SweetieGames

I’ve been an otome lover since 2014; my passion for this underrated story game genre is very obvious on this blog. Otome games are only one type of dating sim; the overall dating sim genre has been huge in countries like Japan and China for years. Tokimeki Memorial, a famous Japanese dating sim, was selling well over 1 million copies all the way back in 1996. In more recent years, the Chinese otome title Love and Deepspace has been downloaded over 50 million times worldwide and has a record high of active users. In 2025, it’s not only Asia that are making the hit dating games; British devs Team 17 published Date Everything! earlier this year and now it’s all I see on my TikTok For You page. When I was a newbie to the otome genre, dating games in general felt very underground here in the west, but are we starting to see a shift?

Back in 2014, I stumbled across a game that I thought was just an anime visual novel on the app store. I had only just recently discovered anime at the time, and this particular game excited me. The artwork was so pretty! This game turned out to be NTT Solmare’s Shall We Date? Angel or Devil +, a game that shut down many years ago now but will always hold a special place in my heart for sparking my love for otome. I told everyone in my friend group about the game, eager for others to try it out. I went on Twitter and Tumblr looking for other fans of the game, but it turned out they were few and far between. The otome community in the west back then was small but passionate, with a few blogs uploading walkthroughs or CG galleries. Dating sims were played by a small handful of people and discussed in little corners of the internet, and I was eager to find as many people as possible to chat about them with.

Non otome dating sims saw slightly higher popularity; NekoPara boomed back in 2014 and 2015 on YouTube, sparking an anime and countless merch drops. Its male-centric features and imagery made it perfect for creating clickbait thumbnails back then, especially as demonetisation wasn’t as big of a thing. However, outside of scantily clad anime catgirls, there wasn’t many other “mainstream” dating games.

It may have been the clickbait ads, but as more mobile otome was released, the bigger they got. I found plenty of fans excited for Wizardess Heart when it released from NTT Solmare. I started to feel a real shift around the time Mystic Messenger released, as I saw mainstream anime YouTubers discussing the game. MysMes was downloaded over 5 million times, something that was unheard of in the western otome community and brought an influx of new dating sim fans. As time went on, I ended up buying a Nintendo Switch as that was where new otome games were primarily being sold after the downfall of the PS Vita. The otome community on Twitter became more alive than ever before and there are now huge Discord servers dedicated to the genre. I was having in depth discussions about the latest otome titles daily, and a lot of people I spoke to had gotten into the genre around the Mystic Messenger days in 2016.

Nowadays, games like Love and Deepspace have been downloaded 10 times more than the ground-breaking Mystic Messenger, and are played by casual gamers looking to indulge in plot heavy (and sometimes raunchy) stories; people who are now exploring more games in the otome genre. Date Everything! is a funny sandbox take on the genre, making it accessible for streamers and YouTubers who want to make funny content. People who I’ve watched on YouTube since my teen years, people who haven’t previously made dating game content, are picking these games up. Even if they don’t play more dating games in the future, I’m glad that this underrated genre is coming more into the public eye. It’s definitely not mainstream, but they’re definitely increasing in popularity. There are some truly funny, silly, heartwarming, and fantastic stories hidden in these games; I love that more people are getting to see them!