Other Age

The dating games genre is quite special and unique, even if it comes pretty close to the visual novel niche. However, these games are not nearly as intricate or as popular as most visual novels, mostly because it is rather difficult to come up with something compelling. On the other hand, they are simple enough to be a good distraction every once in a while.

Other Age is a very simple dating game in which you have to play the role of a young princess searching for her dream man. Thus, you have to pay attention to everything you say and make sure that the potential soul mate doesn’t find you too weird to have anything to do with you. Unfortunately, very little work went into the game’s design and you barely feel like playing most of the time.

The story starts in the Zeiva Kingdom, where the princess wakes up on her 16th birthday to find out that she’s required to find a husband. However, instead of hosting auditions or going out to the pub on Saturday evenings, she gets to do that by using a magical machine built by the castle’s mage. Hence, she just has to describe her perfect man, and the machine teleports him from whatever dimension he might happen to live in.

After the desired boy makes his appearance, you have to entertain him and try to win his trust, using kind words and a memorable date. However, the game is way too blunt in this regard, because there is only one correct answer every time, otherwise the story ends. Not only that, but if you mess up the date, your father the king drinks poison and dies, for some reason.

The dialog options are also very obvious and poorly written, which makes the entire experience that much more annoying and pointless. Thankfully, the graphics are not exactly bad, even if they are just drawings with no animations whatsoever. The music is quite awful, on the other hand, because it’s made out of very short samples that keep repeating themselves every few seconds.

All things considered, Other Age is way too unrefined and short to be of any interest to the fans of the genre, especially when there are far better alternatives out there. Hence, there aren’t too many reasons to give this a try.