| Score | Player is given a score on their performance. Often an integral part of gameplay, such as the main goal. | 1964 / 2026 | 18675 games |
| Media: Download | Full game legally distributed as digital download. | 1966 / 2026 | 15422 games |
| Proprietary license | Distributed under a license that witholds and/or restricts source code & rights granted by law, usually for commercial purposes & is almost always unique per game | 1947 / 2025 | 13682 games |
| Commercial | A notably commercial product despite copyrights (or lack thereof) and/or licensing agreements (or lack thereof) that many perceive as incompatible with commercial sales. | 1947 / 2025 | 12813 games |
| Extra lives | Player character has multiple "lives", that are basically how many tries a player has before a Game Over. | 1972 / 2026 | 10762 games |
| Available on Steam | Available on the digital distribution (and by extension social networking service) by Valve. | 1984 / 2026 | 9386 games |
| Ubuntu Linux | Comes with/Installs very simply on Ubuntu. | 1991 / 2026 | 7110 games |
| Word input | Player controls the game or part of the game by typing in text in some form. Could be simple commands or whole sentences. | 1955 / 2026 | 6383 games |
| Interactive fiction | A type of adventure game where the game world and player input is described using text. Such as "You are in a hallway. There is a key on the floor", ">get key", ">use silver key on door", ">turn valve", ">say hello", etc.. | 1972 / 2026 | 6091 games |
| Indie | Developed without financial backing from large companies or non-private investors. Shares similar design philosophies as art games, but on gameplay rather than artistic value. Often self-published as well. | 1947 / 2026 | 6038 games |
| Available on Itch.io | Offered via any indie pricing model for game and extras. The products are downloaded pairs of file+key. Optional client. | 1983 / 2026 | 5452 games |
| Keyboard | Requires or supports any type of a keyboard type controller. | 1954 / 2026 | 5090 games |
| Visual novel | Sug-genre of adventure games. Easily confusable with dating sims with which visual novels share their outward appearance, but the emphasis is on non-gamelike elements and the lack of use of statistics or other numerical data. | 1973 / 2026 | 4964 games |
| Media: 5¼ inch floppy disk | Comes on one or more 5¼ inch magnetic floppy disks. | 1976 / 2026 | 4445 games |
| Walking | Player can or must move about on foot, regardless of speed. | 1973 / 2026 | 4257 games |
| Planet Earth | The story and gameplay takes place all over earth, over several continents. | 1978 / 2025 | 3923 games |
| Grid | Uses a grid of any shape or type. | 1950 / 2025 | 3788 games |
| Console Classix | Available to play at Console Classix | 1977 / 2026 | 3521 games |
| Traditional game | Video game adaptation of a traditional game. Also when uses real traditional gaming materials. | 1948 / 2024 | 3503 games |
| Emulated on MAME | An Arcade games emulator available for almost any platform. (clones and bootlegs are merged to the parent)
Should be used only for arcade games. | 1971 / 2025 | 3411 games |
| Female protagonist | Player controls apparently female character. | 1966 / 2026 | 3384 games (13 characters) |
| Media: Type-in | Distributed as printed computer code intended to be manually typed into computer software capable of running and/or compiling it. | 1957 / 2025 | 3298 games |
| Scrolling shooter | A shooter sub genre characterized by scrolling environments, vertically, horizontally or diagonally. | 1972 / 2026 | 3254 games |
| Magic | Features anything definitely magical or strange mystic powers. | 1975 / 2025 | 3241 games |
| Media: cassette tape | Comes on a magnetic audio tape. | 1958 / 2026 | 3235 games |
| Monsters | Includes any kind of creatures with terrifying or otherwise horribly deformed/repulsive (monstrous) appearance, regardless if their personality matches this. Commonly assumed to be mindless savages. | 1974 / 2025 | 3213 games |
| Naturalistic | Not necessarily realistic. Has nothing overtly fantastic, be it magical, paranormal, psychic, mystic, super powers, technomagic, nor magical technology. | 1972 / 2024 | 3196 games |
| Action-Adventure | A very vague genre often involving lots of action in form of bloody combat, somewhat spacious environments, and an occasional environmental puzzle. Also includes adventure games that are very action oriented. | 1975 / 2026 | 3082 games |
| Confusable | Any games that can be easily confused with another game by same or similar name on same or related platform. | 1954 / 2026 | 3034 games |
| BASIC programming language | Coded in BASIC. | 1964 / 2025 | 3000 games |
