Midnight Tinder is a game about frustrating the player in hopes that if you get rejected enough, humiliated enough, then your sunk-cost fallacy addled brain will think that the ends justified the means you were put through. It’s a dating sim where each and every character is flaky and flawed beyond belief.
I give Midnight Tinder ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 stars)
The part where I spoil the game
I’ll focus on a single relationship, but none of the routes I’ve attempted have fared much better. Meet Kenedy.
Kenedy never once makes it to any of your dates. You meet him incidentally and randomly. He shows up at your apartment in the middle of the night. Even if you choose the options that forgive him, that tell him you love him for who he is, he misses the final scene of the game. The one where the narration says you live happily with him. During the credits you see photos of your life with whoever you ended up dating, and Kenedy is not in any of the photos. He misses your wedding.
This game does not respect you as a person. Everyone in it claims to care about you but their actions betray this every single in-game day. It’s a dating sim where all of your dates are awful or just don’t happen. And if you keep playing you’re rewarded with a preview of a miserable life with (or without in Kenedy’s case) your significant other.
One of the credit montages is of you breaking up with the person you pursued with cheery captions under the photos. The game has this constant tonal dissonance where the character you’re playing as seems very happy about these things. Not in spite of being stood up, but because you were stood up.
Sure at first you have options to voice disappointment, but if you keep pursuing a route then those disappear. It feels messed up in a way, like you’re lying to yourself or something. But I have to remind myself that it’s the game that’s doing the lying.
Maybe this game has some audience out there for it. But not me.