💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

[NEW!] ꩜✓⚢⚤ Ten Ways Real Life Isn't Like a Dating Sim

(There's a lot of backstory here; the story would probably start when the guy arrives, and explain the story up to that point in flashbacks. But I'm writing here in chronological order so it's easier to understand)

This is the story of 5 or 6 girls. Probably in high school, or maybe in college. They all have some interest in video games, although they otherwise represent quite a wide range of characters. They originally became close because they're all slightly awkward in social situations (though some hide it better than others), and ended up learning how to deal with their own emotions in an unorthodox way. Basically, when some of their friends started dating, they tried it and found boys mostly unsatisfying. They never had the depth of emotions with someone real that they felt for their characters' relationships in various visual novels and dating games. There was some debate between them about whether this is because the boys around them are all boring, or just because that kind of high-intensity love isn't realistic. And then they start to wonder if it's actually because they aren't interesting characters.

After a few experiments, they ended up creating characters (which they call "personas") which are idealised versions of themselves. Basically, they imagined what they would be like as a dating sim character, and turned all their stereotypes up to eleven. They're not really trying to change themselves; they're creating fictional characters inspired by themselves, so that they can play those characters and act out a scene to feel more intense emotions. Sometimes they'll script a scene between them and play it out; sometimes it's improv. But that's how they became the school's dating sim reenactment society. They just play out scenes with their personas, because their "real" relationships seem bland by comparison.

At some point, one of the girls learns a little hypnosis, and uses it to make it easier for them all to slip into character and be their persona. Usually they just do a single scene, although some follow on from a previous one. And usually they have to play the other roles in each other's scenes, because most of the other students think this is pretty weird.

Then they hear there's a new boy coming to their school. A transfer student from overseas; and every rumour about his background makes him sound more like the protagonist in one of the dating sims they play, or a harem anime. So they decide that this guy is the love interest. They get hypnotist girl to modify their personas, so that they automatically go into character when talking to this guy, and they will all start to fall for him when he does certain things (different for each of them). And they frame it like a competition, which of them can date this guy first. But the character flaws of their personas end up standing in their way, or making them mess with each other, and getting to know this guy proves to be hard for all of them. Until eventually, they start to realise that the reason all their long-ago first dates seemed bland was because most of them had started to develop feelings for each other. That encouraged them to spend time together, even if they justified it with some really dumb ideas of what to do. And when they were first building the personas, it felt so intense just because they were doing it together. But now they're so far into those roles that they can't just drop them; as soon as the guy is around, they can't help playing out their character flaws, which makes it hard for them to even realise what is happening.

I can imagine this working as an actual dating sim as well. You'd choose one of the girls at the start, and have points to put into their persona's "traits". In conversation with the guy, or with each other if you choose to use the persona, conversations go in a direction purely determined by which traits are highest; although there might be an icon on screen indicating which trait is going to make the next choice; allowing the player to do a QTE to go with their second choice. But all the other girls would be going through their own conversation trees with the guy, their friends, and each other. Certain events would result in acquiring 'mementoes', which appear in your room, the guy's room, or the clubroom; you could use these to guess about what conversations the other girls are doing in the background, and they would change the probabilities of the guy reacting in certain ways to certain things.

Each girl would have a few "almost good" endings. You get the guy and you're happy; you get the guy and he's happy; or you manage to make a relationship that's good but nothing special. But there's also the "real" endings, which would require you to reach a certain point in the conversation trees to realise your feelings for another girl. Once you got enough of those real endings, you could have an extra game mode where you're playing all six girls. In this mode you treat it more like a resource management game: you can put points into the girls' traits, and send them to different locations, but you don't have any control during conversations; you just have to hope that it goes right based on their traits. This time, the objective is to get everyone a happy ending, and make sure everyone gets their true kiss on graduation day. This would probably require setting the guy (or one of the playable characters) up with another friend who is never even presented as a romance option; testing players' ability to think outside the box.