Thank you Ratalaika Games for sending us a review code!

LoveChoice arrived in Steam’s Early Access in 2018. It currently sells for $1.99 and has overwhelmingly positive reviews there. According to the developers, the game will remain in Early Access for a while longer despite being completed due to legal reasons. Console versions arrived this year (2021) and the price tag of those versions is $4.99.

Upon launching the game, you’ll see that there are three stories to complete: Love-Game, Love-Distance, and Love-Detective. In order to play the later stories you’ll have to experience two endings of the previous story. The stories are pretty quick and if you’re good or using a walkthrough, you can complete this game in about an hour.

Like many visual novel games, you’ll get to select dialog responses to progress the story. However, if you rely on the dialog choices only, you will end up with a broken heart. Sometimes you’ll have to remain silent or interact with the character directly and ignore the dialog prompts altogether. If you’re not sure of what to do, I found a handy walkthrough (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1559163168) with all of the correct responses.

There are some mini-games that you’ll have to do well on in order to make a dinner date go well without a hitch. Thankfully, once you fully complete the mini-game you can skip it for future play-throughs.

The main takeaway I got from playing this game was to think outside of the box and don’t rely on the dialog choices in front of you as a response. For example, if you see your date’s hand, try dragging yours to theirs as a response.

Since these stories are rather short, I don’t want to spoil too much of this game. All of the stories involve a boy and a girl. Love – Game involves a couple that meets at a game jam. Love-Distance is about a childhood couple that can endure a long-distance relationship if you make the right decisions. The last story, Love-Detective deals with a married couple where the wife gets suspicious after seeing a lady calling her husband’s phone. To discover her husband's intentions the wife will have to look for clues around the house.

For the most part, this game is pretty clean. There is one scene where the girl leaves a bunch of wrappers and food items on the floor. The boy can respond by walking away or saying “Oh G-d I guess I have to do it all myself”. In this same story the couple is living together without being married.

The visuals are charming, and I like the art style. The controls can utilize the touch screen or Joy-con buttons. I wound up using both methods while playing. The piano background is well done and plays into the mood of the stories nicely. During arguments, it will get frantic and in sad spots it becomes soothing.

If you enjoy dating simulation games or romantic visual novels, LoveChoice is worth picking up. The Steam version is the cheapest available. However if you want to play on the go, the Switch version is ideal.