Okay, yes, this game is cringey. No one is questioning that, lmao. It’s a gamer themed dating game based around real living people. You really don’t need to go much further than that to understand why everyone makes fun of it. But don’t worry, I’ll keep talking about it and make it all your problem too 🖤🖤🖤
First of all, I just want to say I realize that they clearly went into this game thinking this would be a funny joke of “hey, let’s make a game about ourselves.” “Yeah, hahaha you know what would be funny? If it were a dating game, you know how cheesy those can get.” “Oh, that’s perfect! We can totally poke fun at each other and the game genre at the same time!” And yes, there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. But then you actually sit down and play the game and realize you’re playing a high school dating simulator where you play as a high school girl who is interested in the other high school boys. Except they’re based on 30-year old men, still acting and looking like the 30-year old men they’re based off of, and the cherry on top is one eventually getting into a scandal about whether or not he was sexting with high school aged girls. So yeah, I’m going to find this game incredibly creepy. It’s like watching Grease, where all the high schoolers are so clearly adult men and women, but you have to sit and pretend they’re all 17. Except in addition to that, they’re all epic gamers, a few of which you can argue have some pretty questionable morals. (Though I won’t act like any of the actors in Grease didn’t either lol)
The game still has the qualities that dating visual novels have, and there’s a clear talent put into the UI and art. I don’t want the idea of the game being “cringe” to be anything involving the art or music department or anything like that, it's just when you decide to make a dating game about real people, even if it’s supposed to be a joke, it’s going to be freaking weird. It’s especially going to be weird when the game ends up focusing on specifically Normal Boots people. So bluntly put, that’s what I think about the game. It’s a weird and uncomfortable premise for a game, so as a result I think that the game is weird and uncomfortable.
The game ended amazingly for me though, with it crashing hours in: perfectly encapsulating the spirit of the whole experience.
First of all, I just want to say I realize that they clearly went into this game thinking this would be a funny joke of “hey, let’s make a game about ourselves.” “Yeah, hahaha you know what would be funny? If it were a dating game, you know how cheesy those can get.” “Oh, that’s perfect! We can totally poke fun at each other and the game genre at the same time!” And yes, there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. But then you actually sit down and play the game and realize you’re playing a high school dating simulator where you play as a high school girl who is interested in the other high school boys. Except they’re based on 30-year old men, still acting and looking like the 30-year old men they’re based off of, and the cherry on top is one eventually getting into a scandal about whether or not he was sexting with high school aged girls. So yeah, I’m going to find this game incredibly creepy. It’s like watching Grease, where all the high schoolers are so clearly adult men and women, but you have to sit and pretend they’re all 17. Except in addition to that, they’re all epic gamers, a few of which you can argue have some pretty questionable morals. (Though I won’t act like any of the actors in Grease didn’t either lol)
The game still has the qualities that dating visual novels have, and there’s a clear talent put into the UI and art. I don’t want the idea of the game being “cringe” to be anything involving the art or music department or anything like that, it's just when you decide to make a dating game about real people, even if it’s supposed to be a joke, it’s going to be freaking weird. It’s especially going to be weird when the game ends up focusing on specifically Normal Boots people. So bluntly put, that’s what I think about the game. It’s a weird and uncomfortable premise for a game, so as a result I think that the game is weird and uncomfortable.
The game ended amazingly for me though, with it crashing hours in: perfectly encapsulating the spirit of the whole experience.