Love Conquers All games - A Christine Love thread

[FelixSH]

It's years since I played any of her visual novels, but today, I thought of them and decided to replay Analogue: A Hate Story. And Hate Plus, because why not. That's still two of my favourite sort-of dystopian stories.

Also, her new game Get in the Car, Loser is supposed to be coming out this summer.

A lesbian road trip RPG by the co-creator of Ladykiller in a Bind about fighting for love and justice in the face of indifference, and "discovering yourself," whatever the fuck that means.

It's also a JRPG. Looks fun and queer, I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Sprite]

I'm definitely a Love fan, and it's cool seeing her branch out. The new game looks like a small-scale RPG that's just story and battles, with character stats tied to equipment. I'm definitely a fan of short RPGs, so my interest is piqued. I have a hard time following what's going on in that video, though. It looks somewhat like Valkyrie Profile but without a combo element.

 

[Nich]

From following her posting about its development on Twitter, it seems like it takes more cues from Final Fantasy XIII than VP.

 

[FelixSH]

In the comments, there is talk about a stagger bar, so I assume we are seeing a strong influence from FF XIII here. It is confusing, but I'm sure it will be fun. I have sort-of infinite trust in Love as a game developer and writer.

I mean, I didn't get much out of Ladykiller in a Bind, but that's mainly because sex scenes immediately bore me to tears, in every situation. The writing and artytyle was still great. And I loved every other game of her that I played. Which excludes her Twine games, which I definitely need to correct.

 

[YangusKhan]

Get in the Car, Loser! is out now on Steam and itch. But a huge thing to note: it's...free!? As of this posting, there's a problem with Steam where it costs $0.20 and Christine Love is talking with Steam Support to get that straightened out, but on itch it's a "pay what you want" price.

Originally I wasn't really going to get this because I'm kind of put off by the art style, but for the price of "free" I think I can check it out.


EDIT: The Steam issue is already fixed.

 

[YangusKhan]

So I played through the tutorial tonight. The gameplay is very much a love letter to FFXIII, with a dash of combo systems from stuff like Valkyrie Profile.

The writing is... fine. I've never played her other games before, so I'm not exactly the target audience for this I don't think. But I also have some idiosyncratic opinions about indie RPGs that are pastiches of RPGs, and so far this is straddling the line of what I find funny vs eye-rolling, but also it was just the tutorial part so I imagine the writing is kind of front-loaded with that stuff.

 

[gorha]

I haven't played Christine Love's previous games because I just never feel like playing a visual novel when I'm at my computer, but a FFXIII inspired RPG is a much easier sell. I'll give this a shot.