LoveSick Darlings
LoveSick Darlings is a grounded, realistic, emotional story about a close group of friends at school growing up and trying to understand their own feelings - as well as the feelings of those around them. You play as Syd, a sixteen-year old boy who goes to Foster Hill High - a school in a quiet Australian town. The school year is coming to a close and Syd has to decide whether he confesses his feelings to his crush - all this while juggling the several other friendships and potential love interests in his life.
Such as Maisy, the wild and outgoing girl who lives on the same street as Syd and calls him her “best friend.”
Jayda, the sweet and awkward artsy weeb who loves anime and video games and thinks the world of Syd.
And of course the cool and intellectual Steph, who loves books and music… and who happens to be the person that Syd has been crushing on all year.
Spend time with these characters in a close-knit friendship group over the last four weeks of school, developing your friendships potentially into something more! But be careful, each decision you make can affect the entire friendship group. Spend too much time with one character, and another may get jealous. Or say something mean to someone, and someone else may think less of you for it. Or alternatively: maybe if you say something mean, another character might like you more for it! LoveSick Darlings is packed with group conversations where you get to know characters by watching how they interact with others as well as yourself.
Determine the fate of Syd and all his friends as you help him make some of the hardest decisions in his life. Choose whether to confess your feelings, accept or deny the feelings of others, sabotage or repair broken friendships, and get to know Syd’s friends in a way that he never did before. Enjoy these last few weeks of the school year while they last, and make your limited time count to the fullest!
And ultimately decide: who will you ask out to the school dance?
Game Features:
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An engaging and emotional story rooted in reality and real relationships
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Gorgeous original sprite artwork
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Romance multiple different characters
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Characters with agency and who react in natural ways to your decisions, giving them more impact
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Week and day system where you choose how you spend your limited free time!
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Original soundtrack with 25+ songs
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30+ CG artworks
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Develop close relationships bit-by-bit with each character as you spend more and more time with them!
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No set “routes.” The game seamlessly flows between events and scenarios based off of your decisions in a natural way
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Multiple unique outfits for each heroine
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Highly customized playthroughs featuring dozens of variables that make each “ending” unique
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15 hours of gameplay per run - with dozens more hours in alternate endings and scenarios!
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Comprehensive “Player Review” system that assesses your relationships at the end of each play-through! It also tells you what each character thinks of you by the end, how to get other results, and maybe even hints at a few secrets!
And not to mention an increible cast of artists and creatives working on this game!
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Ippers: Original character design and sprite artist. They’ve done so much work for this game. You will notice their distinct style has given LoveSick Darlings its completely unique visual identity. This game simply wouldn’t be here without them.
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Phiphi: CG artist. Phi has done a great job of showing the characters in LoveSick Darlings in all kinds of situations and bringing their personalities to life in their artwork.
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Edhelsen: Colouring. They’re responsible for all the vibrant colours and little touches you can see on the sprites for LoveSick Darlings. Their work is amazing, and they’re an amazing person too.
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Maddy: UI and misc asset artist. She did several UI and text box elements. Made the logo, and did original art for sections of the story and various icons!
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Awan: Promotional artist. Has done a ton of additional promotional art for LoveSick Darlings!
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Tim Reichert: The offiicial composer for LoveSick Darlings and countless other VN hits!
Voice Actors:
LoveSick Darlings also features an all-Australian all-star voice cast! This game features partial voice acting from all these talents.
Voice of Maisy Anderson: Aimee Smith. The energy and passion Aimee brings to a character as big as Maisy is unmatched!
Voice of Jayda Silvestri: Emily Goeman. Her performance as Jayda is filled with so much love and care.
Voice of Stephanie Azoulai: Sarah Kennedy . The cool and kind Steph comes to life with Sarah’s wonderful and considered take on her troubled character.
Voice of Sydney Ivankovic: Alec Shea. Last but not least, Alec brings it home voicing our young and hesitant hero.
… Oh, um, and also me I guess! I am the writer, director, producer, and pretty much everything else you can think of for this game!
NOTE:
The game is still in production you encounter any bugs or issues in the demo at all, let me know ASAP. Contact me over Twitter (@LoveSickDarling) or via Steam, and I will make sure that it gets fixed :)
Read More: Best Crowdfunded Choices Matter Games.
Epitasis
At this point I cannot recommend this game.. It’s beautiful but very strangely organized. There are also a number of technical problems, which you might or might not encounter. They have brought me to a point where the game is essentially unplayable. Your experience might be different.
Totally mind boggling what many reviewers have said about playing the game in two to four or more hours. I have explored and struggled and experienced many, many unnecessary crashes at the middle stage of the game. Lately whenever I click on a glowing object, the cursor gets stuck. There seem to be two different pointers, one belonging to the mouse, one thrown out by the game. Often in trying to disengage from the stuck point, the game becomes unplayable. Swings from high to low screen resolution and often crashes (“minimizes”) down to the taskbar icon. Generally the position is “saved,” but what saved means is open to debate.
– Real player with 53.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Crowdfunded Open World Games.
Summary: Loved the aesthetics, music, and gameplay, puzzles were trivially easy, don’t get it if you want any challenge.
This is Talos Principle for kiddos. It uses a similar world system as Talos, where you can explore a beautiful world and 2-3 puzzles are contained within each world. Sometimes the puzzles overlap which is cool. The way the game uses colors is really fascinating and advanced, so if you’re after effects and aesthetics, you’ll love the hell out of that aspect of this game. There’s also dynamic weather! This works for the beauty of the game but can make navigating a bit confusing because levels at certain times of day do not look anything like they do at other times of the day. Loved the color and the natural design, simplistic but pretty. The soundtrack is amazing as well, it really added to the whole experience and is one of the better ambient game soundtracks I’ve heard.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game