, also sometimes called , are video games created by
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese hobbyists or hobbyist groups (referred to as "circles"), more for fun than for profit; essentially, the
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese equivalent of
independent video gamesIndependent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. While large firms can create independent games, they are usually designed by an individual or a small team of as many as ten people, depending on the complexity of the...
. Most of them are based on pre-existing material, but some are entirely original creations. They are almost always exclusive to
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
-based
PCA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s, but a few notable exceptions also exist for the Dreamcast, because of its very weak copy protection.
Dōjinis the Japanese term for self-published works, usually magazines, manga or novels. Dōjinshi are often the work of amateurs, though some professional artists participate as a way to publish material outside the regular industry. The term dōjinshi is derived from and . Dōjinshi are part of a wider...
soft are typically available in "demo" or "trial" (体験版
taikenban) form for free on the internet, with full versions available for purchase. One game, French-Bread's brawler
Ragnarok Battle OfflineRagnarok Battle Offline, or RBO, is a beat 'em up game for Microsoft Windows created by dōjin soft developer French-Bread. The soundtrack is composed by Raito of Lisa-Rec...
, a
homageHomage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
/
spoofA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the
MMORPGMassively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
Ragnarok OnlineRagnarok Online , often referred to as RO, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG created by GRAVITY Co., Ltd. based on the manhwa Ragnarok by Lee Myung-jin. It was first released in South Korea on 31 August 2002 for Microsoft Windows and has since been released in many other...
so impressed Gravity Corp. (the original game's designers) that it has been given an official release outside of Japan.
Like fangames, dōjin soft frequently use characters from existing games,
animeis the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
, or
mangaManga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
. These unauthorized uses of characters are generally ignored and accepted by the copyright holders, and are seen as encouraging a greater fan community. This is quite different from the West where high-profile fangames are regularly shut down by cease-and-desist orders. There are also many dōjin soft titles which are completely original, or feature only vague allusions to other series.
While most dōjin soft sales occur at anime and video game or
anime conventions (such as
Comiket, otherwise known as the , is the world's largest self-published comic book fair, held twice a year in Tokyo, Japan. The first Comiket was held on December 21, 1975, with only about 32 participating circles and an estimated 600 attendees. Attendance has since swelled to over a half million people....
), there is a growing number of specialized
internetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
sites that sell them. Some titles sell well enough that their creators can make a full-time job out of their "amateur hobby". One particular circle,
TYPE-MOONis a Japanese game company, best known for their visual novels, co-founded by author Kinoko Nasu and illustrator Takashi Takeuchi. It is also known under the name for its publishing and corporate operations...
, has since become a commercial videogame developer and anime studio.
Notable dōjin soft companies
- ABA Games
ABA Games is a Japanese video game developer, comprising solely of game designer Kenta Cho. ABA Games' works, available as open source freeware, are predominantly shoot 'em up games often inspired by classic games in the genre. Its games feature stylised retro graphics, innovative gameplay features...
: specializes in shoot 'em upShoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...
s with an abstract look. Most of their games are Open Source.
- 07th Expansion
07th Expansion is a Japanese dōjin group that specializes in the creation of visual novels known as sound novels. They started out drawing for the trading card game Leaf Fight, but they are most famous for creating the dōjin game series Higurashi no Naku Koro ni...
: specializes in visual novelA is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s, most notable for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, known simply as When They Cry for the North American release of the anime adaptation, is a Japanese murder mystery dōjin soft sound novel series produced by 07th Expansion. The games are built on the NScripter game engine and are playable on Microsoft Windows PCs...
and Umineko no Naku Koro niis a Japanese murder mystery dōjin soft visual novel series produced by 07th Expansion. The first game in the series, Legend of the Golden Witch, was first released at Comiket 72 on August 17, 2007 playable on the PC; the game sold out in thirty minutes...
- Team Shanghai Alice
is a one-man Japanese dojin game developer specializing in shoot 'em ups. The team's only releases thus far have been the Touhou Project games and related merchandise.-Games:*The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil...
: specializes in curtain fire scrolling shooters, most notable for the Touhou ProjectThe , also known as Toho Project or Project Shrine Maiden, is a Japanese dōjin game series focused on bullet hell shooters made by the one-man developer Team Shanghai Alice, whose sole member, known as ZUN, is responsible for all the graphics, music, and programming for the most part...
.
- Twilight Frontier
Twilight Frontier is a Japanese doujin game developer. They are noted for making high quality derivative works of other games.-Productions:...
: specializes in a wide variety of games including fighting gameFighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as...
s and platformers.
- Type-Moon
is a Japanese game company, best known for their visual novels, co-founded by author Kinoko Nasu and illustrator Takashi Takeuchi. It is also known under the name for its publishing and corporate operations...
: former dōjin studio that specializes in visual novelA is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s.
See also
- Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
- Graphic adventure game
A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game. They are distinct from text adventures. Whereas a player must actively observe using commands such as "look" in a text-based adventure, graphic adventures revolutionized gameplay by making use of natural human perception...
- Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
- Dating sim
Dating sims are a video game subgenre of simulation games, usually Japanese, with romantic elements. They are also sometimes put under the category of neoromance. The most common objective of dating sims is to date, usually choosing from among several characters, and to achieve a romantic...
- Bishōjo game
A , or , is "a type of Japanese video game centered on interactions with attractive anime-style girls". These games are a sub-genre of dating sims targeted towards a male audience....
- Eroge
An or Ero-ga is a Japanese video or computer game that features erotic content, usually in the form of anime-style artwork. Eroge originated from galge, but unlike galge, they feature erotic/pornographic content.-History:...
- Otome game
An is a video game that is targeted towards a female market, where one of the main goals, besides the plot goal, is to develop a romantic relationship between the female player character and one of several male characters. This genre is most established in Japan. The label includes both visual...
- History of Eastern role-playing video games
Eastern role-playing video games are role-playing video games developed in East Asia, specifically Japan, and, to a lesser extent, South Korea and China...
External links