Sandbox

The sandbox is a type of simulation where, instead of following uninterrupted storyline, the player needs to entertain himself on his own in a "open world" map - similar to "playing in a sandbox". Usually player should decide on his own what to do next, where to go, what events to do in what order.

Main characteristics of the genre are a calendar (i.e. time management), map movement, various resources and statistics you need to gather and level up, repeatable events which often can have various upgrades/continuations depending on how many times you did them before, new unlockable events depending on various conditions etc.

A key difference from pure Dating Simulation or Raising Simulation games is that the sandbox is not necessarily about dates/romance, and various parameters you need to level up are not focused exclusively on a protagonist or on other characters, though elements of those genres may be present. The most common example are various corruption games.

While VNs with sandbox elements are allowed in the database, sandboxes with brief VN elements are not.

VNs such as Insexual Awakening are a good example of that genre.