Love is Legal: Speed Dating For Criminals by Krasimir Balchev
🎲 Gameplay Description
Memory game meets dating sim where you remember and figure out who likes what. You also have to manage how much everyone likes you or you might not be able to get a real date with the person you truly want.
❗ Rules
Each day consists of five 10 second interval dates. In each date the character will tell you 2 things about themselves. You do NOT need to reply to the exact things the character tells you, they serve only as hints to show what the character likes. If a chracter hearts something that doesn't mean it is only that thing, they will also heart other similar things as well, so figure what they like based on the hints and the character themselves.
Icon explanations: heart means they super like it, plus sign means it's ok, minus means they don't like it and will give you one strike, an X means they hate it and will give you 2 strikes. If you get 3 strikes you lose, if you don't at least select one thing you also lose.
If you survive the 5 days you will have to pick a character to go out with. You will only win and get a successful real date if you pick the character that likes you the most! So it might not be the best idea to make everyone like you.
If you manage to reach ending take a screenshot to prove it! It seems like I might've made it too hard to win so I'm curious to see successful attempts.
If the embedded version on Ludum Dare doesn't work, try using Firefox, go to the itch.io version or download the game :)
🎮 Controls
WASD and arrow keys - Menu movement
Spacebar - Selection
M - Mute
F - Toggle fullscreen
Esc - Exit fullscreen
📖 Story
Have you ever wondered how hard it is to date in prison? It must be even harder than on the outside, right? The biggest problem is you don't get much time to date in prison. That's why Timmy the cellmate figured out how to make a whole speed dating event in just under a minute. There are five beautifully twisted participants who you will get to meet! Every 10 seconds a new person shows up in front of you. And here's one of them, Coppo!
The event lasts 5 days. In between each day you will get letters from a very dear friend of yours, the garbage man. He will give you hints on what the participants in the event think of you every day.
The way to win everyone's heart is to remember what they like and don't like. If you survive all 5 days without angering someone you will reach the final choice. You can only pick one date at the end and you will only get it if that participant liked you the most out of everyone else.
🧍 Credits
Design, Programming & Writing - Krasimir Balchev a.k.a. krasi0707
Design, Art & Character Vocals - poopie
Sound effects besides character vocals - Freesound.org
Music - Tunetank.com
Fonts - 1001fonts.com
⚠️ Spoliers
Here's a link to a post with all of the good endings in the game, proceed at your own risk.
| Link | https://krasi0707.itch.io/love-is-legal-speed-dating-for-criminals |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/love-is-legal-speed-dating-for-criminals |
Ratings
| Overall | 466th | 3.625⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 419th | 3.563⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 615th | 3.268⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 213th | 4.054⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 131th | 4.316⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 131th | 3.818⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 340th | 3.709⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 58🗳️ | 88🗨️ |
I see you have the same issue that I had exporting Godot to a web build. Check out this thread for how to solve it https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/wip/godot-web-export-on-ldjam-com
I like the memory and the fact you don't seem to always have the same conversation topics so you have to mix it up a bit each time. I think it would be nice to have a way of seeing all the available options for a given meeting, because rapidly spamming the arrow keys in the hopes of finding something good can feel bad sometimes if you're not really sure what you're after.
Nice submission :)
Cute game! It was definitely stressful (in a fun way) being under the gun to guess what each person liked. I spent a lot of time scrolling through the options, it might be nice to instead have a grid to pick from so you could survey all your choices? I guess that's in tension with the time limit, though.
I didn't understand how the final scoring worked so I died on the 5th day :-(
Yeah, that's the exact reason we went with a scroller. The scoring for the strikes is a bit vague. For stuff the characters say is an X you get 2 Xs and for stuff with a minus you get one x
Thanks for the tip! I did see it and thought I uploaded the version with the replacements but it might not have went through, will try again later
Love the art, btw! )
I wouldn't say that the game is very hard, but it certainly is fun! :smile:
The only problem I had is with *used* items. I thought that I have to wait before choosing other items, maybe removing used items is a good idea?
I am glad you didn't find the game difficult. I think the difficulty comes from the lack of explanation in the game itself and if you read the rules page and know how things work it's actually not that bad. Guess for the next jam I'll strive to make things clearer in game, maybe even adding a tutorial if possible.
I did debate whether the used items should be removed or not, in the end they remained mainly because it was easier to show that something was used and cannot be used again than it vanishing and the player possibly not being sure if they used it and what happened to it. But I would agree that it could be improved and removing them could be the better option.
Thank you for playing and for leaving feedback!
This game was very cute. Love the art style and the different facial expressions. The gameplay was super interesting as well; I love how you blended memory games and dating sims! I kept playing until I could go on a date with someone which is as good of a compliment as I could give any game dev (READ: I keep wanting to play your game).
In terms of feedback:
1. Maybe I'm just slow but I didn't really understand what the + and - signs meant.
2. I agree with a previous commenter that showing all response options would be nice so that the player isn't stressfully shifting through everything.
3. It took a few tries before I actually figured out what was going on so a more guided tutorial would've been really helpful.
All that being said, for having been made in 72 hours, this is a fantastic entry. Congratulations :) Also, I'd appreciate if you could rate my game as well! Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Thank you for your feedback as well! I appreciate it very much!
1. The plus and minus signs are lighter variants of the hearts and Xs respectively.
2. The idea was originally to have all the response options shown together but figured it might be too easy if that was the case, but adding a scroller that only showed one response at a time might not have been the best solution. This part of the game could definitely be reworked to be less spammy, I agree.
3. That is the main issue with the game, that the rules aren't easy to understand just from playing. I will definitely take this in mind for the next jam I participate in and try to incorporate a tutorial or in-game instructions of some sort.
Glad you had fun :)
Well done!
Well done!
Guess I will, look out for them in the main feed :)
Love the art, the characters and sound effects!
https://youtu.be/JWDRP3KwO-E
The diegetic tutorial is super cool. I've noticed a lot of LD games that do something like this have way too much lore relative to the amount of tutorial in the text, so it becomes difficult to figure out how to actually play the game. But your tutorial was 90% tutorial and had just a splash of lore to keep it interesting. And then garbage man comes back throughout the game with his cute little notes, it's so fun I love it.
I love games with multiple endings and I'm delighted by how many yours seems to have! Not only different endings for going on dates with different characters, but also different endings for being scorned by different characters!
I wasn't able to make it to a date ending after five attempts, but I'm determined to get there eventually and I'm going to come back to it later...
I think the use of images in place of conversations is really clever given the short 10 seconds. Makes things so much easier to parse quickly! I loved your cast of characters and especially that you play as a lil raccoon dude even though the others are human lmao
The only change I would really like is being able to at least switch items in the short amount of time between characters. Sometimes I would get impatient when it takes that control away from me. Maybe having button to start immediately could work too
Great work overall! The extra character frames each time you picked an option was a really nice touch that also added a lot to the personality of the game <3
Your game was great! I loved the way you implemented speed dating and you had a few things I wanted to add as well but didn't manage to, like an ending collection screen and a mini-game. I was very impressed so I'm glad you found our team's game interesting :)