ARPG + MORPG hybrid with looter shooter characteristics.

It doesn’t really fit anywhere cleanly, though.

Terms can definitely be confusing. Diablo is definitely a hack-n’-slash, but it’s very different from the likes of Golden Axe and God of War.

The ARPGs you’re probably referring to, I call them Diablo-likes to distinguish them from all the other action RPGs.

RNG = random number generator. In gaming, this just means random chance. Whenever loot drops, critical hits land, enemies spawn, or dice rolls decide outcomes, that’s RNG at work.

Eurojank is a term for European-developed games (usually from Central or Eastern Europe) that are ambitious, creative, and full of unique ideas… but also full of technical rough edges.

There’s a lot of subgenres I wanted to include, but I felt this document was already too long. Here’s more of them:

• DBRPG = Deck-building RPG
• SurRPG = Survival RPG
• RLRPG = Rogue-like RPG
• SLRPG = Souls-like RPG

I don’t know why I overlooked GRPGs since Germany has some pretty important ones. You mentioned Gothic, but there’s also both the Sacred series and ELEX series.

I’d say that while both GRPGs and PRPGs are releated to each other, there’s some big differences that go beyond nationality. I’d say GRPGs are more like a muddy Renaissance faire going on while PRPGs have more of a storybook style.

EDIT: In the interest of thoroughness, I added even more subgenre acronyms.

Tetris Plus is quite neat because, not only is there PlayStation and arcade versions, it was released for Game Boy too.

I regularly play it on my cabinet—it’s got a great PvP mode.

They’re gone. No mascots. No background worlds. Just the “elemental” machine skins.

Tetris Worlds had eye monsters because THQ wanted a console-friendly mascot game.

Tetris Elements has industrial pipes because ValuSoft (THQ’s budget imprint) wanted a cheap, self-contained PC release that didn’t require any cross-project asset wrangling.