Hooked on You: A Dead by Daylight Dating Sim is an insult to the medium and its fans

Hooked on You: A Dead by Daylight Dating Sim released on August 3, 2022 in multiple languages and enjoyed a widespread, mostly positive response. The game is, at the time of writing, sitting at 90% positive reviews on Steam — but that’s not the whole story. There’s more than meets the eye in this case. And no, I do not mean that about the actual game itself.

You play visual novels? Then beware!

Hooked on You
Prepare to see this screen a lot (and not always when playing a deadly hide and seek game with the Huntress).

For a company who have had their hands on narrative experiences right from the start, Psyop really trip up here. Hooked on You lacks basic fundamentals that visual novel fans would expect — perhaps due to time constraints during development. There are no options for skipping dialogue, auto-playing and seeing text logs. There is no guidance for the game’s controls. There’s no way to hide the UI to take screenshots. And there’s not even a CG gallery.

What’s more, its autosave function is a massive inconvenience, because it means you can’t backtrack if you forget to make a manual save for easier navigating. Even starting a new game requires immediately saving over an existing file, and there’s only three pages worth of three slots each to begin with. Given how visual novels with multiple routes and choices are designed to be replayed, these are not facts in Hooked on You’s favour. That said, the game barely gives you any reason to stick with it anyway. Once you’ve experienced just one scene, you’ll know that things nosedive from there.

While the game does feature some minigames for added interactivity, there are only two variations: “timed” quizzes and spinning wheel games. The quizzes aren’t really timed, nor are they of any real significance, especially in the common route — though once on a route, getting the right answers to a quiz will always put you on the path of a good ending.

The sourest point here is the spinning wheel game, which appears frequently no matter the event or situation, presumably in an attempt to make the game feel as vaguely interactive as they could bother to muster. It’s tedious, lazy and boring.

On a final note, the game heated up my laptop like nothing else, which is more than I can say for my own body. I wasn’t getting hot under the collar for anything here other than my own feelings of immense disappointment.

Have we gone too far?

Hooked on You
The only part of tempering expectations in the game is teasing that the Trickster is pursuable. Actually, that’s the only time I’ll call this game rather clever.

Hooked on You was developed by Psyop, who are slowly but surely becoming the newer and less impressive Telltale Games of this industry for collaborating with existing IPs – but in this case, dating sim spin-off games. What started out as a promising company with Camp W, an original and unorthodox visual novel that’s not about romance for once, has dissolved into this recurring headache.

Camp W was all about making friends, discovering mysteries within our own world as an otherworldly Witch and making your time in Summer Camp unforgettable. It was a sheer delight.

Then along came I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator in collaboration with KFC and thus, the beginning of the end. Despite branding itself a dating sim, you don’t exactly get to woo or date the Colonel. It’s more of a comedic game that pokes fun at big corporations in its entire runtime, and therein lies the problem – it’s merely a shtick. Who cares about the dating in a “dating sim” anyway, right? (Don’t even get me started on “dating sim” being misapplied to the visual novel medium in general – Ed.)

Yet another collaboration came next with Ghostwire: Tokyo – Prelude, an already weird marketing choice that gives me flashbacks to how Final Fantasy XV played out. We got The King’s Tale to play, the Brotherhood anime to tune in to, a full-length movie of Kingsglaive to watch and an entire book of The Dawn of the Future to read. Can we contain the entire game within said game, maybe? (Damn, someone lit the fuse on Lils and I am Here. For. It. – Ed.)

Now, we’ve got a dating sim spinoff of the Dead by Daylight game, sexing up four of its murderers. Who am I to judge though?

Actually, this is one case where I don’t feel too bad about those who do judge, since the game itself gives us plenty of reasons to complain about it — ranging from its bad design choices that are lazy and uninspiring, and the fact that it openly mocks its own supposed target audience.

Just kill me already

Hooked On You
But seriously, the artists did not need to go this hard.

While the majority of complaints seem to be unfairly focused on the fact that the only sex in the product is during a fade to black, Hooked on You never marketed itself as that kind of game. It’s a dating sim – those concerned by that must’ve felt let down that they couldn’t get it on with pigeons in Hatoful Boyfriend if so. So as far as my own complaints are concerned, it’s not about that side of things. Trapper in a sparkly thong gave me enough food for thought. Some things are best left to the imagination.

I’m instead saddened by the current state of Psyop, because their past output is legitimately great, and their more recent stuff just feels like a cash grab. Their earlier games were all free, while Hooked on You is a paid experience, retailing at a full price of £6.99. That’s outrageous; their free games offered far more in the way of content and were absolutely more polished. They even ran more smoothly.

When free experiences like College Craze’s demo are putting stuff like Hooked on You to shame, something’s wrong; the wrong people are getting paid for their work.

It took me about 7 hours to quickly, and I mean quickly, get through all the good and bad endings, each one featuring a gorgeous illustration depicting the four gruesome love interests either happy in love or tragically betrayed. This is the one area where I will happily praise the game: the artists responsible for the character sprites, backgrounds and CGs deserve all the credit for giving Hooked on You such eye-pleasing visuals.

It’ll probably take you around 10 or so hours to fully complete Hooked on You for all achievements, though; I pretty much did a speedrun through this living nightmare. Because everything else about the game besides the art makes the purchase of this unjustifiable for visual novel fans.

The story follows the same structure for all routes. Each pursuable character has personal issues, which always ends up being conflict between them and a family member in the final chapter. It all gets wrapped up as soon as this encounter happens, and it feels just as tedious as all the minigames in terms of how much it uses this flimsy, overused narrative piece as a crutch.

Whatever hidden depth and complexity these characters are supposed to have, the game completely fails to capitalise on it, making everything about Hooked on You feel extremely superficial, even with its more interesting characters such as Spirit and Wraith.

As far as the game’s supposed comedy goes, don’t even get me started. Jokes are repeated as frequently as its minigames, but the worst issue is the sassy narrator who can’t keep their trap shut for five minutes. They’re quick to provide meta joke on top of meta joke to make sure the game breaks the fourth wall as often as possible. That’s what “parody” in western visual novels seems to translate to these days.

It all becomes tiring as early as the first half hour. If I hear “IP Island” one more time…

Save your money

Last but not least, don’t give any thought to it being tagged as a “psychological horror”. This is not Doki Doki Literature Club or Billionaire Lovers – Hooked on You never tries to be deceptive or horrifying in any way other than the most obvious. It’s visually and textually not a horror — perhaps they mean it was a “horror” in terms of how much of a timewaster it is.

Hooked on You will be quick to remind you that you’re pretty suspicious for trying to hook up with a murderer, so if you don’t mind a game you’ve purchased constantly shaming you for buying it, then be my guest.

Saying this game is “dead on arrival” is perhaps too obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the wise words of Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain’s greatest quote “why are we still here? Just to suffer?” with games like these? Oh yeah, for the memes, supposedly.

Fuck that. Save your money for something that respects itself and its players.

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Lilia Hellal
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