For a kiss of cosmic horrors, MeinMMO demon Cortyn was ready to let you all die. It happened just like that and was worth every life.
You know by now that I don’t shy away from strange games. I like dark beings and myths with great cosmic threats in the style of C’thulhu from the Lovecraft universe. But a good (or funny) dating sim can also convince me.
When I saw the trailer for “Sucker for Love – First Date,” I knew that the game was calling out to me.
The premise is quite simple: The protagonist has a clear goal that he wants to achieve. He wants to summon a powerful being. A creature from the furthest corners of the cosmos. A “Great Old One” whose awakening would plunge the world into darkness and end all existence in a cacophony of horror. Once this being is summoned, he wants a kiss from it.
Yes, you heard correctly. He has no ambitions regarding special powers or any pacts to enrich himself. It should just be a kiss from the cosmic entity.
The Three Cosmic Monsters
Sucker for Love offers the possibility to summon three different cosmic beings, all of whom have voiced dialogues and different personalities with their own stories and plenty of madness.
Ln’eta is probably the closest thing to C’thulhu. A huge tentacled monster whose awakening means the end of reality. On one hand, she is quite cute and caring – on the other hand, a “Yandere” personality who does not tolerate when you meet other cosmic gods.
“The Golden King” Estir embodies the light from the planet Carcosa and acts like a majesty who simply demands that you serve her. She loves to poach followers from Ln’eta and has a penchant for perfectly performed theater productions and subservient slaves who read her every wish from her lips.
Nyanlatothep is the most powerful being of the Great Old Ones and appears in countless forms; for us in the form of an oversized cat being. In modern internet language, she is probably what one would call a “Dommy Mommy” and simultaneously the most sinister of these beings. But we affectionately call her “Aunt Nyan Nyan”.
To put it modestly: I loved every second with the three, even if I sometimes erased reality, humanity, or time for it. It was simply worth it.
Rituals for the Goddesses of the Cosmos
To satisfy Ln’eta and the other Great Old Ones, one must perform a series of rituals after their arrival.
The rituals and interactable objects are – besides the dialogues – the only gameplay element. It is essentially a visual novel that aims to tell a story with some branches.
Time and again, one must consult the book to see what kind of ritual is needed. Do you have to wear a special, occult mask? Is the room allowed to be lit? Do posters need to be removed from the wall? Do you need a ritual dagger? What is the formula that must be recited?
The rituals become increasingly complex and the tolerance for mistakes decreases. In the second chapter, a single mistake can already lead to “Game Over” – or result in the beloved tentacle monster deeming us unworthy and snuffing out the protagonist’s life lights.
And because a world-devouring monster is not enough, I naturally try to convince two of them in parallel, but make the mistake that they suddenly stand together in the room and want to have a “serious word” with me.
What sounds funny and is also funny at first has a clear horror component. Because while rituals are carried out to make our “lady of the heart” happy, not only does the world change, but so does the protagonist.
In the bathroom, you can wash your own face at any time and escape the illusion of madness for a few seconds. Your body is covered in blood, the skin has been pulled from your face, your eyes are gouged out or your entire lower jaw is severed. Somehow logical, after all, you usually had a dagger with you for most rituals to open yourself more and more to madness.
Those who have “Doki Doki Literature Club” know this kind of horror already. The actually cute, amusing game is interrupted by atrocities. A brief glimpse through the window reveals the screams of dying people as body parts rain from the sky and unspeakable terrors demand their tribute from the worst nightmares. It even features some quite dark jump scares and disturbing artworks.
But these brief moments of terror quickly fade away when Ln’eta, the Golden King, or Nyanlatothep demand the next offering from us, we get a little closer to our kiss, and give up our humanity a bit more.
The protagonist has, by the way, a foolproof method to find out if the person across from him is a cosmic monster. They simply have to try to pronounce the name “Worcestershire Sauce” correctly – and if they succeed, the case is clear. This is, after all, a loanword from the language of these Eldritch creatures. Why else would it be spelled that way?
Conclusion: A Wacky Visual Novel that Does Lovecraft Horror Justice
“Sucker for Love – First Date” surprised me quite a bit. After the trailer, I actually thought that the game was so trashy that you could only like it if you were into bad games. But that was not the case. The dialogues are surprisingly good and fresh. The humor is always quite spot-on, and some conversations have surprisingly deep themes and discuss some concepts of “reality” or “fear” that one can think about for quite a while.
Despite all the absurdity of wanting to kiss such an “Eldritch Horror”, the whole game is a pretty brilliant representation of these terrible creatures. When a cultist shows such fanaticism that he wants to be “loved” by these cosmic creatures, that would be quite a convincing variant of madness that he could experience.
Sucker for Love is not a parody of Lovecraftian horrors, but a pretty brilliant and detailed representation of these creatures in a slightly different context.
With a playtime between 3 and 5 hours, I was completely satisfied for the price of 8.19 Euros and can only recommend this strange experience to everyone. The game currently has 98% positive reviews – so people agree. However, English proficiency is necessary – as there is unfortunately no German version of the game.
And now please excuse me again. For Ln’eta I have to shed my human shell and exchange my arms for tentacles. Then writing will get a bit difficult.
In this sense:
Ln’eta ahf’ art I’ mgepkadishtu nilgh’ri.
