As the game we have chosen is a dating sim, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look into other dating sims of varying themes and quality. To keep track of my thoughts, opinions, and criticisms of the games, I made notes whilst I was playing (includes a short description of the game, features and the estimated time it took me to finish). All these games I have showcased are available on Itch!
By looking at these games, I hope to expand my knowledge of narrative design. As different games require different language structures, I have looked at different genres of dating simulators to broaden my perspective of how the art of conversation can be used to engage the player.
I have applied what I have learnt in this section to my narrative design development.
Ninefold Promise – Flaming hot lemon
I started off with my research with a game made in 1 month from a game jam!
Thoughts:
My initial thought when I looked at this game was, how pretty the colour palette is. Personally, I am someone who finds candy-like or dream-like colour palettes, very aesthetically pleasing, which what made me download it and have a try in the first place! The use of pinks, blues, and purples weren’t just for the sake of using them because they’re a good combination of colours. As the game has some supernatural elements such as the mythical 9 tailed fox, it reinforces the dream-like themes. Another thing that I liked was the love interest, he is very charming and what most women would consider a green flag. But because he was so perfect, I wanted to try provoke him as much as possible to see if anything would change, which only changed the story minorly. I also liked the voice acting in the game! It made the game feel slightly more alive. When I was done with the game, I somehow got the good ending, despite being the worst girlfriend to this man.
Criticisms:
Although I do think that adding the time dial is a great attention to detail, it doesn’t really provide much to the story (the route I played didn’t have much use for it). The music also had way too many crescendos, to the point where it felt like something bad was going to happen, it felt creepy and times, even though I was just talking to the boyfriend. The assets felt like they weren’t cohesive enough, in the living room, it felt quite empty and there would be close up scenes of the boyfriend, however it’s obvious that a different artist has drawn it due to the style and colours.
Screenshots from my gameplay:
TOUCH STARVED (demo) – Red Spring Studio
This game is a complete contrast from the previous game, from aesthetics to the premise. I don’t usually engage in dark romance dating sims, so I thought that this would be a great opportunity to check out what I’m missing.
Thoughts:
When I was loading up the screen and was greeted with suspenseful music and SFX, a small detail, but it got me hyped up for what I was getting myself into. When I created a new game, I was immediately captivated by the visual style, although the characters are extremely detailed, the backgrounds don’t have intricate line works or shading, which makes the character you’re talking to, stand out more. The game uses a lot of greens which indicated the player is in a safe area or a place with lots of foliage, to compliment this, they also use red to show that the player is in some sort of peril or to show that the player is in a cosy environment. And the art style is absolutely beautiful, I like how each character is consistently drawn, even if they’re not in their idles. All 5 characters are well written and fleshed out. They’re all distinguishable from their personalities to their physical appearance, you can also tell how each character will act based on their appearance (big well done to the character designer, they did an AMAZING job with conveying this). Each character also seems to have their own theme song that plays when you first meet them, a great way to distinguish them as well! I had so much fun playing this demo!
Criticisms:
This feature’s probably redundant as I was playing the demo, but when you start the game and customise your character with the name, pronouns, and what class/race you are, I don’t see how the class/race affects the gameplay that much. Besides that, this game was very enjoyable.
Screenshots of my gameplay:
This is the part where the game got really interesting for me and I thought about my options thoroughly, I chose Kuras (4th guy) in the end as I liked his character the most and his secretive side. Just as I thought the game was going to get good, the demo stopped and my jaw was floored.
My SWEET! Housemate (demo) – Sourmilk, Ghost-realms
Now taking a break from dark romance and heart warming romance, I wanted to try a different genre of dating sim. This time, I wanted to try a comedy dating sim. Initially, I was attracted to this game’s advertising of its intractability. I also noticed that this game was made on Ren’Py, which is the engine that we will be using for our game!
Thoughts:
To start off, I want to point out how unique the art is in comparison to the games I have played, especially the background. In the majority of games, you expect the background to be fully detailed. In this game, the artist uses halftones to contrast the character in front and it’s in one solid colour. The artists use brightness to differentiate objects. Another aspect I like from this game is the customisation scene, as you apply for a house, it makes you put in your information on the application form and I thought it was a nice detail to add. I also like how the game uses computer noises to make the character seem like they’re speaking. In terms of narrative, I loved every bit of it. There was a bit of humour in most sentences which contrasted the overall theme of the game. The unique feature in this game is the interactivity, although there was only one instance through my game play, I can tell in the full version, there will be much more to interact with.
Criticisms:
No criticisms! I thoroughly enjoyed this gameplay!
Screenshots of gameplay:
