First, I want to say that this developer has done more than I have ever done, and this VN is still really ambitious and I think accomplishes some of the interesting goals it set for itself. (A dating VN with a dog-caring component IS really cool!)
However.
I personally am really tired of "lol sploot dog cute random over the top silliness"-style VNs. Half of this story and dialogue contains puns, that's not a joke, it's CONSTANT. The other half of the story and dialogue is extremely irreverent and doesn't take ANYTHING seriously. It's very mildly hinted at that your character has a bit of a dark or tragic reason for moving, but when you find out what it is like an hour into the game, it ends up being ruined by that same lol dog rando cute silliness. Your character found a random dog during a really sad time, and it mysteriously led them to a bus stop, and now your character refers to it as the Dog Wizard.
Because of all of that, the narrative is extremely shallow. "You're definitely just a person playing a VN so we're going to do the bare minimum to actually try to immerse you in our world." Seriously, the game does VERY little to pretend that you are a "real" character in a "real" world that it wants you to engage with on that level. No, instead, it mostly just says "Here's your dating app, you can see where people are at any given time, here's a lampshade where we acknowledge that that's really weird for privacy and safety reasons but then we blow that off because hey you're playing a dating VN with dog training, you're not here for real immersion, are you? Anyway, you only have 5 motivation points to do things, some events cost more than others! Also here's a bunch of spam in your inbox that we, the company in the game that created the dating app, could totally clean up for you, but we won't, because the developers want to shove puns in your face and be silly constantly. We're also going to constantly say that everything that happens is extremely "serendipitous" instead of trying to actually think of ways for things to happen to and around your character more organically."
In that same vein, your character is nothing. They are a cardboard cutout. They make constant jokes about never unpacking, they sleep on the floor of their apartment, they have no personality except being a stone-cold idiot. They don't know how to cook. They only like burgers, apparently. They let Anders just walk ALL over them. And they apparently have to be nosy and/or oblivious about/to people's private lives (which is what made me just quit the game and finally write this review, it'll be detailed at the end of this review). Why do VN authors insist on making your character a tactless dumbass? You get NO input as to how your character actually acts, you get hardly any dialogue or narrative choices. You get your name, and a choice of one of.. three or four character portraits.
You can apparently ♥♥♥♥ Anders on the first date, but it cut that date off so quickly I genuinely couldn't tell if I had ♥♥♥♥♥♥ him or not. Also he absolutely dictated the hell out of everything, my character did NOT get a say in ♥♥♥♥ even when they TRIED to be the one to decide where to go for dinner. Anders even said, "I still get to pick dinner but you can pick what you get for dessert" which was SO disgustingly controlling, and the sad thing is, I'm not even sure the developers realized that that was actually a real red flag of a thing to say in conjunction with how Anders has interacted with the character up to that point (and how your character thought of Anders in their head), I bet they just thought it was a silly joke. It's possible that Anders' controlling tendencies get touched on and resolved later in the game, but first, lol, no, not with this type of game, I have no trust that they would actually try to tackle character flaws like that in a serious and satisfying manner; and second, I am not playing any more of this game to find out.
The dates do NOT mingle into the rest of the game at all. I went on several rapid-fire first and second dates with three different characters and their was no narration whatsoever of those things happening and possibly conflicting with each other. Like, I get not having it actually cause complications, it IS a dating sim and you do want your player to be able to test the waters with different characters, but there wasn't even a thought of any other character in your character's head between events.
You do not get to pet the other characters' dogs.
Fox is the worst character, she's insufferable, extremely not funny, and very mean.
Actually Felix might give her a run for her money on all accounts, except that Fox is omnipresent and Felix is not.
At least the art is nice, and the game tries to be inclusive. I like the music well enough.
What finally made me quit was when I went on a first date with Sacha and one of his friends mentioned him transitioning. I (the human being playing the game, NOT the character) had already suspected that he was a trans man, but I didn't need to know for sure, he was cute and nice no matter what. However, your character is given a set of questions to ask, and one of them was "Transitioning?" Like they didn't know what that meant, or didn't realize, hey, maybe now is not the time to pry? And that would actually be okay, if it was part of a roleplaying choice you could make.. but it was not. You HAD to ask ALL of the questions for the game to move on. You were not allowed to NOT ask any question.
So yeah. Do not recommend. The characters are prop caricatures and are written all the same way (that doesn't mean they all act the same, just that you can tell they were all written with the exact same ideas of characterization and stereotypes), the story does not exist on any more than a superficial level, and your character is an empty-headed milquetoast bore.
