CheckpointDB taxonomy
Find your kind of game.
Start with the promise you want to play, then follow the catalog into more specific subgenres, structures, and hybrid paths.
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Search roots, structures, and subgenres.
The broadest promise
Gameplay roots
Action
Execution-focused games built around reflexes, timing, movement, or combat.
Action-Adventure
Games that balance real-time action with exploration, traversal, and adventure progression.
RPG
Games centered on character growth, builds, equipment, statistics, and consequential role-playing progression.
Strategy
Games centered on planning, resource allocation, positioning, and multi-unit or systemic decision-making.
Simulation
Games centered on operating, managing, inhabiting, or experimenting with modeled systems.
Adventure
Games centered on exploration, narrative discovery, dialogue, and puzzle-led progression rather than execution-heavy combat.
Puzzle
Games whose primary challenge is solving explicit logic, spatial, pattern, or systems problems.
Sports
Games whose primary activity models or adapts a recognized sport or athletic competition.
Racing
Games whose primary activity is competitive or time-based vehicle racing.
Fighting
Games centered on direct, bounded combat contests between a small number of fighters.
Platformer
Games centered on precise traversal through jumping, climbing, momentum, or obstacle courses.
Shooter
Games whose primary interaction is aiming and firing projectile or ranged weapons.
Music/Rhythm
Games whose primary challenge follows musical timing, performance, dance, or rhythm patterns.
The shape of play
Cross-genre frameworks
Metroidvania
Interconnected exploration gated by abilities that open previously inaccessible routes.
20 accepted games
Roguelike
Run-based play with procedural variation and substantial reset on failure.
15 accepted games
Roguelite
Run-based play with procedural variation and meaningful persistent progression between attempts.
48 accepted games
Soulslike
Deliberate high-commitment combat, checkpoint recovery loops, and demanding encounter mastery.
17 accepted games
Open World
A large, substantially non-linear world that supports player-directed traversal and activity selection.
67 accepted games
Survival
Sustained resource, condition, and environmental pressure is a central progression structure.
64 accepted games
Extraction
Players enter a session, acquire valuables, and must successfully leave to retain them.
9 accepted games
Survivor-like
Automatic or simplified attacks, dense enemy waves, and rapid build selection across short runs.
13 accepted games
Immersive Sim
Systemic environments support multiple interacting tools and player-authored solutions.
7 accepted games
Sandbox
Open-ended systems prioritize experimentation, construction, or self-directed goals.
80 accepted games
Stealth
Avoidance, concealment, detection management, and information control substantially shape play.
29 accepted games
Battle Royale
A shrinking-field or last-survivor competitive structure with many initial participants.
10 accepted games
Specific paths worth opening
Featured subgenres
Farming Life Sim
A farming-and-life lens spanning Simulation, RPG, Adventure, Platformer, and Action-Adventure hybrids when farming participates in recurring progression, relationship, or community loops; not equipment-led agricultural realism.
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Life Sim
Daily-life simulation centered on routines, personal expression, relationships, or household development; use a narrower life-sim term when available.
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ARPG
Real-time action combat is integrated with character growth, equipment, builds, and role-playing progression.
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Turn-Based RPG
Role-playing games whose primary combat or decision loop is turn-based without enough evidence to justify a regional or tactical sub-genre.
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Survival Horror
Games with a survival horror form of the selected root genre.
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Grand Strategy
Games with a grand strategy form of the selected root genre.
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