Today I logged in at ~6ish after work, as Ryoko in the morning told me she had club activities and would be home then. Our "convo" of the day was me knocking on her door, her saying "look buddy I am studying, is this important?", me going...no not really, and being shoo'd off. So I turned off the game because there was nothing else to do.

A few days before, I also logged in after work, only to get a phone call (on the land line, which I was teleported in front of) from Ryoko telling me she forgot about a friend's party after school so she wouldn't be home until 9. But she would see me then! So I...turned off the game, now with the obligation to turn it back on ~3 hours later.

This is, of course, insane. But! I did log back in at 9. And Ryoko was there at the front door, with her friend who was dropping her off. She was stressed since she wasn't sure if she was allowed to just shift plans like that and we hadn't discussed it yet:

So we talked it out. And today I logged in a few hours later, and Ryoko was done studying - we chatted about her English lessons, career stuff, etc.

When you look past the bullshit, the realism really works, in a way that is almost impossible to do today. The way the game is just openly hostile to your attempts to bend it to your will are, yeah, how real people function. Her personality too matches the tone - she in fact a flawed, "normal" person with her own stuff going on, even if ofc there is some moe-inspired sanding of the edges. And the "story" it is telling - slice of life anecdotes and the day-to-day frictions of living together with a normal girl - would completely fall apart into boredom as something you sat down and played for 20 hours straight. When it is someone you talk to for ~10 minutes each day, though, it is rationed out in doses you can handle.

And the time gaps really do create spaces for affection to fill! I am, of course, doing this for my weird meta 90's-otaku research motivations, but within that framework I can buy what this game is selling; I wanna hear what she says next, precisely because I can't right now.

Today this game would clearly be a mobile game, right? You would log in each day, do your "convo" daily, get some kind of log-in bonus, maybe do a decorating or outfit making minigame. And it would be better, to be clear, in a lot of ways? Games are better now on average. But here, all of that smoothing out would shatter the simulacra - real people don't give you bonus rewards for a log-in streak, or are available at your beck and call for a convo. Even being on the phone - being in your pocket - detracts from the illusion. Ryoko lives in a specific place. My desktop PC, sure, but still - if I wanna talk to her, I have to go there. Her home is manifested, fullscreened, nothing else going on. And the only reward for talking to her is that I got to talk to her.

Because today you have played far, far easier games to interface with, almost everyone would drop this immediately, and as such it would simply not be made. But since back then there wasn't that same cultural expectation, this game could be made and somewhat succeed. Temporal specificity seeps out of every low-render polygon in the house in an infinitely charming way.

It isn't all charm though! While some of the game's hostile inconvenience is load-bearing realism, not all of it is. I mentioned in my initial post that you walk around the house (aimlessly) to trigger events? That is true...like 3 times. 99% of the time when you log in the events auto-trigger, and then when they are done walking around gives you absolutely nothing because Ryoko has retreated to her room. The only physical mechanic of the game, the entire "setting", is actually virtually pointless. Something you only learn by playing - it tricks you into thinking this will be relevant, and then it isn't (except when it is, 1% of the time, after you have learned to stop bothering - what fun!). Why was walking even included?? For the "simulacra", yes, so the house feels lived in - but trust me you can't make this minimalist mind prison feel homey:

Certainly not when walking into my own bedroom results into empty nothingness every single time.

You also run headlong into the fact that while Ryoko feels real, you don't. You have a distinct personality, but no life around it - you are trapped in the house, no job, no school, waiting for her to return. The idea, of course, is that you aren't trapped - you are you. You go to work or w/e each day, and come home and say hi to your new roommate. Conceptually neat, sure, but since Ryoko isn't a moe-blob she needs to have actual convos with an actually-written person, and that person as written is too distinct to be you. And particularly when you are told to log off and log back in 3 hours later, the idea will inexorably take over that the protagonist just...sits there. Waiting. Starting at the staccato ombré of faux-voxel light beams reflecting off a beige wall until Ryoko deigns to notice you again. It is unsettling, precisely because the game tries so hard to make this place feel like home.

I feel like a game designer could take a meat cleaver to this game, add some mechanics, strip away some others, streamline the experience, etc, and make a truly intriguing game. Obviously not something that will ever happen to an orphaned IP like this in the year 2025! It is sadness nonetheless though, because there really is something uniquely neat at the core here. Gotta find the bankrupt remains of Datam Polystar and ask about a remake, clearly.

It's sort of an interesting inversion actually -- dateable moeblob game characters only "exist" in a confined space, but in this game, *your character*, the PoV character, is the one who exists for Ryoko and only her.

It is very amusing to me as I play this game how adjacent to a horror game it is. I am biased probably, I have thought to myself "this is like the antimatter version of Monika from DDLC" more than once and meta horror dating sims are a whole genre now that I know well. But still, you absolutely can feel like a digital prisoner who exists to give Ryoko the home she wants, and a poor simulacra of that to boot. A fangame on that premise would be a natural fit.

@teal-deer if I may indulge a tag, when you are walking around inside your house - with no purpose - there is an entrance to your home:

And you can even approach the entrance:

And nothing ever happens. You never need to do this. You cannot open that door. The only purpose it serves, best I can tell, is to trick you into thinking you can leave. It lets you pantomime the illusion of exit.

And for you to greet Ryoko at when she comes home, of course - she leaves every day.

Listen I love video games and I love horrible liminal houses. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on House of Leaves. Of course you can tag me about how you can't interact with the door.

okay so you guys dont give a fuck about him ?