Later Daters - Premium

Hours played at review time, across 41 reviews with recorded playtime.

positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up

[h2]Growing Old Disgracefully Would Be More Fun With Better Choices[/h2] Later Daters tackles a subject games barely acknowledge: love, dating and sex in old age. That alone deserves credit. Ageing is usually treated as the bit after the credits, so putting people in their seventies and beyond centre stage is genuinely refreshing. The simple artwork fits the game well - and, mercifully, nobody has been transformed into a doe-eyed manga teenager merely because romance is involved. The generously sized text also seems entirely appropriate when virtually the whole cast qualifies for a senior discount. Unfortunately, this is a choice-driven game rather short on [i]choices[/i]. If you want to follow the intended emotional path, all is reasonably well. If, like me, you regard dating simulators as an elaborate challenge to remain single while playing a cynical nihilist, things become more difficult. You are even forced to join one of the leisure activities because Plot Has Spoken. Still, credit where due: I actually managed to remain single, which is my personal definition of winning a dating game. The relentlessly American-style saucy double entendres are rather less successful - less sophisticated seduction, more "naughty retirement-home greetings card". The technical side is remarkably bare. There is no voice acting, which I don't mind, and the music can be muted. Beyond that, virtually nothing can be configured: no resolution, no proper volume controls, no text speed. That is a genuine design weakness worth knowing about before buying. Worse, when moving from day one to day two I clicked the folder icon in the top-right corner and was rewarded with the nighttime image from the main menu and absolutely no way to continue. Even escape appeared to have retired. Task Manager eventually provided the euthanasia. More seriously, I disliked how Haroun's dementia is handled. Other characters effectively play along with a false situation rather than dealing with his condition in a way that felt responsible or convincing to me. For a game explicitly built around ageing and life in a retirement community, illness deserves the same care as romance, and other games centred on dementia have handled the subject considerably better. The writing also occasionally produces surprisingly heavy-handed wisdom, including the notion that life without grief would somehow be preferable, as though grief were an administrative error one ought to have opted out of. Then there is the calendar. The story spans two weeks but apparently only ten days matter. Quite right too: presumably Ye OLDE shuts down at weekends and everybody is placed in stasis until Monday morning. It is one of several little things that left me wishing Later Daters had given its unusual and genuinely worthwhile premise a little more freedom, polish and care. I wanted to recommend it, and there is quite a lot here that I like. [b]But only just, and with some regret, this is a thumbs down.[/b]