Date or Die: The Pilot Episode Demo

Finding true love is one of the main goals in everyone’s life, and it’s a lot easier to do so nowadays than it was a century or more ago. Hence, dating apps and the Internet allow anyone to meet their match, regardless of distance or interests. On the other hand, the pressure is even greater now, because it’s a lot more uncommon to be alone.

Date or Die: The Pilot Episode is an interactive visual novel and dating sim rolled into one, in which your role of a character trying to find true love in the weirdest possible way. Hence, the whole thing revolves around taking part in a reality show where the participants must murder each other in order to find true love, which obviously does not make too much sense at first.

The demo at hand allows you to choose from two characters, one of which is the game host himself. Hence, you have to inhabit the same home with the other character and maybe get close to them without murdering them. Naturally, you also have to expect the same treatment, which is pretty exciting, even if most of your time is spent reading text.

As mentioned before, the gameplay is not that exciting, but at least you can make choices every now and again that affect the plot. Granted, the demo is too short for these decisions to have a big impact, yet it still feels better than just watching the action unfolding on the screen. The full version should include many more options and possibilities, as well as multiple endings.

The artwork is definitely enjoyable, and it’s great that it comes in high-resolution, especially thanks to the nice backgrounds that decorate every scene. A lot of work went into the characters too, although they seem to look a bit too dull sometimes, or at least the ones available in the demo. Not much can be said about the soundtrack, on the other hand, since it barely makes an impression on you.

In the end, Date or Die: The Pilot Episode is a tad too short at this point, but then again it’s barely a demo designed to show off the idea. Hence, the finished product is certainly going to feature a lot more content.