Game genre

A game genre refers to the type of game. There are several game genres to date.

Platformer

A platformer is a game genre in which the player's character goes across "platforms" to get to the end of the area. Typical platforming games involve the character moving left and right, and jumping to overcome platform heights and obstacles. Platformers are very popular, and in fact, make up the majority of the fangames on MFGG.

Role Playing Game

A role playing game (or RPG) is a game in which you gain some form of experience which increases some stat relevant to the player. It has been argued that an RPG requires a specific sort of combat system, however a great many RPGs designed more innovative combat systems. While there are a fair amount of RPG fangames, they are not popular to make because they require much more for-thought and time to produce than most other genres.

Puzzle

A puzzle game requires the player to manipulate one thing, which in turn allows you to complete a task. There are not very many puzzle fangames, and most of the existing ones are considered to be of poor quality (for instance, Mallow Maze 2: Switch it Up).

Arcade

Arcade games are, perhaps, the most general game genre. Instead of being classified by it's game mechanics or level design, arcade games are based around trying to score as many "points" as possible, usually under a time limit or scaling difficulty curve. Many minigames are the arcade genre, as this genre is generally agreed to be the easiest to produce, and fits well in a smaller-game environment. An important distinction should be made between arcade games, and games with arcade elements (such as Super Mario Bros.) Simply having a points system does not make a game an arcade game, it must be focused primarily around achieving these points.

It is very common for arcade games to have a "high-score" chart, as it is an obvious and age-old feature. In addition to that, Game Maker has a built-in high-score system, thus making it's implementation take minimal effort.

The name itself originates from games in an "arcade", where the goal of most games were to prove your skill by achieving a spot on the high-score chart, as every body who plays the game afterwards would see your name and score. Their game was also economically designed to defeat the player rather quickly (as previously stated, either with a time limit or harsh difficulty curve), as that would allow more players to play in faster rotations, or frustrate the player into playing again. This is known as, "eating quarters".

Fighting

Fighting games usually have a two fighters face each other and use different attacks on their opponent by pressing different keys. They get KO'd when all of their health is depleted. Fighting games tend to have different playable characters, where they have different attacks, strengths, and weaknesses. Fighting fangames aren't that common, but there is some good ones (like Mushroom Kingdom SHOWDOWN!).

Minigame

Minigames are small games that can have any type of gameplay, most of them would have a high-scores table. Some games are known as Minigame Compilations, where they have more than one minigame (a good example is Mario Land: Minigame Mayhem). Minigames are quite common in MFGG, due to their small size. They even have their own competitions.