By Boys and For Boys

For most of their history, it felt like there were no games for girls. Video games seemed to be designed by boys and felt like they were meant to be played by boys.

It didn’t help that games were mainly about the sort of things little boys like to imagine —fighting, usually. Often involving guns. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but games are a huge form of entertainment now, so it’s only natural that there should be more to them than that.

The Ladies Arrive

Sure enough, things have begun to change recently. More and more girls have got involved with gaming and the industry — recognizing a massive, untapped market — has been keen to let them.

Exactly when did girls start to get in on the action? The truth is they’ve always been there. Polling by the industry shows that girls make up roughly half of the people who play games, even if not many of them identify themselves as “gamers”.

All Games Are For Girls but Some Are More For Girls Than Others

What girls like and appreciate is a topic of great mystery, especially for mostly-male game designers! Many of the most obvious examples of girl-oriented games are simply adaptations of girl-oriented toys: Barbie Horse Adventures and Detective Barbie being two great examples. Generally, there are plenty of games that try to appeal to the female of the species by focusing on traditionally “feminine” concerns such as clothes, make-up and childcare.

Something Other Than Conflict

Of course, we’re generalizing here! There’s no reason that girls can’t play any of the games available in any section of the GamePix site, just as there’s no reason that boys can’t play any of the games listed in this section.

If you peel back the obviously feminine presentation of most “games for girls”, you’d find their real appeal lies mostly in the sort of activity they offer, rather than the specifics of that activity. Women tend to choose games of a different sort to men. Soccer management games and transport simulators requiring hours and hours of obsessing over details are mostly played by men. Women, on the whole, tend to prefer more casual puzzle games and story-driven RPGs. These are games about creation, cooperation and intrigue, not conflict, competition and challenge.

Increasingly, the games industry is realizing the market for this sort of “cozy game” — games that are less like competitions and more like experiences. You could say that there are a lot of people playing “games for girls” now, and they’re not all girls!

GamePix’s Collection of Games For Girls

This section represents something of an island of tranquility amid a sea of testosterone. Many of the games here may have girly themes but all of them are slightly less frantic than a lot of the more typically male-oriented games. No-one in the games listed here is about to be shot, or eaten by a bear or run over by a tank. Instead, they’ll be planning and choosing, creating and growing.

There is a huge range of games to choose from here;

Dress-up games that give you the chance to dress your character up in a wide variety of ways, using a vast selection of skirts, dresses, tops and pants. With so many items available there are billions of combinations — and that’s before we even get to hair and accessories. Games of this sort let your imagination run wild!
In a related vein we have fashion games where the models you’re dressing up are actually human-shaped giant cats;
Some games have you preparing for a day at the beach, working out what to bring with limited space
In Geisha Make-Up and Dress-Up, you make up Jun Ji-Hyun, one of South Korea’s most famous and glamorous actresses. As a replacement stylist called in at short notice it’s up to you to make sure that Ji-Hyun comes out of the dressing room looking spectacular!
In Panda Hair-do, you’re taking care of hair and outfits for a girl looking after the pandas at the local zoo. In real life, caring for an enormous mammal who lounges around eating bamboo all day might not be a job that requires a great deal of glamor — but in this game the panda-keeper wants to look her best!
There are more traditional puzzlers which come with skins designed to appeal to girls. In Calming Lia, you’ll have to clear a traditional match-3 board of rotating fruits — but you’ll be doing it for a girl called Lia and her teddy-bear, Bao. As a bonus, this game comes with soothing music and graphics, making it a great way to unwind when you’re not hard at work.
Then there’s Beauty Cat Salon, another cat game, except this time they’re normal-sized. The objective is to give the cat a quick haircut. The only problem in the owner of the cat who doesn’t want you to!
Many of our games for girls are about royalty. In Your Queen Destiny, players must train to become a monarch. In Princess Curse, players must cure a monarch who’s been turned to stone.
Some games take subjects that are usually thought of as “for boys” and use them to show that girls can do anything! Try Monster Truck Repairing if you think Games for Girls are all about tea-cups and nice dresses!

All of our games for girls are free browser games, meaning they work on any device, without the need for you to install or update anything, ever. And because they’re totally free to play, you can try as many as you like at no cost at all. Try a game for girls today. You might surprise yourself!

FAQs

What games should a girl play?

Whatever games she wants! While gaming can sometimes not feel like a form of entertainment that is trying to entertain girls and women, we know from studies that there are an awful lot of girls and women out there playing games! They might not call themselves “gamers” and they might not trash talk on the mic, but they’re a huge part of gaming and they play everything — as they “should”!

What is the coolest game for girls?

The great irony of cool is that it’s not a thing you become by trying hard. The coolest people are always those that follow their own path, confident in their tastes and happy to like what they like. So the answer to this is probably the same for girls and boys — the coolest game for you is the one you love the most and play the best.

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