About this game
I pulled the Lovers card this morning and honestly, it feels like the deck is trolling me after playing Goldream. You show up in this city with a "secret mission" which is about as secret as a boner in sweatpants. The whole setup is cliche on purpose, like the devs are winking at you before they pull the rug. And they do pull it. What starts as a standard "which babe do I bang" visual novel turns into something that actually made me put my phone down and stare at the ceiling for a minute.
The branching paths are where things get messy in a good way. You pick a route thinking with your dick and suddenly you're in emotional quicksand. There's this one scene with the blonde, forget her name, where you think it's gonna be a standard titty reveal and instead she hits you with backstory that recontextualizes the whole first act. I was genuinely caught off guard. The sex scenes are hot, don't get me wrong, the writing doesn't shy away from explicit detail, but they feel earned which is weird to say about a porn game. Or maybe not earned. Sometimes you just want to skip the crying and get to the cumming, you know? The game doesn't always let you.
It's based on Wants of Summer apparently, which I never played, so I can't compare. The whole thing runs in browser which is convenient for... reasons. The UI is whatever, functional but ugly, like a Honda Civic. I wish the sound design existed at all, it's dead silent which makes the emotional beats hit weird. You're reading about someone's trauma and the only sound is your own breathing and maybe a neighbor's dog. The twists are good though. Real "oh fuck" moments that I won't spoil. Just know that your choices actually matter and some endings are bleak as hell. Not what I expected from a game called Goldream which sounds like a energy drink.