Child raising simulator Princess Maker 3 is coming to Switch on December 23, and—no, wait, come back! I promise it’s cool.




In Princess Maker 3, you schedule out your daughter’s time between various school and work activities to raise her skills. You can also take her on adventures, which are basic RPG sequences where your daughter can explore and fight monsters. After playing a lot of its predecessor, I’m excited to spend more time with it.

Back in the day, I discovered that anime studio Gainax had once made a game, Princess Maker 2, that was almost-but-not-quite released in the United States. I was able to download a rom of it and played it almost nonstop. Something about raising a daughter, taking her adventuring, and the number of endings for her charmed me. This was a game where you could raise a child who would become the queen of hell. What’s not to like? As implied by the number 2, Princess Maker 2 is also part of a series, most of which is now available on Steam, though the sketchy translation makes the games harder to enjoy.


While I didn’t play Princess Maker 3 as much as 2, in many ways it’s a better, more varied game. That’s why I’m excited to grab it for Switch when it comes out.

According to this trailer, a few of the issues with the Steam release have also been corrected. It’s got an easier-to-read font, and the text wrapping no longer cut off words in the middle. I’m crossing my fingers for a more polished translation, but this game is too much of a gem to pass up either way.

