Roomates

($14.99 - Per Character - Free Demo - from Winter Wolves)

In this game you play as either Max or Anne (purchased separately) as they take on their first year in college. Sharing dorm life with four other tenants, you must make sure they still make time for their studies and all those fun extra-curricular activities. And, maybe, even have a little time for romance.

To the best of my knowledge, this is WW's first foray into the comedic side of romance. And, really, this game was a lot of fun. For the most part. I did, however, have a few issues. First though, the good things.

I loved the characters. Almost universally, I thought they were all awesome. In fact, there was only one that I didn't much care for - and that was really from more of a romance based perspective, because she'd probably be an awesome friend.

I also really like the stat raising format for this game. You don't choose one even for the whole week - but schedule a full week, with three events for each day, at a time. This screen shot will give you an idea. I thought that was really great and I loved how the characters all lived together and were (somewhat unwilling as the case may be) friends.

However, I didn't like the way you get 'events' for several people at once. It's really difficult to explain, but say you're romancing Person E - unless you choose to skip all events without them, you're going to get too much information about Person G when you're not romancing them. Basically, there is no character/story arc that you can only see if you romance the character. If you go through the game watching all the events, the only new information you'll see is the Winter Break and the Spring Break scenes. Plus a couple of dates that play out very much the same no matter who you're dating.

Now this is just personal preference, but I much prefer games that give you more information about the character you are actually dating as opposed to those you might just be only friends with.

Also, with this game, you see right away if the character you're romancing likes the choice you made or not while in one of the events. This lead me to quit roleplaying (as I much prefer to do which is why I like VN's more) and start making the choices that I knew the character would like. I don't know if there's a way tis could be changed, but this was the first time I felt this displeased with this setup while playing a Winter Wolves game.

Final note: The humor in this game was merely okay for me. While there was a few funny instances, most of it fit quite well in the realm of sitcoms, which I've never found very amusing.

Now, although this wasn't my cup of tea - as they say - this is Winter Wolves most popular dating sim and one of their most popular game, period.

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