A
bishōjo game (美少女ゲーム,
bishōjo gēmu?, literally "Pretty girl game"), or
gal game (ギャルゲーム,
gyaru gēmu?, often shortened to "
galge"), is "a type of Japanese video game centered around interactions with attractive
anime-style girls".
[1] These games are a sub-genre of
dating sims targeted towards a male audience.
[2]
Bishōjo games are a uniquely Japanese phenomenon: they have virtually no equivalent in the
western video game industries, but are similar to
Choose Your Own Adventure books. They form a sizeable fraction of the Japanese market: the most popular have sold over a million copies, and they make up the majority of
offline PC games in Japan. Nevertheless, because of real or perceived cultural differences [
citation needed], only a few titles of this sort have been translated or commercialized outside of
East Asia.
Notable subgenres of bishōjo games are
ren'ai games (often called "dating sims") and
eroges (often called "
hentai games").