The genre of otome games is often used to encapsulate any game with heavy romantic elements but in actuality, the term describes story-driven games that are aimed toward women. The category was coined in Japan, the word “otome” translating to “maiden”, which created Angelique, an otome game widely recognized as the first of its kind.
Otome games have a reputation for being light and fluffy romances, and a vast amount of them are. However, as the genre has grown, so has its subject matter. For women, or simply those who enjoy female-oriented content, here are nine otome games with unexpectedly dark depths.
9 Mystic Messenger
As its name suggests, this otome app game uniquely takes the form of a messaging app. Most of the player’s interactions with the characters take place within the messenger’s chatrooms which open throughout the day in real time as the player works to coordinate a fundraiser. On the surface, Mystic Messenger is cheerful and humorous, its chatrooms full of the characters poking fun at each other and using adorable personalized emojis.
However, as players trek deeper into the game’s routes, they soon discover that the characters are grappling with troubled pasts and unhealthy behaviors (and a web of secrets surrounding the previous fundraiser planner). It’s up to the player to guide their chosen character to a better path. Or lure them down the road to hell.
8 Alice In The Country Of Hearts
Inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the visual novel reimagines Alice as a seventeen-year-old with a disinterest in romance after having her heart broken and inferiority complex revolving around her older sister Lorna, whose elegance caught the eye of Alice’s first love.
From the get-go, Alice In The Country Of Hearts is drastically darker than its source material. Alice arrives in Wonderland via kidnapping by the White Rabbit and once there, discovers it is a land rife with violence and death, its citizens casually killing each other at whim (though this is partly due to them having reparable clocks in their chests rather than hearts). Gruesomeness aside, playing the game eventually reveals that like her literary counterpart, Alice’s time in Wonderland may be influenced by her own imagination.
7 Hatoful Boyfriend
Absurd premises aren’t exactly a rarity in otome games, but it would be a challenge to find a title that kicks off as bizarrely as Hatoful Boyfriend: A School of Hope and White Wings. In a world where sentient birds comprise the majority of society, the story’s heroine enrolls in a previously bird-only high school as its sole human student.
The quasi-dating simulator initially centers around the heroine falling for one of her avian peers but after obtaining several key endings, players can eventually unlock Bad Boys Love, a hidden route that tells the morbid story at the heart of the game and reveals how its world came to be.
6 Amnesia
Aptly titled, this visual novel features a heroine afflicted by the titular condition after she becomes telepathically bound to Orion, a spirit that takes the form of a young boy. Together, the pair work to recover the heroine’s memories.
There are several grim elements lurking under Amnesia’s disarmingly pretty art, but the game is most notorious for Toma, one of the heroine’s love interests. Toma is one of the most infamous yanderes in otome and anime media, a term that describes a character with an obsessive fixation (often violent) on the object of their affection.
5 Dandelion
The art from this dating simulator game may already be familiar to Mystic Messenger fans. Dandelion ~Wishes brought to you~ was developed by Cheritz, the same South Korean game company that created Mystic Messenger and sprinkled multiple Easter eggs and flat-out references to Dandelion within the popular app game.
Dandelion follows Heejung Kim, a college student that stumbles on a basket of adorable animals that has mysteriously appeared in her apartment. She decides to keep the critters and after a few weeks, gets another surprise. Her pets have all transformed into human men, albeit with some of their former furry appendages intact. It’s a cute premise but there are not-so-delightful forces at play, and it is quickly established that Heejung is already struggling with her mental health before the story’s plot begins.
4 Hakuoki
A historical fantasy that interweaves demon mythology with events and figures from Japan’s Edo period, specifically regarding a special police force from the era referred to as the Shinsengumi. Chizuru Yukimura, the protagonist, becomes affiliated with the Shinsengumi in her search for her missing father, a doctor that the Shinsengumi are also looking for.
Unlike the majority of otome games with darker natures, Hakuoki’s grimness comes not from dysfunctional romance or depressing backstories but primarily by reflecting the tragic realities of battle. Hakuoki is brimming with death, nearly no one is safe and there is no route where everyone gets a happy ending.
3 Nameless
Another entry produced by Cheritz, Nameless ~The one thing you must recall~ puts players in the shoes of the heroine, a high school student that lives alone and has a passion for collecting dolls. After a strange dream, she awakens to find that her beloved dolls have come to life.
Like Dandelion, Nameless’ protagonist comes packaged with her own set of issues and trauma that players have to navigate along with their chosen love interest’s personal brand of problems. Fascinatingly, the anguish that plagues the love interests and the actions they take as a result are directly linked to their past as dolls.
2 Nightshade
Taking place in the tail end of Japan’s Sengoku period, Nightshade follows Enju, a shinobi in training borne from a union between two once opposing ninja clans, as she undertakes her first mission which proceeds to go horribly wrong.
As advertised, the visual novel is certainly a ninja romance at its core but it also heavily revolves around political maneuvering, sinister conspiracies, some absolutely atrocious parenting, and high stake situations. If players make a few too many bad choices, the consequences are far direr than a broken heart.
1 Diabolik Lovers
With a title clearly alluding to a term that means “satanic”, gamers should expect some dark elements but this notorious visual novel still manages to shock those who play it. Diabolik Lovers is essentially a vampiric BDSM fantasy, beginning with Yui, a heroine with particularly tasty blood, moving into a mansion that she learns is the home of six bloodthirsty brothers.
Even with the game’s intent in mind, the narrative is truly twisted. The brothers are the absolute embodiment of “mommy issues”, and every main character (including Yui) manages to kill and be killed throughout the various routes.