crusader of Centy, Beyond Oasis/The Story of Thor, Brain Lord (ARPG hybrid), Terranigma (ARPG), etc.
Knight Lore-likes or Solstice-likes:
A relatively shortlived subgenre of isometric view and puzzle-focused AA games where the world tends to consist of one big maze/dungeon. These tend to also feature platforming and object manipulation (pushing, carrying and placing, stacking) used for puzzle solving.
Platform Adventure/Metroidvania (can be either AA or ARPG):
See my previous site for more info on these and their various subgenres. There's generally a lot of overlap between these and other AA & ARPG games. These include Metroid-likes, Igavanias (historically Metroidvania), Maze of Galious-likes or Milon's Secret Castle-likes, Zelda-likes or Wonder Boy/Monster World-likes, Zelda II-likes, Clash at Demonhead-likes or Ys III-likes, Dizzy-likes, Spyro 2-likes or Banjo-likes, Open World Platform Adventures/Metroidvanias, Horror/Survival Horror or System Shock-likes, Souls-likes or Hollow Knight-likes, Roguevanias or Dead Cells-likes.
Stealth or Stealth Action:
AA games with a focus on sneaking/not getting detected, spying, avoiding most combat and avoiding killing your enemies. Going in guns blazing is often discouraged by the game becoming much harder, and in some cases the current mission is failed outright (however in the most popular Stealth Action franchise, Metal Gear, there are a lot of combat sequences by design including various boss fights). These tend not to feature towns or a clear overworld and dungeons split in the world design.
Open World (can be either AA or ARPG):
There are a couple different main interpretations of this one that I've seen. In the first or "proper" one, you can potentially go anywhere in the world from the get go, but some things are gated by story/quest triggers, and others by higher difficulty obstacles (difficulty/challenge or level gating). In the second one, the player is made to go through a more or less linear sequence of sub areas or levels but can finish sub objectives in these in any order and there are usually many different ones in each area/level. I've also seen this second interpretation called Sandbox at times, but those are really a different thing more akin to Simulation games or simply game engines that you can just mess around with and create your own activities and goals in without considering a story to follow or an intended end to the game (which, yeah, you can do in any open world game if you want and probably still have fun, but there's usually some sort of structure to it that you're guided towards).
This subgenre evolved out of WRPGs/CRPGs and Space Sim games like Elite, and some Japanese AA & ARPG games featured open world structures for a brief period in the 1980s, but it wasn't really recognized as a genre until the GTA series popularized the term in an AA-lite context.
Survival Horror/Horror (can be either AA or ARPG):
AA games with a focus on horror and resource management to survive enemies and hazards. Generally the player avatar's movement and ability to fight is limited and/or clunky by design, to increase the feeling of vulnerability. These tend not to feature towns or even any safe/friendly areas besides save rooms. Inventory item-based puzzle solving is also common here, an influence from (Quest/Point & Click) Adventure games.
The first of these that tend to be considered proper Surival Horror games are Alone in the Dark, System Shock and War of the Dead though games like Sweet Home and Project Firestart are also considered influential.
Survival:
These feature a survival focus, usually in an open-ended world without a clear main goal or end to the adventure. Crafting of tools and weapons (sometimes buildings or vehicles) from gathered resources is also common here. World interaction tends to be more detailed than usual?
One of the first Survival games, UnReal World (PC, 1992), is an offshoot of the Rogue-like genre, and another one, SOS/Septentrion (SNES, 1993) is an offshot of Prince of Persia-style Platformers (it can also be considered one of the first Catastrophe Simulation games). The genre didn't really come into its own until the 2010s though.
Prince of Persia-likes or God of War-likes? (maybe also Tomb Raider 3 or 4?):
Named after the 2003 reboot of the PoP franchise. These tend to have a strong movement focus with acrobatics/parkour elements, a puzzle focus and in GoW's case (which PoP later adapted as well), a combo-based combat system and spectacular boss fights w/ QTEs.
ARPG (experience point or use-based leveling):
Ys-likes, Hydlide-likes:
Defining traits here are bump combat (Ys), a combat focus, a silent protagonist (Ys), a save anywhere feature, health regen while still and being able to escape from boss battles. Ys-likes can be considered a form of Hack 'n Slash ARPG with more advanced player mobility (various games feature platforming for example), though your ability to manipulate your environment is generally pretty limited and combo-based combat wasn't a thing until the later Ys games.
Zelda II-likes (a Platform Adventure/Metroidvania subgenre):
A subgenre that mostly disappeared after the early '90s. These feature a separate overworld engine similar to older RPGs like Dragon Quest, which is generally top down view. They also tend to feature experience point leveling and/or other RPG elements like NPCs, towns and shops, and otherwise have the world structure of Zelda-likes with an overworld and dungeons split.
Other examples: Rygar (sort of), Gargoyle's Quest 1-2 (no exp point leveling), Battle of Olympus (no exp point leveling), Getsu Fuuma Den (sort of),
Clash at Demonhead-likes or Ys III-likes (another PA/MV subgenre) - Alundra 2-likes?:
In these, in-game areas are separated by a hub map screen where the player selects between locations to travel to rather than freely navigating an overworld with a player avatar (or if there is an avatar, it can only move between areas - not interact with the world in any other way). In Clash at Demonhead specifically, the player can initially only travel between adjacent areas on the map, and the areas represent the routes between locations rather than locations themselves unlike other games with a map screen or overworld. This method is pretty rare compared to free movement to any visited area, but was used in some similar games, and Clash at Demonhead is more of a proper Platform Adventure/MV game than most other similar games of the time plus it's more well known and well regarded than, say, Space Hunter.
Quest for Glory-likes?:
Games in this series featured a blend of Quest Adventure and ARPG elements, with real-time combat in separate encounters, avoidable encounters and real-time w/ pausing exploration of a non-linear world. I'm unaware of other games that blend the two in the same way, but the skill and class systems possibly had some influence on Diablo for example.
Seiken Densetsu/Mana-likes:
Distinguishing traits of Secret of Mana-likes compared to the Ys-like category are the general focus on CPU-controlled allies (though this also appears in Ys IV for example), the game pausing while selecting a spell to cast, and the use of dice rolls to determine if attacks hit or not. From SD2 onwards, the games also feature co-op gameplay. Because of these aspects they have more in common with RPGs than the average ARPG.
Tales of-likes or Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu-likes:
A style of ARPG or ARPG/JRPG hybrid used by the Tales of series and some other games, possibly influenced by Zelda II. Most of the game plays out like a typical JRPG with towns, a separate overworld/world map area, dungeons with top down view exploration, separate battle encounters and a narrated story focus. However when an enemy encounter is entered here, the game switches to real-time gameplay and the player controls one character at a time only (?) while the rest of the party is CPU-controlled.
Diablo-likes or Hack 'n Slash (HnS) ARPGs:
These tend to feature basic movement (Diablo was originally played mainly with the mouse and had no platforming or climbing nor could you manipulate your environments much), a combat focus, dice rolls to determine if attacks hit or not, a focus on loot/enemy drops and combat gear (w/ gear set bonuses from Diablo 2 onwards), manual stat allocation when leveling up, skill tree systems, a multiplayer focus (co-op and player vs player) and randomized/procedurally generated dungeons or hostile areas. From Diablo 2 onwards these start incorporating gear crafting as well.
As a side note, Diablo 1 was originally conceived as a turn-based Rogue-like game, but was changed into a real-time game with the aforementioned features during development.
And as another side note, hack 'n slash is also used to refer to weapon-based Beat 'em up/Brawler games (such as Golden Axe and TMNT, Capcom's D&D arcade games, and arguably God of War and Devil May Cry). Hack 'n Slash ARPGs or Diablo-likes generally don't have combo-based combat or a level-based structure, unlike these games.
Real-time or Action Rogue-likes (can be either AA or ARPG):
Named after the game Rogue (1980), the Rogue-like genre is an offshoot of early Dungeon Crawler RPG games. These tend to feature all or most of these elements: procedurally generated/randomized worlds, turn-based gameplay where the player and enemies move at the same time, tile-based movement and permanent death of the player character.
At one point (possibly introduced by Shiren the Wanderer from 1995) the perma-death aspect was softened by the inclusion of meta progression mechanics meaning one or more items, resources or stats gained by the player carries over to the next attempt.
The inclusion of meta progression combined with real-time gameplay is generally considered its own subgenre of Rogue-likes, usually called Rogue-lites or Action Rogue-likes, and they've since been applied to various different genres. As you can tell there is overlap with Diablo-likes here, however these games also tend to have more advanced movement and world interaction.
Souls-likes:
ARPGs with more elements from the (Dark) Souls series: a heavily interconnected and non-linear world (at least in Hollow Knight's case, a souls-like Platform Adventure/MV), corpse runs (originally from World of Warcraft), player vulnerability/immobility while healing and storytelling via pieces of lore found in the environment (originally from System Shock and RPGs). Has a combat focus as well?
Looter Shooter (can be either AA or ARPG?):
These are basically Hack 'n Slash ARPGs recontextualized as (generally first-person) shooters. There's a focus on acquiring loot (gear and resources) through combat and finishing quests/missions. The quality of the loot is generated following certain rarity scales (also known as loot tables), with some degree of randomization.
Darksiders-likes?:
A blend of Diablo (gear/loot and skill trees), Zelda (puzzles and tools, dungeons and overworld), Prince of Persia (acrobatics) and God of War (combo-based combat, spectacular boss fights w/ QTEs) elements.
Tactical Real-Time RPGs?:
WIP
When it comes to non-linearity (mainly in the overarching structure of the game so not just sub areas or dungeons), it tends to vary a lot between games even in the same series so I didn't consider it as a staple of any subgenre in particular here, but for the AA & ARPG genres as a whole, partial non-linearity with some guiding of the player in the right or expected direction seems to be the norm. See each game entry for more info on this.
Note that it is assumed that any game fitting into one of these is also an Action Adventure or ARPG game. I am not talking about turn-based Rogue-likes or level/mission-based and linear Stealth games for example.
Action Adventure:
Zelda-likes or Wonder Boy/Monster World-likes:
Considered as the default AA formula on this site though I'm aware that it changes in some ways between Zelda games and that the MW series didn't really become part of the AA genre until Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap/Monster World II. These games feature an overworld and dungeons split to the world structure, usually with self-contained dungeons that don't require revisiting at a later point to progress, while the overworld is more interconnected and serves as a hub. They also tend to feature NPCs, towns and shops (elements originally inspired by RPGs (Ultima and Wizardry), Adventure games (Zork) and ARPGs (Hydlide)). See the front page for a full Action Adventure definition.
Other examples: Adventure, AD&D: Cloudy Mountain, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dragon Slayer (ARPG), Gemstone Warrior, Alcazar (hub map)?, Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu (ARPG), Valkyrie no Bouken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu (ARPG), Space Hunter (sort of), Metal Gear 1-2 & Snake's Revenge (stealth), King Kong 2: Yomigaeru Densetsu (ARPG), The Magic of Scheherazade (ARPG, TB hybrid), Golvellius (all versions, sidescrolling segments), Neutopia 1-2, Faria: A World of Mystery & Danger! (sort of, ARPG), Crystalis (ARPG), StarTropics 1-2 (sort of), Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest/Seiken Densetsu, Golden Axe Warrior, Cowboy Kid?, Landstalker (isometric), King Colossus (ARPG)?, Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru/For the Frog the Bell Tolls (sort of), Illusion of Gaia, The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang?, Gauntlet IV (quest mode), Soleil/Crusader of Centy, Beyond Oasis/The Story of Thor, Brain Lord (ARPG hybrid), Terranigma (ARPG), etc.
Knight Lore-likes or Solstice-likes:
A relatively shortlived subgenre of isometric view and puzzle-focused AA games where the world tends to consist of one big maze/dungeon. These tend to also feature platforming and object manipulation (pushing, carrying and placing, stacking) used for puzzle solving.
Platform Adventure/Metroidvania (can be either AA or ARPG):
See my previous site for more info on these and their various subgenres. There's generally a lot of overlap between these and other AA & ARPG games. These include Metroid-likes, Igavanias (historically Metroidvania), Maze of Galious-likes or Milon's Secret Castle-likes, Zelda-likes or Wonder Boy/Monster World-likes, Zelda II-likes, Clash at Demonhead-likes or Ys III-likes, Dizzy-likes, Spyro 2-likes or Banjo-likes, Open World Platform Adventures/Metroidvanias, Horror/Survival Horror or System Shock-likes, Souls-likes or Hollow Knight-likes, Roguevanias or Dead Cells-likes.
Stealth or Stealth Action:
AA games with a focus on sneaking/not getting detected, spying, avoiding most combat and avoiding killing your enemies. Going in guns blazing is often discouraged by the game becoming much harder, and in some cases the current mission is failed outright (however in the most popular Stealth Action franchise, Metal Gear, there are a lot of combat sequences by design including various boss fights). These tend not to feature towns or a clear overworld and dungeons split in the world design.
Open World (can be either AA or ARPG):
There are a couple different main interpretations of this one that I've seen. In the first or "proper" one, you can potentially go anywhere in the world from the get go, but some things are gated by story/quest triggers, and others by higher difficulty obstacles (difficulty/challenge or level gating). In the second one, the player is made to go through a more or less linear sequence of sub areas or levels but can finish sub objectives in these in any order and there are usually many different ones in each area/level. I've also seen this second interpretation called Sandbox at times, but those are really a different thing more akin to Simulation games or simply game engines that you can just mess around with and create your own activities and goals in without considering a story to follow or an intended end to the game (which, yeah, you can do in any open world game if you want and probably still have fun, but there's usually some sort of structure to it that you're guided towards).
This subgenre evolved out of WRPGs/CRPGs and Space Sim games like Elite, and some Japanese AA & ARPG games featured open world structures for a brief period in the 1980s, but it wasn't really recognized as a genre until the GTA series popularized the term in an AA-lite context.
Survival Horror/Horror (can be either AA or ARPG):
AA games with a focus on horror and resource management to survive enemies and hazards. Generally the player avatar's movement and ability to fight is limited and/or clunky by design, to increase the feeling of vulnerability. These tend not to feature towns or even any safe/friendly areas besides save rooms. Inventory item-based puzzle solving is also common here, an influence from (Quest/Point & Click) Adventure games.
The first of these that tend to be considered proper Surival Horror games are Alone in the Dark, System Shock and War of the Dead though games like Sweet Home and Project Firestart are also considered influential.
Survival:
These feature a survival focus, usually in an open-ended world without a clear main goal or end to the adventure. Crafting of tools and weapons (sometimes buildings or vehicles) from gathered resources is also common here. World interaction tends to be more detailed than usual?
One of the first Survival games, UnReal World (PC, 1992), is an offshoot of the Rogue-like genre, and another one, SOS/Septentrion (SNES, 1993) is an offshot of Prince of Persia-style Platformers (it can also be considered one of the first Catastrophe Simulation games). The genre didn't really come into its own until the 2010s though.
Prince of Persia-likes or God of War-likes? (maybe also Tomb Raider 3 or 4?):
Named after the 2003 reboot of the PoP franchise. These tend to have a strong movement focus with acrobatics/parkour elements, a puzzle focus and in GoW's case (which PoP later adapted as well), a combo-based combat system and spectacular boss fights w/ QTEs.
ARPG (experience point or use-based leveling):
Ys-likes, Hydlide-likes:
Defining traits here are bump combat (Ys), a combat focus, a silent protagonist (Ys), a save anywhere feature, health regen while still and being able to escape from boss battles. Ys-likes can be considered a form of Hack 'n Slash ARPG with more advanced player mobility (various games feature platforming for example), though your ability to manipulate your environment is generally pretty limited and combo-based combat wasn't a thing until the later Ys games.
Zelda II-likes (a Platform Adventure/Metroidvania subgenre):
A subgenre that mostly disappeared after the early '90s. These feature a separate overworld engine similar to older RPGs like Dragon Quest, which is generally top down view. They also tend to feature experience point leveling and/or other RPG elements like NPCs, towns and shops, and otherwise have the world structure of Zelda-likes with an overworld and dungeons split.
Other examples: Rygar (sort of), Gargoyle's Quest 1-2 (no exp point leveling), Battle of Olympus (no exp point leveling), Getsu Fuuma Den (sort of),
Clash at Demonhead-likes or Ys III-likes (another PA/MV subgenre) - Alundra 2-likes?:
In these, in-game areas are separated by a hub map screen where the player selects between locations to travel to rather than freely navigating an overworld with a player avatar (or if there is an avatar, it can only move between areas - not interact with the world in any other way). In Clash at Demonhead specifically, the player can initially only travel between adjacent areas on the map, and the areas represent the routes between locations rather than locations themselves unlike other games with a map screen or overworld. This method is pretty rare compared to free movement to any visited area, but was used in some similar games, and Clash at Demonhead is more of a proper Platform Adventure/MV game than most other similar games of the time plus it's more well known and well regarded than, say, Space Hunter.
Quest for Glory-likes?:
Games in this series featured a blend of Quest Adventure and ARPG elements, with real-time combat in separate encounters, avoidable encounters and real-time w/ pausing exploration of a non-linear world. I'm unaware of other games that blend the two in the same way, but the skill and class systems possibly had some influence on Diablo for example.
Seiken Densetsu/Mana-likes:
Distinguishing traits of Secret of Mana-likes compared to the Ys-like category are the general focus on CPU-controlled allies (though this also appears in Ys IV for example), the game pausing while selecting a spell to cast, and the use of dice rolls to determine if attacks hit or not. From SD2 onwards, the games also feature co-op gameplay. Because of these aspects they have more in common with RPGs than the average ARPG.
Tales of-likes or Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu-likes:
A style of ARPG or ARPG/JRPG hybrid used by the Tales of series and some other games, possibly influenced by Zelda II. Most of the game plays out like a typical JRPG with towns, a separate overworld/world map area, dungeons with top down view exploration, separate battle encounters and a narrated story focus. However when an enemy encounter is entered here, the game switches to real-time gameplay and the player controls one character at a time only (?) while the rest of the party is CPU-controlled.
Diablo-likes or Hack 'n Slash (HnS) ARPGs:
These tend to feature basic movement (Diablo was originally played mainly with the mouse and had no platforming or climbing nor could you manipulate your environments much), a combat focus, dice rolls to determine if attacks hit or not, a focus on loot/enemy drops and combat gear (w/ gear set bonuses from Diablo 2 onwards), manual stat allocation when leveling up, skill tree systems, a multiplayer focus (co-op and player vs player) and randomized/procedurally generated dungeons or hostile areas. From Diablo 2 onwards these start incorporating gear crafting as well.
As a side note, Diablo 1 was originally conceived as a turn-based Rogue-like game, but was changed into a real-time game with the aforementioned features during development.
And as another side note, hack 'n slash is also used to refer to weapon-based Beat 'em up/Brawler games (such as Golden Axe and TMNT, Capcom's D&D arcade games, and arguably God of War and Devil May Cry). Hack 'n Slash ARPGs or Diablo-likes generally don't have combo-based combat or a level-based structure, unlike these games.
Real-time or Action Rogue-likes (can be either AA or ARPG):
Named after the game Rogue (1980), the Rogue-like genre is an offshoot of early Dungeon Crawler RPG games. These tend to feature all or most of these elements: procedurally generated/randomized worlds, turn-based gameplay where the player and enemies move at the same time, tile-based movement and permanent death of the player character.
At one point (possibly introduced by Shiren the Wanderer from 1995) the perma-death aspect was softened by the inclusion of meta progression mechanics meaning one or more items, resources or stats gained by the player carries over to the next attempt.
The inclusion of meta progression combined with real-time gameplay is generally considered its own subgenre of Rogue-likes, usually called Rogue-lites or Action Rogue-likes, and they've since been applied to various different genres. As you can tell there is overlap with Diablo-likes here, however these games also tend to have more advanced movement and world interaction.
Souls-likes:
ARPGs with more elements from the (Dark) Souls series: a heavily interconnected and non-linear world (at least in Hollow Knight's case, a souls-like Platform Adventure/MV), corpse runs (originally from World of Warcraft), player vulnerability/immobility while healing and storytelling via pieces of lore found in the environment (originally from System Shock and RPGs). Has a combat focus as well?
Looter Shooter (can be either AA or ARPG?):
These are basically Hack 'n Slash ARPGs recontextualized as (generally first-person) shooters. There's a focus on acquiring loot (gear and resources) through combat and finishing quests/missions. The quality of the loot is generated following certain rarity scales (also known as loot tables), with some degree of randomization.
Darksiders-likes?:
A blend of Diablo (gear/loot and skill trees), Zelda (puzzles and tools, dungeons and overworld), Prince of Persia (acrobatics) and God of War (combo-based combat, spectacular boss fights w/ QTEs) elements.
Tactical Real-Time RPGs?:
WIP