After my failures with the past two games I played, I wanted something that was simple, sweet, and a palate cleanser. I have hundreds if not thousands of games in my backlog, and I just watched the Wholesome Games Direct to put half-a-dozen games onto my Wishlist (and download the demos). I played a few of the demos, and then decided to try out a game I bought after watching last year’s Wholesome Games Direct (at least I think that’s where I saw it). It’s amusing to me that my two genre of games are cozy games and FromSoft games. Well, yes, there are some roguelite/likes, but those are few and farw between.
This game is a dating sim, which is very much not my jam. I’ve played one I really enjoyed (Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator (Game Grumps)) and one I mostly enjoyed (Boyfriend Dungeon (Kitfox Games)), but that’s about it. In this one, though, you are a ghost who is matchmaking residents in a house rather than dating people/entities yourself. The mechanics are simple, and I think you can match anyone with each other (you can’t make a thruple, sadly, though I did try), and I finished one run in 3 hours. There are twelve residents, and you start out with four in your house.
You steal items in the house and either give them to a resident in the name of another resident or sell it online to make money. By the way, the online stuff is hilarious. I think the website where you buy/sell is Eekbay or something like that (it’s actually eep!Bay). Then there’s Deaddit, too, in which a bunch of ghosts talk about what’s happening in the game as if it were real, and another option you can unlock in which you write scam emails for money.
By the way, one thing I appreciate about the game is that in that mini-game (where you write scam emails for money), the way you write it is a bit Mad Libs. There are three blanks, and for each one, you have to choose a word or phrase. Every option is accompanied by a colored shape, and you have to matchh up all three colored shapes. When I first played it, the options were whizzing by at a rate that I had no chance of doing correctly. In options, I could slow it down to an almost-literal crawl, which is what I did.
You can match any resident with any other resident. Meaning, you could do more than one romance at a time. But, I’m assuming that you can’t have more than one relationship with the same person go to five stars.
Why did I buy the game? I liked the artstyle and how bright and colorful it was. The launch trailer is included above. It had really good vibes, and if I’m going to be really honest, it’s because the founder/lead dev is an Asian American woman, most of the team is Asian, and one of the residents is a cat named Mina.
That’s it. That’s why I bought the game, and I am glad I did. It’s such a heartwarming game, and one thing I appreciate is that it doesn’t try to do too much or go too far. They aren’t going for spectacle or being overly-ambitious. They have a vision of what they want to do, and they do it capably.
It’s a bit more twee than is my usual sttyle (and more overt, honestly), but strangely, I don’t mind. Again, I don’t know if it’s because I’m coming off two games that just drained the fuck out of me, but I really appreciate the simplicity of this game.
It’s funny because I knew who I wanted to pair up almost right away. There were a few characters I didn’t really want to pair with anyone, but in general, I had the couples pegged from the very start. Once they reached 5 stars, you had the choice to move them out (presumably so they could live in their own abode together and to allow other residents to move in).
It’s a charming game that touched me. It’s light, yes, but I was more than ready for slight. I got credits to role and went into NG+, but I don’t know if I want to see all 66(?) endings. Supposedly, that’s how many there are. I think I read that and that you have to play through 11 times in order to see all the endings. Oh, and in looking up the achievements, you can max out two different relationships with the same resident (with two other different residents) at the same time. Which might be enough to make me play NG+ until I do that.
This game proves that you don’t have to be everything to everyone. This is a self-contained game that knows what it’s trying to portray. They do it well and with such joy, I could not help but smile as I played.
I just played a bunch more. I have four achievements left, so I might as well do that, right? I am grateful that seeing every ending isn’t part of it (meaning I don’t have to make them all couple up). It’s interesting because in the first run, I just did whatever and ended up with some interesting pairings. Now, I’m deliberately trying to get all the achievements, which means doing things in a very specific way. I messed things up for one of the achievements, which means I have to do another playthrough. I’m not mad about it because it was on me, but I’m aggravated.
Of the four achievements I have left, this is the most tedious one by far. I can’t help but think how easy it was to plat Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla Games), and even then, it was a bit of a pain in the ass to find all the letters in a bottle.
In this one, though, the biggest ‘why the fuck was that included’ achievement is having to find all the hearted qualities of each resident. Meaning, there is a list of roughly twenty traits including lazy, artistic, complex, and more. You have to discern the positive traits of each resident (12? I think?), which is tedious. At first, it’s easy because you just give residents gifts from other residents and make them do chores. Each gift is targeted to two or three traits as are each of the chores.
At some point, though, you have to actually just methodically eliminate each trait one by one for each resident. Which is not fun at all.
More tomorrow. I’m done for now.