Because I want to try to make this subreddit as user-friendly as possible for folks who may not necessarily be serious, hardcore gamers, it occurred to me that it might be prudent to create a dictionary of terms to help those who may not be familiar with some of the words and terms I use in this subreddit. I also felt that this might help explain my line of thinking regarding the use of some of these terms for people who might ask “why do you call it that?” or “why don’t you use that term instead?”. Hopefully, listing everything here will help to clarify things somewhat. Okay, let’s-a go!

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2-Stick Shooter – This is a genre where players control a character or a ship in 2D, where one of the control sticks moves the character, and the other is used to aim shots in the direction you’re pressing. Popular games in this genre include Robotron and Geometry Wars.

2D Space Shooter – This is a genre where players control a ship in 2D. It is comparable to the 2-Stick Shooter genre, except it controls differently, with players controlling the ship by propulsion and inertia. Popular games in this genre include Spacewar and Asteroids.

3D Platformer – A sub-genre of the Platformer genre, where players can move their character in three dimensions. Popular games in this genre include Super Mario 64 and Spyro.

8-Bit and 16-Bit – These are terms used to refer to videogames of older generations. 8-Bit generally refers to videogames that came out on videogame systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System, or games designed in that style. 16-Bit generally refers to videogames that came out on videogame systems like the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or games designed in that style.

Accelerometer – One of three forms of motion-control the Nintendo Switch uses. This form of motion control detects when the controller suddenly moves in a direction or suddenly stops.

Action – As a general term and a genre, the word “Action” on its own is one I use as a catch-all. It is basically used when the game is faster-paced, has a focus on inputs that require fast reflexes, and particularly if it doesn’t fit neatly into another genre.

Action-Platformer – This is a sub-genre of Platformers, and I use this term to refer to Platformers that place an emphasis on combat with enemies. Popular games in this sub-genre include Mega Man and Shovel Knight.

Action-RPG – This is a genre of games that are like RPGs in that they generally place an emphasis on character growth and progression, and frequently have elements of exploration and an emphasis on story. However, I differentiate these games from RPGs because these games have players actively moving and fighting enemies instead of selecting choices from a menu. This genre is often referred to as “Action-Adventure”, but I prefer not to use that term as “Adventure” is often associated with multiple types of games. I have also seen games in this genre referred to as “Hack and Slash”, another term that I do not use because it has been used to refer to multiple types of games. Popular games in the Action-RPG genre include The Legend of Zelda and Diablo.

Aliasing – This is a term that refers to a videogame’s graphics, where the edges of objects look jagged instead of smooth. Anti-aliasing is a technique used to make this aliasing appear smooth in a game.

Alternating – Multiplayer games with Alternating play are played by one player at a time in turns, with the player passing the controller to the next player when they are done with their turn.

Arcade – As a general term and a genre, the word “Arcade” is one I use as a catch-all. It is used when a game has simple, repetitive gameplay, usually is fast-paced, and particularly if it doesn’t fit neatly into another genre.

Auto-Runner – This is a sub-genre of the Platformer and Arcade genres. In these games, players are constantly moving forward without stopping, and players must jump or dodge around obstacles before getting to them. Popular games in this genre include Canabalt and Temple Run.

Board/Card Game – Games in this genre simulate both pre-existing and new board and card games in a videogame form, using similar rules and often featuring similarly simplified visuals. Examples of this include Solitaire and Battleship.

Brawler – This is a sub-genre within the Action and Arcade genres, where players fight a multitude of enemies with melee attacks. I’ve also seen this genre also referred to as “Beat-‘Em-Ups”, but I’m opting to go with “Brawler” for brevity’s sake. Popular games in this genre include Double Dragon and Final Fight.

Brick Breaker – This sub-genre of the Arcade genre refers to games where players control a ship or character, usually a “paddle”, that bounces a ball in an arena to break bricks inside that arena. Popular games in this sub-genre include Breakout and Arkanoid.

Bullet Hell – This is typically a sub-genre of the Shmup genre, although it can also apply to Action-Platformers, 2-Stick Shooters, and other genres. These are games where the screen fills with bullets that the player must dodge. Popular games in this genre include Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga.

Bullet Sponge – This is a term generally used to refer to enemies in a videogame that take absurd amounts of damage to defeat, usually resulting in tedious gameplay.

Car Combat – This is a sub-genre of the Action and Racing/Driving genres, that has players fighting each other by driving cars, generally with various weapons the cars use. Popular games in this genre include Twisted Metal and Interstate ‘76

Co-Op – Short for “cooperative”. This is a term when multiple players are working together rather than competing with each other.

Collectible Card Game – This is a sub-genre of the Card/Board Game genre, with the game including an assortment of randomized cards players collect as they play the game and use to construct their own custom deck. Popular games in this sub-genre include Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone.

Collection – This is when a group of games is released as one package. I try to distinguish a Compilation from a Collection by referring to it as a Collection when there are many games, or when the games included all share a common trait.

Competitive – I use this term to refer to multiplayer games where players are in competition with each other.

Compilation – This is when a group of games is released as one package. I try to distinguish a Compilation from a Collection by referring to it as a Compilation when the games are not directly related to each other, or when they are few in number.

Console – This refers to a videogame console, such as the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, or Xbox. It does not include the PC, and it does not include handheld-only devices like the Nintendo 3DS and Smartphones.

Console Exclusive – This term, which I did not invent so don’t @ me, refers to games that are on the Nintendo Switch, but not on competing consoles. However, these games may appear on PC and Smartphones. Basically, these games are a reason to get the Nintendo Switch instead of an Xbox or PlayStation console.

Controls – I use this term to refer to how what you do with the controller affects what happens in the game. If I complain about poor or awkward controls, this may be due to the way you interact with the game feeling unnatural, or the game not properly responding when I use the controller as the game instructs me to do.

Couch – This term is used to show that a game is multiplayer using one game system and one TV (or in the Nintendo Switch’s tabletop mode, simply using one game system). See also: “Local”

DLC – This term is short for “Downloadable Content”. This is additional content that doesn’t come with the game that players can download, either for free or at a fixed price.

Docked – This term is used to refer to the Nintendo Switch when it is connected to a TV.

Dungeon Crawler – This is a sub-genre of the RPG genre, where players’ movements throughout the game’s areas cause enemies to move at the same time, encouraging players to think about where they will move. Popular games in this genre include Mystery Dungeon and Etrian Odyssey.

Dynamic Resolution – Dynamic Resolution is a term that refers to a game’s visual presentation and specifically the clarity of the image on-screen. A dynamic resolution is a resolution that aims to be as clear as the resolution in question, but drops when what’s going on in the game gets more technically demanding. To put it another way, a dynamic 1080p resolution means that the game can get as high as a 1080p resolution, but that resolution drops in some areas.

Falling Block Puzzle – This is a sub-genre of the Puzzle genre that features gameplay involving an endless series of blocks falling from the top of the screen that need to be placed at the bottom. Popular games in this genre include Tetris and Dr. Mario.

Famicom – The Japanese name for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Family-Friendly – When I use this term, I tend to mean that a game meets most or all of the following criteria: It does not feature extreme graphic violence, it doesn’t make any overt sexual references, it doesn’t have nudity or feature highly-sexualized characters, it doesn’t have any noteworthy profanity, it doesn’t feature any controversial topic matter, it doesn’t feature complex plot or instructions that will be difficult for a child or casual gamer to understand, it doesn’t features complex gameplay or controls that will be difficult for a child or a casual gamer to understand.

Fighting Game – This is a genre where a player controls a character with a variety of melee attacks fighting opponents with similar attacks. Often these fights are one-on-one, and usually these games place a great emphasis on multiplayer play. Popular games in this genre include Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.

First-Person Shooter – This genre refers to games where the player is looking through the eyes of the protagonist, in first-person, and where the main way the player interacts with enemies is by, well, shooting. Popular games in this genre include Doom and Call of Duty.

Flight Sim / Space Combat Sim – These are games that have players piloting an aircraft or spacecraft in three-dimensional space, often involving combat with other aircraft or ground-based targets. Popular games in this genre include Star Fox and Crimson Skies.

FMV Game – Short for “Full Motion Video”, this is a sub-genre of the Graphic Adventure genre, and features gameplay that has players making choices and responding to characters depicted in video footage taken for the game. Popular games in this genre include Night Trap and Dragon’s Lair.

FPS – This term is short for “Frames Per Second”, and refers to the game’s framerate. The higher this number, the better. 30FPS is usually considered acceptable for most games, but competitive games that require split-second timing (like racing and fighting games) often call for more, with 60FPS generally seen as an excellent framerate. I should note that “FPS” is also an abbreviation for the term “First-Person Shooter”, but to avoid confusion I try to avoid using this abbreviation of that term.

Framerate – This term refers to how fast the game displays images to the screen. The better the framerate, the smoother the game looks and the easier it is to visually understand what’s going on.

Free-to-Play – This is a term used to refer to games that are free to download from the eShop and require no upfront cost to start playing. However, these games often use other forms of monetization, such as microtransactions, lootboxes, and wait mechanics, meaning that while initially free, many of these games have the potential to become deceptively expensive if you’re not careful.

Futuristic Racing – This is a sub-genre of the Racing genre, and features games set in the future, usually featuring extremely high speeds and often incorporating vehicles like hovercrafts. Popular games in this genre include F-Zero and Wipeout.

Gameplay – This refers to how it actually feels to play the game.

Genre – This is used to describe the overall type of game a game is. Just like films are sorted into different genres like comedy films and action films, games are sorted into genres like Racing games and Platformers. In my reviews, I try to make sure to capitalize the genre, because I feel it makes my meaning clearer.

Graphic Adventure – This genre is games that place the focus on character interaction and story, with the gameplay generally coming in the form of players making conversation choices and solving puzzles by interacting with the environment. This genre is often referred to as simply “Adventure”, but I prefer not to use that term on its own as “Adventure” is pretty wide-open and generic, and I feel it can make for added confusion. Popular games in this genre include Monkey Island and Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

Grinding – This is a term used to refer to repetitive actions in a game, usually used to accomplish some kind of progression. Grinding can be a bad thing, making a game tedious and frustrating. However, it can also be a good thing, if the action being repeated or the way this affects progression are enjoyable in and of themselves. It all depends on the context.

Gyro / Gyroscope / Gyroscopic Motion Control – One of three forms of motion control the Nintendo Switch uses. This form of motion control detects what angle the controller is pointed, relative to a prior angle. This form of motion control is often used to give players a direct and potentially precise way to control movement, especially in First-Person Shooters where it can be used to control the direction the player is facing.

Handheld / Handheld Mode – This is used to refer to a Nintendo Switch when it is not connected to a TV. I should note that I tend not to refer to “tabletop mode”, since I find it to be largely indistinguishable from handheld mode.

Horror – This is a sub-genre of the Graphic Adventure genre, featuring games where a large component of the game is a presentation that’s intended to be scary, and where the player often plays a character who is extremely weak and vulnerable to enemies. Others have at times referred to this genre as “Survival Horror”, but I’m opting not to do that as many of the games in this genre don’t necessarily have any “survival” elements. Popular games in this sub-genre include Resident Evil and Five Nights at Freddy’s.

Hotspot – In Graphic Adventure games, players will often need to interact with various objects and parts of the environment. However, it may not always be clear which parts of the environment players can interact with, and which parts are just for decoration. “Hotspots” are those places that players can interact with, and it is often useful for the game to provide some sort of indicator where these are, so players aren’t forced to scan over every inch of the screen searching for ones they might have missed.

Infra-Red – One of three forms of motion-control the Nintendo Switch uses, using a beam of infra-red light to detect the movement of the controller relative to objects it detects. This has also been used in some games as a primitive camera, or even to detect the player’s pulse. The right Joy-Con is the only controller with infra-red.

Interactive Story-Driven Adventure – Also referred to as “Narrative Adventure”, this is a Sub-Genre of the Graphic Adventure genre, and features games where a significant part of the gameplay comes from making choices in multiple-choice form similar to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. Popular games in this genre include Heavy Rain and Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

Interactive Toybox – This is a sub-genre of the Puzzle and Graphic Adventure genres. These are games that present players with a complex device or a room with a variety of objects to use, with each providing amusing results when interacted with. Many of these games were first introduced as VR games. Popular games in this sub-genre include Please Don’t Touch anything and Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin.

Isometric – This is a term used to describe games where the perspective is overhead at an angle, usually a 45 degree angle, and usually with the North, East, South, and West displayed diagonally onscreen.

JRPG – This is short for Japanese-style RPG, and it is a sub-genre of the RPG genre. Japanese-style RPGs tend to have a story with pre-determined characters that the player does not create, and combat that is separate from the rest of the gameplay. Popular games in this sub-genre include Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Kart Racer – This is a sub-genre of the Racing genre, and generally features more cartoony graphics and unrealistic physics, and frequently allows racers to use various power-ups on courses that enable them to enhance their performance or attack one another. Popular games in this sub-genre include Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing.

Local – When speaking about multiplayer games, this term is used to show that a game is multiplayer using one game system and one TV (or in the Nintendo Switch’s tabletop mode, simply using one game system). See also: “Couch”

Local Wireless – This means a game that can be played in multiplayer with two or more Nintendo Switch units in the same area. Local wireless play requires that each player have their own TV screen, or that they simply play using the Nintendo Switch’s built-in screen.

Localization – This refers to the process of taking a game from another language and translating it to English. It’s called “localization” instead of “translation” because often words and phrases in one language don’t make sense when directly translated to another. Bad localization is often the cause of terrible, nonsensical writing in games.

Lootbox – This term refers to a specific type of microtransaction that gives players an unknown randomized item in exchange for money.

Low-Poly – Short for “Low Polygon”, this term refers to the graphics of a 3D game using a low number of polygons, which results in boxy-looking characters and environments lacking in detail. This can be done intentionally as a stylized aesthetic, but more often this is due to a game originally being made for a game platform that could not render more complex 3D graphics, or being made by a game developer that either lacked the skill to create more detailed graphics, or one that did not want to invest the time and effort to do so.

Match-3 Puzzle – This is a sub-genre of the Puzzle genre that involves matching or lining up multiple items of the same type or color (usually 3 or 4). Popular games in this sub-genre include Puyo Puyo and Dr. Mario.

Maze Game – This is a sub-genre of the Arcade genre that has players navigating a character through a maze. Popular games in this sub-genre include Pac-Man and Lock ‘N Chase.

Memory – This is often in reference to the amount of space a game takes up on your Nintendo Swich’s memory card.

Metroidvania – This is a sub-genre of the Action-Platformer sub-genre. It is named after two game series, Metroid and Castlevania, that produced some of the earliest games in this sub-genre. The key traits of Metroidvanias are that they are games with an interconnected world that requires exploration and revisiting past areas, and power-ups that enable players to explore more of that world. Popular games in this sub-genre include Super Metroid and Hollow Knight.

Microtransactions – This is a term that refers to when a game asks the player to pay more money in exchange for some effect on the game. This differs from DLC because microtransactions are generally not for any finite content, but are designed to encourage players to spend a potentially unlimited amount of money on the game.

MMO – This is a term that is short for “Massively-Multiplayer Online”. As a genre, this refers to games that are online-only, and feature world where players play with large numbers of other players moving around in that same world. Popular games in this genre include World of Warcraft and EVE Online.

Mobile-Style 1/2-Button Arcade Game – This is a sub-genre of the Arcade genre, and I use this term specifically to refer to games that are designed to use only one or two input buttons. Often these are ports of Smartphone games designed to be played using only the touchscreen, but in some cases it can be using the left and right buttons. Popular games in this sub-genre include Flappy Bird and Jetpack Joyride.

Motion-Control – This term refers to the game detecting the movement of your controller and using that to influence the gameplay.

Music-Rhythm – This genre of games has a focus on performing actions in time with music, or that otherwise directly tie into or interact with the game’s music. Popular games in this genre include Guitar Hero and Crypt of the Necrodancer.

NPC – Stands for “Non-Player Character”. Usually this indicates a character in a game that is not controlled by the player, but not an enemy either. Rather, this is usually a character that talks to the player, offers help, or requires the player’s help or protection.

On-Rails – This term refers to 3D games that have players traveling on a set path without the ability to significantly deviate from that path, where they are constantly moving forward.

Online Leaderboards – This is a list of top player scores that other players can see online. This is a way for players to compete with each other indirectly.

Online Multiplayer – This means that a game can be played in multiplayer with others connected via the internet, generally using the Nintendo Switch Online service. Each player must have their own Nintendo Switch, their own TV, their own internet connection, and their own subscription to Nintendo Switch Online.

Open-World – This term refers to games with a large world that players can freely roam, usually with an emphasis on exploration, and a great degree of freedom for the player to go and do what they want.

Party – As a general term and a genre, the word “Party” is one I use as a catch-all. It is used when a game has a focus on multiplayer gameplay (generally three or more players), usually with gameplay that’s easy for kids or casual players to understand, and particularly if it doesn’t fit neatly into another genre.

Pinball – This is a sub-genre of the Arcade genre, and it involves games that have players bouncing a ball around a space using “flippers” that bat at the ball. Popular games in this sub-genre include Pokemon Pinball and Kirby’s Pinball Land.

Pixel Art – This is a term used to refer to a game’s graphical style, specifically to describe it as a game with a style of 2D visuals depicted using blocky-looking low-resolution visuals in the same style as 8-bit and 16-bit videogames.

Platform – This term, used interchangeably with “Game Platform” refers to the device a game is playing on, such as the Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC, or Smartphone.

Platformer – This genre of games has players jumping to move around, with players controlling their jumps to move through the game and avoid enemies. Popular games in this genre include Mario and Donkey Kong Country.

Port – This term refers to the process of a developer taking a game from one game system or platform and bringing it to another.

Presentation – I use this term to refer to elements of the game other than how it controls and how it plays. This includes the graphics, artwork, music, sound, story, and characters.

Progression – This is a term used to describe how a player makes progress in a game. Progression can refer to moving a character from one place to another, or increasing the character’s equipment and abilities. In any case, progression indicates things gradually changing over the course of a game.

Puzzle – This is a genre used to refer to games that have gameplay that focuses on making players think about how to solve problems. Often this involves looking for patterns or reasoning how to use tools available to the player. Popular games in this genre include Tetris and Sudoku.

Puzzle-Platformer – This is a sub-genre of Platformers and Puzzle games, combining elements from both of those genres. Like Platformers, players frequently move around by jumping, but like Puzzle games, the focus is on finding the solution to problems by thinking them through. Popular games in this genre include Trine and Fez.

Racing/Driving – This genre includes games that involve driving vehicles, usually cars, and usually to race. Popular games in this genre include Mario Kart and F-Zero

Re-Review – When something changes about a game, I may come back to give it a second review. That change could be something in the game itself that got updated, or it could be something to do with me, such as my opinion on the game evolving over time. I’ll be sure to note what has changed in my Re-Review.

Resolution – This term refers to the amount of detail on-screen. The higher the resolution, the more detail players can see and the clearer the image.

Retrospective – This is a more in-depth look at a game, with much more detail than a standard review

Review – Most of my content here is game reviews, where I judge how good a game is based on my time playing it. I try to keep these brief, discuss the premise of the game, how it plays, how good the graphics and sound are, and my overall opinion of the game.

Roguelike – This is a genre and style of game named after the game Rogue. Common features of Roguelikes include randomized level design, randomized enemies and power-ups, high difficulty that leads to frequent permanent deaths that force you to restart from the beginning, and it often includes game progress that carries over the course of multiple attempts at the game. I should note that I do not use the term “Roguelite” – I feel that “Roguelike” suffices for all games of this sort. Popular examples of this genre include The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky.

RPG – Short for “Role-Playing Game”, this genre of games generally places an emphasis on character growth and progression, and frequently have elements of exploration and an emphasis on story. Generally, combat in RPG is represented by players selecting actions out of a menu for their characters to perform. Popular games in this genre include Final Fantasy and Baldur’s Gate.

RTS – Short for “Real-Time Strategy”, this is a sub-genre of the Strategy genre, and it refers to games where the decisions being made about where to direct units are being made in real-time as players compete. Popular games in this genre include Starcraft and Pikmin.

Sandbox – This term refers to games that provide players with a variety of options of things they can do without directing them how to use them. This term is often used to describe Open-World games.

Shmup – Short for “Shoot-‘Em-Up”, this genre of game has players playing as a character or ship on a scrolling background, and players move around the screen shooting enemies. It is distinct from Space Shooters and 2-Stick Shooters in that the ship is generally only oriented to fire in one direction. Popular games in this genre include Galaga and Gradius.

Shooting Gallery – This is a sub-genre of the Arcade and Action genres, featuring gameplay where players manipulate a cursor on-screen to target and shoot enemies. Popular games in this genre include Operation Wolf and Wild Guns.

Signposting – Signposting is a term that refers to ways that the game indicates where the player can go, or where they are supposed to go, or what they are supposed to be doing. This can be subtle, such as an attention-grabbing event happening in the vicinity of where you need to go, or it can be obvious, such as a giant arrow telling you what direction to go. Signs in games aren’t always signposting, but they can be. Games with poor signposting tend to lack these markers, or make them so vague or subtle that players don’t understand what they’re meant to be doing.

Simulation – Called “Sim” for short, this genre features games where players are making choices within a complex system designed to mirror the sort of choices one would have in that situation in real life. Popular games in this genre include Sim City and The Sims.

Spectacle Fighter – This is a sub-genre of the Action and Fighting genres, where players fight multiple enemies using detailed fighting systems. Others have referred to games like this as “hack and slash”, but I choose not to use this term as it has been used to describe multiple types of games. Popular games in the Spectacle Fighter sub-genre include Devil May Cry and Bayonetta.

Splitscreen – Multiplayer games that use split-screen allow multiple players to play on the same screen by dividing the screen into multiple smaller screens so that each player has their own smaller screen.

Sports – This is a genre of games that simulate or depict various sports, either realistically or unrealistically.

Sprite – Sprites are graphical elements that are flat 2D images, as opposed to 3D polygonal graphics.

Stealth – This term refers to a game mechanic and a genre with a focus on avoiding enemies and hiding from them rather than confronting them directly. Popular games in this genre include Metal Gear and Thief.

Strategy – This is a genre where players focus on controlling not just one character but instead direct a large number of characters, or manipulate the conditions within the game to prevail over enemies. Popular games in this genre include Civilization and Starcraft.

Strategy-RPG – This sub-genre of the Strategy and RPG genres combines elements of these two genres, with players controlling a characters and moving them around in a way that is comparable to a Strategy game, but with character progression and a focus on story much like an RPG. Strategy-RPGs often tend to be XCOM-style or Tactics-style, with XCOM-style Strategy-RPGs (named after the XCOM game series) featuring characters attacking each other using projectile attacks that require line-of-sight between characters, and Tactics-style Strategy-RPGs (named after Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics) featuring attacks that depend on where one character is relative to another. Popular games in this sub-genre include Fire Emblem and Disgaea.

Sub-Genre – Just as games can be categorized by genre, games within that genre can be categorized by sub-genre. A Puzzle game’s sub-genre could be a Falling Block Puzzle or a Match-3 Puzzle, for example. This just helps to further explain the sort of game this is.

Super Famicom – The Japanese name for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Survival Adventure – This is a sub-genre of Action-RPG, with games that place a focus on survival, with a specific focus on maintaining your characters’ health and well-being and scrounging up resources. Popular games in this sub-genre include Don’t Starve and This War of Mine.

Switch – Starting with the basics, when I use the word Switch with a capital “S”, I am referring to the Nintendo Switch videogame system. I try to avoid using the word “switch” in other ways to avoid confusion, but if I unintentionally do so, you can generally tell when I mean the game system because I’ll capitalize it.

Team – This term is used to describe multiplayer games where players compete in teams, usually with two teams consisting of multiple players each.

Third-Person Shooter – This genre refers to 3D games where the game’s perspective is behind the character.

tl;dr – Stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read”. This will be an extra-short description of the game and my assessment of it, written to fit into one short paragraph or even one sentence.

Top-Down – I use this term to note when the game is shown from a perspective above the action from a bird’s-eye view.

Touchscreen – This is an input method some Nintendo Switch games can use in handheld mode, where players can interact with the game by touching the screen on the Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo Switch uses a capacitive touchscreen, similar to most modern Smartphones and tablet computers, which means that it can detect the player pressing multiple points at once, but will only detect if the player is touching the screen with some thing capacitive, such as a finger or a capacitive stylus.

Tower Defense – This is a sub-genre of the Strategy game genre, where players defend against invaders by building, upgrading, and maintaining defenses. This usually comes in the form of guard towers that shoot enemies that pass within their range. Popular games in this genre include Defense Grid and Plants Vs Zombies.

Turn-Based – This term, usually used to refer to the Strategy and RPG genres, generally means that a player selects what actions they’ll be doing while the game waits for them to make their choices. Some games use a version of this that includes some form of timer, but generally Turn-Based games are designed to be played at the pace of the player.

Unlimited Pattern Puzzle – This is a sub-genre of the Puzzle genre, featuring gameplay that has you working on puzzles that have a pattern that can keep repeating possibly forever. This is comparable to the Match-3 Puzzle sub-genre and the Falling Block Puzzle sub-genre, except it doesn’t focus on matching things or feature falling blocks. Popular games in this sub-genre include Pipe Dream and 2048.

Visual Novel – This is a sub-genre of the Graphic Adventure genre, featuring gameplay that is extremely story-focused, to the point where often players are not making any choice at all. When player choice is involved, it generally comes in the form of selecting dialogue options. Popular games in this sub-genre include Snatcher and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Wait Mechanic – This is a term that refers to a gameplay element that forces the player to wait in real-time before they can proceed with some part of the game. Wait mechanics are often (though not always) paired with microtransations that enable players to skip this waiting period in exchange for real-world money.

Walking Simulator – This is a sub-genre of the Graphic Adventure genre, featuring gameplay that is focused on observing the environment without necessarily interacting with it. Games in this genre usually have a strong focus on story, and are usually played in the first-person perspective. Popular games in this sub-genre include Gone Home and The Stanley Parable

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Whew! Okay, I think that about does it. Let me know if there are any other terms I use that you want me to define here, and I’ll either respond or just outright add it. I hope this helps!

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