Our Life: Beginning and Always

Our Life is an amazing game with a ton of customization, and believable relationship growth! Very few games can make me cry, let alone cry from happiness , so this is proof of how well-written this game is.

Cove is very close to my heart, I played every variation of this game (except for a full-indifference, I just can't handle him not liking me whoops..) He really feels like an actual person and not a collection of tropes like other dating simulators

Cove isn't the only well-written character here, I also quite like the MC's Sister, Lizzie! I didn't really like her in the Childhood stages, she seemed mean for no reason, but like cove, with time I learned that there are many aspects of her! I especially loved the confrontation about her identity being adopted in the Teenage stage, it's nice to see parts of the game where the MC develops their relationship with someone other than their love interest, and I also think the decision to make both MC and Lizzie adopted is very smart; most dating sims that allow for MC customization dont give them family members, and vice versa so this is a good way to get around it.

I haven't played the DLC, so I have no opnions on Baxter or Derek in a romantic sense, but through the view of Cove's route. Derek was pretty cute and I loved his friendship with Cove and MC, I do find it a little strange that he still makes the promise with MC in crush routes, since he's aware of Cove's feelings by that point. I don't really have any thoughts on Baxter, he doesn't appear much in the free content.

Dweller's Empty Path

Dweller's Empty Path is a cute short gameboy-style rpgmaker game! It was created by Temmie Cheng , which you may know for their work on Undertale, Deltarune, or Soul Beacon!

This is the sequel to Escaped Chasm! There are way more characters and interactions in this one than Escaped Chasm (obviously because yiko isn't a recluse) and the character designs for everyone are very pretty and unique! Some of them even affected my own character designs

This is a very small thing but my favourite thing about this game (other than the cute interactions and illustrations) are the background rpg party characters! I thought it was pretty funny and I hope we see more of them

The story still leaves us some unanswered questions about the world, so I hope we get to see more of it in Temmie's next project! Expect the rating to change if that happens

Witches x Warlocks

Another incredible underrated game! the gameplay is fun, the character interactions are funny and the halloween theme is adorable! it has plenty of customization, too

You play as a witch with a passion for matchmaking, and all the love interests are different types of monsters, 2 male, 1 female and one nonbinary!

I didn't play ALL the routes, just Zero and Damion, and I really loved both! Damion especially! spoilers: I feel like usually frankenstein-inspired characters have insecurities over not being "real humans" or about their general naivity compared to actual humans. I feel like diving into their thoughts into being made up of like a hundred different parts of other people was pretty unique! It's kind of a ship of theseaus sort of thing

Escaped Chasm

Escaped Chasm is a pretty sweet and short psychological horror rpgmaker game! It was created by Temmie Cheng , which you may know for their work on Undertale, Deltarune, and Dweller's Empty Path!

I played this the day it came out, actually! It was the prequel to Dweller's Empty Path, but many of us that played it didn't know that at the time lol :p

The style is really adorable and the animations were just gorgeous, and the overall story seems pretty intriguing however short it was. It does leave us with many unanswered questions that not even DEP answers sadly, but I feel like we'll learn about this world and its inhabitance, and whatever happened to the MC's parents soon enough if Temmie creates more games! When that happens, look forward to the rating here potentially changing