Meet and date nine different ghosts in a short but humorous visual novel that deals with life, death, and the after-life.
Speed Dating for Ghosts
Copychaser Games
Price: $9.99
Platforms: PC
MonsterVine was provided with a PC code for review.
You can find visual novels that let you date just about anything, and Speed Dating for Ghosts applies that concept to the afterlife. As a lonely ghost, you attend a speed dating session that lets you pick one of three rooms, meet three ghosts inside, and then choose a ghost to go on a date with.
Speed Dating for Ghosts is presented like a visual novel, although a minimalistic one with plain backgrounds and black-and-white character designs, which has its own sort of charm. There is some narration, but it mainly focuses on dialogue from the ghosts. You pick your dialogue from the options presented, and your dialogue choices determine what happens next. If you annoy a ghost enough, they’ll refuse to go on a date with you, although it isn’t difficult to pick the right options.
Once your date begins, you’ll have further dialogue options. These have a bigger impact, changing the direction of the date or altering that story’s ending, from choosing plays in a football game to pulling off a heist. This makes the dates pretty entertaining. Afterwards, you can still pick one of the other dates, and you can always visit the remaining rooms, which makes it possible to date every ghost in a single playthrough.
Each ghost has a unique personality, and their stories are enjoyable. Some are funny, some are sentimental, and a couple get rather dark. All of the stories are standalone, and aside from one ghost who appears in another’s date, the characters rarely interact. This is a bit disappointing, since a game with such a charming cast seems perfect for entertaining banter.
This ties into the biggest flaw with Speed Dating for Ghosts, which is how short it is. Playing through every date and replaying some for additional dialogue took me about two hours. With nine main ghosts to date (plus one bonus ghost), that doesn’t give you a lot of time with each character. Speed dating or not, it’s hard to form an attachment to characters when their stories are over so soon.
The Final Word
Speed Dating for Ghosts is a cute game with some genuinely enjoyable moments, but its length is its biggest drawback. Two hours isn’t necessarily bad for a simple visual novel – until you divide that time among several stories that never intersect. If you like quirky characters and situations, you might have fun with it, but just keep in mind that when they say “speed dating,” they aren’t joking.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 3 out of 5 – Average
