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Genre Mashup / Video Games

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Examples of Genre Mashup in Video Games:

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Examples from Genre-Busting not yet sorted:

  • LittleBigPlanet. On the surface, it's a platformer, but you can make racing levels, shooting levels, and even a take on Mario if you want to.
  • Pikmin is a Real-Time Strategy action-adventure puzzle game, all at the same time. Pikmin 2 adds Dungeon Crawling elements into the mix too.
  • Metroid:
  • All the original Might and Magic games switch from swords and sorcery to sci-fi towards the end. Trade in your maces and bows for blasters.
  • Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption. Wide-Open Sandbox with focus on typical RPG elements like looting, morality and NPC interaction and the inclusion of a hunting system while still maintaining the third person shooter aspect and an even wider world designed for exploration and adventure..
  • Thief: Although it has since been recognized as a "first person stealth" game, journalists had trouble sorting it into any recognisable genre when it came out in November 1998. It plays from a first person perspective, yet it doesn't award killing like an FPS. It features lots of various puzzles, yet isn't an Adventure Game. It includes RPG Elements, yet isn't an RPG at all. Along with Metal Gear Solid, Thief practically defined the stealth game genre as we know it today.
  • Deadly Rooms of Death is part puzzle game, part hack and slash, part turn based strategy, and ultimately none of those things. The only classification it can consistently fit is that of extremely difficult games.
  • Brütal Legend is inclined towards being a Real-Time Strategy game, but your skills at Hack and Slash, Rhythm Games, and driving are often more important than RTS-related skills. The single player campaign being a Wide-Open Sandbox further complicates slapping a genre label onto it.
  • Zeno Clash is a Stone Punk first person melee brawler with shooting elements.
  • Planetarium bills itself as an online "story-puzzle", and is about equally balanced in both Web Original and Puzzle Game elements. You can follow the unfolding story and ignore the puzzles, or focus more on the puzzles than the story surrounding them, or enjoy both the story and puzzles.
  • Soulcaster has elements of a Tower Defense while playing nothing like a normal Tower Defense, and elements of a top-down Action Game while playing nothing like a normal top-down Action Game.
  • NiGHTS was designed as roughly a platformer, but is far removed from the genre's core concepts: As you're in midair nearly all of the time, there's no actual running, jumping, or functional platforms. The stages loop endlessly, as your goal is collection rather than getting to the end. You're totally invincible, your only real opponent being the timer counting down. You must reach certain score quotas to advance. And sometimes, you transform into a bobsled. Indeed, you have just as many who say it's a platformer as those who say it isn't, and the only other genre it fits even microscopically into is as a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter with no shooting and total free roaming.
  • Gobtron. You play as a giant pink monster and defend against waves of enemies by using its snot, spit, burps and farts.
  • Don't Shoot the Puppy doesn't fit into any genres of video games; in fact, it's barely a video game at all as you will trigger a sentry gun shooting a puppy if you so much as move the mouse, regardless of distractions like messages that it's okay to move the mouse and the puppy seemingly stopping. As an extra middle finger to the player, not moving the mouse after one level can cause the game to time out.
  • Blast Corps starts out hard to classify, what with the main goal being to rush in front of a runaway missile carrier with a motley assortment of increasingly-bizarre demolition vehicles to level anything in its path before it crashes. Then it starts turning into a puzzle as levels feature things like arranging cargo ships so the carrier can roll over water. Then it gains exploration elements as you hunt down the scientists, RDUs, and anything you haven't smashed to the ground yet. Then come the vehicle racing levels...
  • Killer7 is notoriously hard to describe. Much of the game is a Rail Shooter, except that you can freely move back and forth along the rails, which branch off in different directions, and the camera is in the third person when you're not aiming at things. Along with shooting enemies, there's also adventure and puzzle elements added as well that make it much like a Survival Horror game. The story, meanwhile, deals with a mix of foreign politics, government conspiracies, uber-powerful assassins, supernatural living weapons and just balls-out incomprehensible, nightmarish insanity.
  • The now-famous Warcraft map/mod Defense of the Ancients was this, though it was actually preceded by Aeon of Strife, a map for StarCraft. Its popularity spawned a genre variously known as Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games (MOBAs) or Action Real-Time Strategy games (ARTS). Many of these games are called DOTA-clones due to their similarity to the original Defense of the Ancients game, right down to copying the map out of it (and frequently, including many heroes which are extremely similar to the heroes present in the original game), but the genre has since expanded to include games such as Awesomenauts, which are certainly in the same genre and yet decidedly not clones.
  • Deus Ex director Warren Spector said in an analysis of the game, "Conceptually, Deus Ex is a genre-busting game (which really endeared us to the marketing guys) — part immersive simulation, part role-playing game, part first-person shooter, part adventure game."
  • Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream on Sega Dreamcast bills itself as a "Lovely Pop Action RPG". In practice, that translates to "2½D Platformer where you have to Talk to Everyone and everything is really cute." It's critically acclaimed! Really!
  • Portal and Portal 2 are both technically puzzle games, but use an FPS engine and follow (or deliberately subverts) many of that genre's conventions.
  • Eversion is three types of games at once: platformer, puzzle, and horror.
  • Crypt of the NecroDancer is a cross between Nethack and Dance Dance Revolution.
  • AI War: Fleet Command has elements of Real-Time Strategy, 4X, a hint of Survival Horror, and Tower Defense, of all things.
  • The Last Federation is an inversion of a 4X game; the A.I.s are competing for the solar system, while your role is to make the scripted events that prevent victory, and encourage a Federation to be formed. Throw in a political simulator and Turn-Based Combat. Stir for taste.
  • Devil's Third is a Third-Person Shooter and a Hack and Slash game with a sprinkle of Beat 'em Up as well. The player character is capable of changing from third-person shooter gameplay to Ninja Gaiden-style swordplay in an instant and deal with foes both up close and at range (plus using Good Old Fisticuffs as well).
  • In keeping with Simogo's motto of not making games of a specific genre if doing so would impede the gaming experience itself, Year Walk can most accurately be described as a point-and-click first-person Survival Horror and adventure iOS side-scroller puzzle game.
  • Is One Finger Death Punch a Beat 'em Up? Or a Rhythm Game? Or both?
  • Asura's Wrath:
    • Along with traditional Beat 'em Up gameplay, there are Rail Shooter elements as well.
    • Other elements of this include that there are no Action RPG elements like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta have, (like getting new weapons or collecting stuff like a Heart Container), nor is there a upgrade of stats. Asura's stats instead change depending on the episode.
    • One can also add in Fighting Game thanks to a coming DLC that pits Asura against Ryu, complete with the health bar, super gauge and Ultra gauge from Street Fighter IV (although in Asura's case, the latter two are replaced by his Burst and Unlimited Mode Gauges).
    • A review has pointed out that while this might not really be considered a "game," but as a multimedia experience, it is a memorable one.
  • Guilty Gear 2: Overture is part hack-and-slash and part single-player "massive online battle arena" (think League of Legends, which came out the same year) with a button to give the player characters race car controls, and a separate screen to control your MOBA units with a real-time strategy interface. Keep in mind the rest of the franchise is your bog-standard Fighting Game series.
  • Marc Eckō's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure: a blend of graffiti mini-games, combo-based brawling, Prince of Persia-style platforming, a bit of stealth and Experience Points thrown in for good measure.
  • Dungeon of the Endless is part Roguelike, part Real-Time Strategy, part Turn-Based Strategy, and part Tower Defense. This video sums it up quite nicely.
  • Pixel Junk Nom Nom Galaxy is an odd game that combines elements of tower defense, buisness simulation, and farming, all layed with a Terraria-style sandbox-survival gameplay.
  • In terms of gameplay, Kingdom Hearts is a pretty standard hack and slash (though Chain of Memories did include some kind of weird card game sysstem on top of it somehow), but in terms of plot it's as genre defying as it is confusion. The hero travels through multiple worlds on a spaceship visiting and helping local populace which sounds pretty straight sci-fi, but he also knows magic and wields a giant key like a sword. There's no advance technology despite the spaceship except when there is like in the Tron worlds. Artificial life is present and is created both scientifically and via magic. It doesn't just stop at science fantasy though. The hero fights the evil in peoples hearts which can manifest as cute little creatures a foot tall, to complete eldritch abominations, to weird armored...things? There's some solid horror present with the sort of things that can be done to a person in this universe. Some games end in friendship conquers all type plots while others are absolute tragedies. Given the fact that by very concept the story is about following the plot of multiple Disney movies it inevitably is going to pull from a very wide range of themes, genres and aesthetics leaving one with something that doesn't seem to fit into any category even when it uses completely original characters and settings.
  • Gumshoe is a platformer/Light Gun Game hybrid. The player character constantly moves forward (turning around if he runs into a wall) and the player makes him jump by shooting him. The player also has to keep the player character safe by shooting down any enemies and preventing him from walking/falling into any hazard tiles.
  • Super Surprise Party has a platforming segment, a puzzle segment, and an item-catching segment.
  • Undertale and Deltarune are turn-based Role Playing Games whose defensive Action Commands are a Bullet Hell minigame.
  • Wanted: Dead: The game's combat is a blend of Third-Person Shooter and Hack and Slash combat with a sword, with the player being able to switch between both forms of combat to deal enemies, from getting into cover and shooting them up or getting up close and cutting them to pieces.

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