Utsuge is the Japanese portmanteau for "depressing/melancholy game". As the name implies, these games' goal is to make the player cry. Most of them are of theVisual Novel variety, in which the player is guided through an increasingly (melo)dramatic story,Deconstruction mostly optional.

Games of this type contain lots of typicaltear-jerking material, with death, mental problems, loneliness and rejection as central themes. A lot of them contain at least onegirl with a serious disease,who has to be helped by the player.Downer Endings are very common, when the player fails to achieve this goal.

Utsuge are often populated byBishoujo-style characters and aimed squarely at aSeinen audience. By far the most of them take the form ofDating Sims, where the dramatic material is used to give the on-screen girls more depth and character. In some of those games, the drama actually becomes much more prevalent, overtaking the premise of simply trying to date girls. MostUtsuge, beingDating Sims, also containquite a bit of the erotic content that comes with the territory.

It is rare to find examples without any erotic content whatsoever, although someH-Games have been re-releasedwithout adult material to appeal to a wider audience, usually without suffering any negative consequences for the story or playability. Still, gaming companies generally don't explicitly market their games asUtsuge, instead emphasizing theirDating Sim-nature to appeal to the typically male audience.

• Air Pressure, but it's not obvious on the first playthrough.
• Da Capo
• Neko Kawaigari combines this withillcatgirls and aBait and Switch opening. Just comparethe opening tothe ending.
• ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two, which has been adapted intoef: A Tale Of Memories andef: A Tale of Melodies.
• Ever 17, especiallyTsugumi's and Sora's paths, or worse yet,the Tsugumi/Sora bad ending.
• Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and itsSpiritual SuccessorUmineko no Naku Koro ni form an interesting variation. Their main objective is not to make the players cry, but toscare them. Despite this, the games still manage to move the player emotionally. They succeeded in doing both in both series.
  • The question arcs are supposed to confuse and scare us, but the answer arcs are straight Utsuge.Well, except forMatsuribayashi-hen.
  • Tatarigoroshi-hen is also fueled by tears.
• Ico also qualifies: the main character is a lost little boy, the "love interest" is a frightened girl you can't communicate withwho ends up being sacrificed and, after being resurrected,sacrifices herself again just to rescue you, the battle music is nothing but a depressing dark hum, and your enemies are the souls of boys just like you who didn't make it. Yeah.
  • It has a happyending, though.
  • Don't forgetShadow of the Colossus - the music is exciting action-adventure stuff (except for the final boss), but the ending is possibly the most bitter-sweet thing ever in gaming. And then there is the music that plays as a Colossus dies...
• NieR is probablythe most utterly depressing game of 2010. Thebackstorydoesn't help much either.
  • Spoiler for the curious:It's our world (or what's left of it) after a cataclysm caused byDrakengard's fifth ending.
• Kana: Little Sister
• Most anything byKey Visual Arts:
  • AIR
  • Clannad
  • Kanon
  • Little Busters
  • planetarian
• Devil Survivor is anextremely dark RPG example.
• Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. The anime version doesn't let up on the tears, either.
  • Depending on how familiar you are with what PTSD does to people, you may think the animeamps it up from tears totrauma.
• Muv-Luv.Alternative is definitely one of these consideringhow practically the entire main castis killed off.
  • Chapter 7 ofAlternative, titledThe Unforgiven, stands on par withKimiNozo in all its gut-punching, PTSD-triggering, tear-jerking and râge-inducing glory.And you thought you had hit rock bottom with HEADCHOMP, didn't you? Wait till she's seen eating with another man.
• Symphonic Rain seems like a slice of life visual novel at first but reveals it's more depressing elements later on.
• Narcissu
  • Especially notable in thatWord of God says it wasn't his intention to make people cry at the end. Well,he failed.Hard.
• Private Nurse—Come for the marketing as anH-game, stay for the many, many moments ofcrying your damn eyes out. There is basically one path that leads to a triumphant ending, the rest count asBittersweet Ending if not outrightDowner Ending.
• Saya no Uta is aCosmic Horror love story. Besides theGorn, thenature of the bishoujo, and the other delightful elements, it fits this trope perfectly.
  • Chaos;Head, also by Nitroplus, has this as well.
• Type Moon's games, particularly the routes leading up to a "Normal End". "True Ends" tend towards bittersweet.
  • Sakura's route inFate/stay night (Heaven's Feel) is particularly warped, with her "Normal End" the most depressing of all the endings.
    • Which leads some people to regard it as a bad end.So reload that save and stay alive, will you?
  • Tsukihime, the Far Side routes (Akiha/Hisui/Kokahu) in particular. Akiha's Normal End, as well as Hisui's True End, willPlayer Punch you in the face.
• Surprisingly forSquare Enix,Final Fantasy XIII-2 could qualify.The ending is one of the worst endings to hit aFinal Fantasy game, and this is in direct contrast toits predecessor. It's even been noted noted on the game's main page that there aremultiple bad endings, thanks to the game's "Paradox Endings".
• Yume Miru Kusuri has three paths - one for the socially isolated school idol, one for the druggie kid, and the last one for the poor girl who is bulliedwith tasers in a classroom whilethe teacher assumes she is constantly falling out of her chair and screaming for no particular reason.
• A Dance With Rogues is aBreak the Cutie story for the player character. In the opening sequence, your entire family gets massacred by an invading army and youget raped. Then you are forced into working for the city's equivalent ofThe Mafiya, and just when you are getting settled and used to it your friend Caron gets brutally murdered right in front of you. Then, just when you are getting over that, all of the Family's leadership that have been much nicer to you than they could have get killed or taken prisoner by the same band of people who killed your family in the first place.And it doesn't stop there.
• Mother 3 is an RPG example. Oooh, boy, is it ever.
  • To clarify,Lucas and Claus' mother (Hinawa) dies, Claus' goes missing for years, their father becomes a broken, beaten, man, the eden-like state of Tazmily village slowly becomes corrupted by technology, Lucas' has a dream of his mother and kills himself in the dream so he can be with her (but it was all a dream so he still lives in his hell), Claus turns out to be the enemy because Porky turns him into a Chimera after the accident, Lucas then needs to fight Claus but can't bring himself to fight his brother, Claus pummels Lucas, Hinawa talks to whatever parts of Claus that remain, Claus realizes what he became, kills himself to be with Hinawa IN FRONT OF LUCAS, and then the world ends and everyone dies. Or do they?
• Oracle of Tao may qualify. It has anumber ofDowner Ending events, depending on what you do. Although some of these tend more toward theFridge Horror/Nightmare Fuel category.Most notably, many of the dreams either result in a variant ofDream Apocalypse orDying Dream, though some actually involve the physical destruction of the universe. And then there's a Naughty Tentacles ending... Even the good endings tend to be set up as aTear Jerker.
• School Days. Some of the routes are just wallowing in melodrama and end with someone unexpectedly dying horribly through suicide or murder.
• CROSS†CHANNEL can be like this early on, but it'sdefinitely this by the very end.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky somehow manages achieve this of allNintendo franchises.
• Youwill cry as you playCorpse Party, either because of all theTear Jerker scenes or because of all the horror Possibly both.
• 99 no Namida (99 Tears) is solely made to make you cry. NO EXCEPTIONS!
• Katawa Shoujo falls under this heading as the routes can be heartbreaking. Every route has at least oneDowner Ending and even some of the good endings areBittersweet Endings
  • Rin Tezuka's route fits this trope the most.Hanako's route isn't too far behind, either.

• Trope
• Visual Novel Tropes
• Utsuge