"Romanceylvania" Mini-Review

Publishers: The Deep End Games, 2124 Publishing, Servios

Developer: The Deep End Games

Available for: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation 5

Every once in a while, there comes along a game that is elevated to a higher status by its concept. Such is the case with Romanceylvania. There are a few aspects of the game that are going to be up for awards at the end of the year, but this review has been delayed since March, so we're going to go with a rapid-fire-style review.

In Romanceylvania, the aforementioned concept is this: you play as a hunky, brooding vampire named Drac. Drac was dumped by his girlfriend many years ago, and he has spent every waking moment since then brooding hunkily in his throne room. One day, a note gets slipped under his door from a friend inviting him to something like a poker night or something like that, and Drac decides to finally leave his throne room to start being social again, because what's the worst that could happen? Well, as soon as he leaves, he finds himself suddenly trapped in an intervention from those who care for him. The intervention? He's forced to be the protagonist of a brand new The Bachelor-style reality show, and the only way he can escape the show is by leaving the past behind and finding love again with one of the show's other contestants. As you may be able to guess, all the other contestants are famous horror/Halloween icons (a werewolf, a mummy, a succubus, an incubus, a scarecrow, etc). Great concept, right? Well, what makes it even better is the commitment to the bit! In everything he does, Drac plays up the drama and takes his role as the protagonist of this game show 100% seriously. For example, as in any good reality game show, there are occasional contestant eliminations, and as Drac, it's your job to decide who to eliminate. You can choose to break the news quickly or sentimentally. If you choose to do so quickly, Drac will drop a classic-style punny line as he drops the contestant from the show, but he'll give a heartfelt monologue before he breaks the contestant's heart if you chose to go the more sentimental route. The basis of success in all things is sincerity: comedy, drama, anything. And this game is filled to brim with the stuff.

So, the concept is strong, but what about the characters you'll be spending your time with? Well, your mileage may vary. If all you're looking for is a fun, raunchy time, then there are characters such as P.S. Elle (the BDSM-obsessed scarecrow-ess). A fair number of characters are about as surface level as that, but then there are characters such as the genie (whose arcs I'll let you discover for yourself) if you want a character with a bit more substance. 

But despite how this has probably sounded so far, this is not a visual novel or anything like that. As the title implies, this is actually a metroidvania game that also happens to have dating simulator/visual novel elements. That deserves some recognition for creativity alone, but how does the game execute on that creativity? Well...not quite as well as it executes on the overall concept. Your walking speed is a little too slow, your sprinting speed is a little too fast, save points are sometimes too readily available and sometimes too sparse, bosses are ridiculously unfair and unfun...but despite what I just said about save points, every little bit of your progress against a given boss is saved every second, things like that. It's a bunch of small bits of jank that all add up...plus what I consider to be the cardinal sin of game design: taking damage from touching enemies when there isn't a visible reason for it (such as they're made of fire or spikes, etc). So....not exactly a good look, but all in all, the gameplay on display here gets the job done. 

It's probably obvious given what I mentioned in that last paragraph, but gameplay jank tends to line up hand-in-hand with technical jank. Besides what I've already laid out, certain sound effect volumes are too loud by default, the game has a tendency to crash, animations feel floaty and jarring, and beyond all of that, I ran into an issue with the save system. One night, when I was at nearly the end of the game, I quit for the evening...and the next time I logged on, I'd lost the whole night's worth of progress. It's been long enough that I don't remember if there had just been so much time between save stations that I thought there'd be an autosave or if a save station bugged out and didn't actually save...but either way it's indicative of the game's poor technical state.

So folks, it's possible you haven't even heard of Romanceylvania, given how little media attention it's gotten. If that's the case, I'll say that while you've missed a great concept executed well where it counts, you haven't missed a whole lot. And that's...kinda all there is to say!

Let us review:

Cardinal sin - 1.0

Added up gameplay jank - 1.0

Added up technical jank - 1.0

Loss of progress - 1.0

The final score for Romanceylvania is...

6.0/10 - Above Average

Better luck next time, The Deep End Games, better luck next time.