Welcome to dating simulaton! These unique visual novels have been around for ages in Japan but are slowly becoming more popular in the West. The goal? Date your romantic interest, often with overt sexual encounters at the end. One of the first dating sims (mostly an RPG with dating elements) to make it here was Thousand Arms for the original Playstation, but it never sold very well and not many others were localized. Now, in the digital age we’re seeing more and more of these ‘slice-of-life’ dating sims are becoming available. Winter Wolves is putting out a lot of this type of content as it becomes more and more popular and their latest release, Roommates, has made it to the Switch courtesy of Ratalaika Games.
Roommates is a traditional slice-of-life visual novel with a bit of management sim thrown in. It features two main characters, Max and Anne, and you can choose either one. Each character has four romance options and one of those four is a gay option. Max can romance Rakesh, the Indian roommate in addition to the women and Anne can pair off with Isabella, the wild party girl, as well as the guys in the house. Each romantic option requires you to fulfill a variety of mundane tasks and conversations to achieve enough romantic points to trigger certain events. Eventually, those will culminate in romantic encounters with the guy or girl of your choice, but it’s a bit of a slow burn for a shorter game.
This is not a fast-paced game, but more of a steady experience. Once you get through the rather lengthy exposition at the beginning, you have to choose your schedule for the entire week. That includes, studying, free time, working, slacking off, everything. It’s a bit weird to schedule lazing around, but nonetheless, it’s an option. Each grid selection gives you points and those points are required to activate your romantic entanglements in addition to the points you get through events. If you raise the difficulty, it’s even tougher to get the points you need and you’re forced to really focus on specific tasks and options to acquire the necessary points in time. It’s a unique way to allocate your choices and it means that if you’re not paying attention to the minimum point values and then budgeting your time wisely, you won’t, um, well, ‘score’.
That’s one of the issues with Roommates. With Max as your choice, you’ll quickly find that he’s surprisingly unlikeable. He’s brash, rude, snarky, and doesn’t like to follow any rules. But he’s such a good-natured ‘bad boy’ that he comes across as weak and wishy-washy. He’s obsessed with women and makes a surprising number of inappropriate comments right from the get-go as well as scoffing at school and constantly talking about his band, but you can set him to go to classes and study heavily, which makes little sense. Eventually, his constant pubescent banter becomes a bit tiresome. Anne is shy and withdrawn, but she opens up more and more, probably to the point where she does a fair number of things that are distinctly out of character for her, all in the effort to spice things up a bit. The dialogue in general, while fun, is a bit on the crass side, with realism taking a back seat to light-heartedness. This will definitely appeal to some more than others but it’s tough to form any kind of sympathy or emotional bond for these fairly two-dimensional and predictable characters.
In the Steam version of the game, there’s an uncensored patch that features a fair amount of nudity, but that’s been removed for the Switch. There’s plenty of questionable content on the Switch (see our reviews on Omega Labyrinth Life or Moero Chronicles Hyper for reference) but Nintendo probably draws the line at overt nudity and you’ll have to go PC if that’s what you’re looking for. That being said, once you finally get through things like Spring Break and Valentine’s Day one managed week at a time, you’ll eventually hook up with someone for a moderately gratifying ending. You can blow through your first playthrough in about 4-5 hours if you keep at it and have solid reading skills, but unlocking each couple will definitely take you a while, so there’s at least a lot of gameplay and replayability here to offset the light plot and average characters.
Visually, Roomates was a bit of a letdown. There’s limited animation of the characters, uninspired backgrounds, and only a handful of scenes that are fully drawn to create a visual impact. It’s a bit disappointing as with a little more artistic expression and a bit of script polish, the game would be much more fun than it is. This is not a AAA visual novel, but at the same time it’s not meant to be and the $20 price point reflects that. The soundtrack is also a bit rough, with the same guitar song constantly looping and definitely not heavy enough to match with Max, who looks more like a metalhead than anything. There were a few times where all sound cut out entirely during play on the Switch and a reload of the last save was required to get it functioning again.
In addition to the sound glitch, there were several instances where button functionality randomly disabled in handheld mode on the Switch. Touch controls still worked during these glitches, but it was still weirdly irritating, especially considering that not all functions are mapped to the touch screen, notably the rewind function mapped to the L and ZL buttons. Control in general is easy to use and intuitive though, and the game moves along at a decent speed with no hitches most of the time.
There’s not a lot else going on in Roommates. There’s no overriding science fiction narrative, no background drama, no murder mysteries. This is pure slice-of-life dating simulation and it definitely delivers exactly what you’d expect. It might not be the most gripping or immersive story out there, but it does exactly what it sets out to do and gives you a fun little diversion with a fair number of replayable options and divergent pathways. Roommates is one of those games you can just boot up for a chill getaway with no real substance and a smattering of management simulation. The jokes are hokey but fun, and the characters are forgettable but not terrible. There’s a fair amount of non-PC content, but at least that’s somewhat realistic, especially for the age of the characters. The supporting characters are erratic and strange, but not unbearable, and the whole experience is decent. Not outstanding, but not horrid either. This is a solid middle of the road title and if you want a light, fun romance-oriented, hormone-driven visual novel, Roommates will definitely work for you!
This review is based on a digital copy of Roommates provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes. Roommates is also available for iOS, Android, PS4, Xbox One and PC on Steam (which is definitely, um, Steam-ier). Screenshots are from actual gameplay.