Love Surge!

I really enjoyed this game's music, visuals, and narrative, but I felt it was lacking in it's underlying game design. It's cute and energetic and considering it's price range, that's all it really needs to be in my opinion. Outside of general bugs (at one point I all of my progress on Noki got entirely reset back to the first date T-T ) I had four major criticisms of the game: The first being the overworld section felt kind of pointless. There's a date and time-of-day mechanic like in the Persona series, but they don't really seem to matter to what I'm doing at all. There are no milestones to hit or deadlines that I need to scrape by, so it offers me no real pressure, which also makes the stress bar in the overworld a little pointless too. Because I have no time constraints, I have no reason to ever need to worry about the stress bar because I can just spend as much time as I want putting it down in the arcade before I go on a date. The same goes for building stats in the overworld too, the only thing stopping me from just grinding them up for 2 hours to max is that watching the screen transition up to 5 million times would be *extremely* tedious. I really enjoyed the narrative …

Better than Date Everything, makes more sense, less chaotic. I've not played the whole game, and it's not my usual kind of game, but for those who dig this kind of game... I think you might dig it.

The main character of this visual novel is a young technology student who is testing a new augmented reality program that takes the form of everyday objects. You get to experience three of them: a phone, a coffee maker, and a thermostat. Each one appears as a girl, complete with her own name and personality quirks. Things quickly take a strange turn when a lightning bolt strikes the program and somehow turns them into real girls. That does not stop the experiment. You still need to see how they interact with humans, which means going on dates and having conversations with them. These interactions play out through a card based mini game with fairly simple rules. You choose one of four conversational topics, each with a number that acts as your goal. Then you play cards from your hand onto the card in the middle. Each card has one of four suits and a number. You can play any card that matches either the suit or the number of the middle card. You are not limited to a single move, so you can place as many valid cards as possible in one turn. When you run out of moves, you end the turn and draw new cards from the deck, letting you continue building your sequence. Sometimes your hand …

Okay, so, listen, there isn't a neutral option. I've flipped the switch to positive on my review because the game is on track enough to do what it sets out to do, and because I like to support an indie from time to time. My curator was sent a copy 9 days before release, and there's been a few patches since my initial contact and my zesty feedback. Just to respect your time, whether you should get this game or not is based around you having an unserviced need to romanticize your appliances. To be direct with you, reader, much as I enjoy coffee, I'm not *into* coffee. You with me? And if you are into coffee (or cellphones or thermostats), you may still exit unfulfilled unless your need is purely emotional. I'm not judging, even if I don't understand it. There's a lot of grinding to be done in this game. You'll grind by clicking on locations on the map, and then clicking through pointless randomly-generated dialogues, while filling up a "stress" meter that you can empty by clicking on another place and clicking through randomly-generated dialogue. It's not compelling gameplay, honestly. Eventually you'll decide to go on a date with your appliance of choice. You'll woo her …