Ruby Dreams: Immortal Promise

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A nice mix of regular visual novel sections getting to know the love interests for better or worse and 3D puzzle sections consisting of multiple smaller puzzles. Easily a small highlight of the game is the environments in 3D and backgrounds in 2D, which are both very detailed and beautiful to behold. The character portraits are competent and cleanly drawn, though they don’t stand out much from the crowd. With eerier tunes interlaced into the background tracks they add to the atmosphere. While they too are very in line with vampire themed music, being classical and occasionally with a dark undertone they are also competently executed. About two thirds of the game consists of the visual novel dialogue complete with choices here and there, which leaves around one third of the game to show off the 3D puzzle gameplay. There is a dream dedicated to each love interest, which are integrated really well into the story in my option. Each of these dreams consists of the same a handful of smaller puzzles with slight variations strung together, which are not overly difficult but still engaging. The controls during these 3D sections are standard, so they work perfectly fine for the game and even allow for some fun parkour. While I personally like the writing, you could look at it either as the characters simply talking in a casual everyday manner or as the writing being a bit unrefined and even juvenile depending on your preferences. Sebastian is the most pleasant to interact with. Right out of the gate and into the mansion he is very sweet and courteous. During the ball with him there is even a moment of him remembering a small detail that the player character has mentioned before, which was really nice. As the trope that Alexander embodies is quite easy to discern from the get-go I didn’t take his initial rudeness for much, plus he cuts early interactions short rather than unnecessarily continuing them with harsh words. Now Roderick… he is certainly something. He comes off as creepy right at the start and this uncomfortableness compounds with each interaction as he is possessive and rather disrespectful to the player character. However that is actually addressed directly in the text, particularly during his ending as well as the player character reprimanding him for his behaviour, which was very good to see! Still the dialogue options that have to be chosen to get his ending are quite uncomfortable, especially the last one. Additionally the choice during the ball can change the impression the player has of him by the end a substantial amount as he either doubles down on his bad behaviour or lets a small fragment of consideration shine through. There is also some interesting worldbuilding sprinkled in, some of it up to interpretation which I like and by the end some questions are still open such as what is currently going on with the player character’s mother leaving room for imagination. At the end of the night personally I had fun with this game, so I’m marking it as recommended, though more objectively speaking this would likely be considered middle of the road. However I have put an asterisk behind that recommendation on accounts of Roderick. I do find that he is handled better than I commonly see characters like him being handled in romance, but he is still not a good love interest as such. He is not charming or alluring, he is just pushy and rather acts like a creep around whom you would keep pepper spray at hand just to be safe. So if that is a complete no-go for someone they may want to stay clear of this game.