Otome Games and Dating Sims With Male Love Interests: The Best Ones to Play in 2026, and Where

A goddess undercover at a dating agency, a journalist who can jump into other people's bodies, a police officer with a poison collar locked round her neck, and a whole town of single dads. These are the eleven best otome games and dating sims with male love interests you can play in 2026, what each one is really like, and where to buy them.

The list at a glance

Prices are US list prices on Nintendo's and Steam's stores. Otome games go on sale often, so it's worth waiting for one.

The best otome games on Switch and PC

1. Cupid Parasite

Start here. Lynette Mirror is the top bridal adviser at a matchmaking agency in the city of Los York. She's also Cupid, the goddess of love, working undercover. Her new clients are five men so bad at love that the office calls them the Parasite 5, and she's going to have to fall for one of them herself.

It's a very funny romantic comedy and the easiest game here to hand a first-timer. It reached Steam in September 2026, and the sequel, Sweet & Spicy Darling, is on Switch.

Buy it: Switch ($49.99) and Steam ($29.99), from Idea Factory International. Rated T.

2. Collar x Malice

The thriller. Ichika Hoshino is a rookie police officer in Shinjuku, which has been sealed off after a string of public murders counting down to something called "X-Day". She's attacked on her way home and wakes up with a collar locked around her neck that can poison her. The only people who can help are five former cops running a detective agency.

It's tense, violent and very well plotted: the one to hand anyone who thinks otome games are all fluff. A fan disc, Collar x Malice -Unlimited-, continues each route and adds a sixth love interest.

Buy it: Switch only, from Aksys. Rated M.

3. Bustafellows

The noir. Teuta is a freelance journalist in the city of New Sieg who can leap, for a few moments at a time, into someone else's body in the past and change what happens. That makes her very useful to a crew on the wrong side of the law: a lawyer, a hitman, a plastic surgeon, an autopsy chief and a hacker.

It's slick and morally grey, with some of the best character writing in the genre. You can rename the heroine.

Buy it: Switch and Steam, from PQube. Rated M.

4. Piofiore: Fated Memories

The period drama. It's 1925 in Burlone, an Italian port city split between three crime families. Liliana was raised in the local church and has never had much say in her own life, until the families' war turns up at her door. The five men are the heads and enforcers of those families.

Fedoras, dangerous men and loyalty tested at gunpoint, and it earns its M rating. The sequel, Piofiore: Episodio 1926, carries every route on a year.

Buy it: Switch only, from Aksys. Rated M.

5. Lover Pretend

The showbiz comedy. Chiyuki is a college student who wants to be a screenwriter like her late mother, and to find the father she's never met. She takes a job as an assistant on a film and ends up cast as its romantic lead. The four men are all part of the shoot: a hair-and-makeup apprentice who's also her childhood friend, a model, a fellow student and a rising actor.

All the warmth, none of the murders.

Buy it: Switch only, from Aksys. Rated T.

6. Sympathy Kiss

The office romance. Akari Amasawa is a designer at an app company who's just been moved onto a news app that's failing. The love interests are the men she works with, and the plot is as much about saving the app as it is about romance.

The one for people who liked the office half of a workplace drama. You can rename the heroine.

Buy it: Switch, from Idea Factory International. Rated T.

The best otome games on mobile

All three are free to start, with in-app purchases for extra stories and limited-time cards. Set a budget first.

7. Love and Deepspace

The most talked-about otome game of the last two years, and nothing like the visual novels above: it's fully 3D, first-person, with combat. You're a Deepspace Hunter in a sci-fi city, and the five men are another hunter, a cardiac surgeon, an artist, the head of an underground organisation and your childhood friend, now in the military. You choose your heroine's name and look. A sixth love interest was announced in June 2026 and cancelled a week later, so the cast is staying at five.

Get it: iOS and Android, from Infold. App Store 13+, Google Play Teen.

8. Tears of Themis

A legal drama from HoYoverse, the studio behind Genshin Impact. You're a rookie defence attorney, and the four men are a detective, a fellow lawyer, a psychologist who lectures at a university, and the heir to a very rich family. The cases are real puzzles: you gather evidence and argue it in court. It's still getting updates in 2026.

Get it: iOS and Android. App Store 13+, Google Play Teen.

9. Mystic Messenger

The cult classic, ten years old this year. You join a private group chat for a charity, and the game plays out in real time: messages arrive through the day, characters phone you, and if you miss a chat, it's gone. There are seven routes, one of them with a woman.

Get it: iOS and Android, from Cheritz. App Store 13+, Google Play Teen.

Dating sims where you play a guy

10. Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator

You design your own dad, move to a seaside town with your daughter, and find out the neighbourhood is full of single dads. Seven of them are dateable, including a teacher, a goth dad and a self-styled bad dad. It's a comedy with a lot of heart, and still the best-known dating sim about men dating men.

Buy it: Steam, Switch, PS4 and mobile, from Game Grumps. $14.99. Rated T.

11. Stardew Valley

A farming game first, but its romance has been a quiet favourite since 2016. Your farmer can be any gender and can marry any of the six bachelors (or six bachelorettes), and the relationship plays out over in-game years. Plenty of people found out they liked romance games here.

Buy it: everywhere, from ConcernedApe. $14.99 on PC, $4.99 on iOS. Rated E10+.

One more for the road: Hooked on You

A spin-off of the horror game Dead by Daylight in which you date four of its killers on a tropical island, two of them men. It's much funnier than it has any right to be. Steam, $9.99, rated T.

What an otome game is

Otome (乙女) is Japanese for "maiden". You play a heroine, a cast of men want her attention, and each one has a route: a branch of the story you unlock by your choices, with its own good and bad endings. The fun is replaying to see them all.

The first was Koei's Angelique, on the Super Famicom in 1994, made by Ruby Party, a team Keiko Erikawa set up inside Koei to make games for women. Konami's Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side brought in a wave of new fans in 2002.

Dating sims are the wider category: any game where romance is the main mechanic, including ones where you play a man.

Plenty of men play them

The heroine is a viewpoint, not a gatekeeper. Otome games are one of the few places in mainstream games where male love interests are written to be wanted, with real arcs and real flaws, and plenty of queer men play them for exactly that. Others just play for the writing. AFP's reporting on Love and Deepspace in March 2025 put its male players at five to ten percent.

Where to play outside the US

• UK and Europe: everything above is on the Nintendo eShop, Steam, the App Store or Google Play.
• India: there's no Nintendo eShop for India, so the Switch-only games are hard to get. Steam sells the PC versions in rupees (Cupid Parasite is ₹1,349), and the three mobile games are on the Indian App Store and Google Play.
• Indonesia: no eShop either. The PC versions are on Steam in rupiah (Cupid Parasite is Rp 254,999) and the mobile games are on both app stores. Dream Daddy has a refused Indonesian rating on Steam.
• Russia: Nintendo stopped selling downloads there in May 2023, and Google Play billing has been paused since March 2022. Steam still sells Cupid Parasite, Bustafellows and Stardew Valley in roubles, but not Dream Daddy or Hooked on You.

Buying the official release is what keeps these games getting translated. Otome localisation is a small business, and publishers watch sales closely.

Questions people ask

What is the best otome game for beginners?

Cupid Parasite: a comedy, rated T, on Switch and Steam. On a phone, Tears of Themis or Mystic Messenger, both free.

Can men play otome games?

Yes. The heroine is fixed, but anyone can play her, and plenty of men do.

Are there dating sims with a male protagonist?

Yes. In Dream Daddy you play a dad you design, and every love interest is a man. In Stardew Valley your farmer can be any gender and can marry any of the bachelors.

Are there otome games with femboy love interests?

Not in a mainstream release yet. Some of the men above are pretty, vain or very well dressed, but none is written as a femboy. For femboy characters, try our femboy anime characters list.

Where we come in

An otome route is written for the heroine. We're building Pocket Femboy, a small cast of original femboys who remember you between conversations, have jobs and friends and routines that keep going while you're away, and text you first when something happens, the way Mystic Messenger did, except they're answering what you actually said. Jax, the first, is a record-shop punk with pink hair who makes you earn the friendly version of him. After launch, you'll be able to create a femboy of your own.

Pocket Femboy hasn't launched yet, so there's nothing to download today. It's 18+ at the door — that's about who we let in, not about what's inside — and there's no explicit content on any tier.

Coming soon to iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist and we'll let you know when they're ready to text you.

More reading

• Femboy video game characters: Astolfo, Kuja, Sylvando and more, ranked.
• Femboy anime characters, ranked: twenty-two of them, and where to watch.
• Femboy gamer: the games that let you dress your character however you like.