Summary
Love, Ghostie provides a lovely cozy experience where everyone can find love. Pair couples however you want and take as long as you need. Everything you do helps boost relationships and you see your efforts pay off. There is lots of experimentation and progress is slow at first. Love, Ghostie makes relationship pairing fun and is a must-try for any cozy romance player.
Developer – Janbeh Games, LLC
Publisher – Janbeh Games, LLC
Platforms – PC, Switch (reviewed)
Review copy given by publisher
When seeing a cast of characters, everyone has their own ideas about who would make the perfect pair. If you had the power to make your relationship pairings come true, who would you choose? Love, Ghostie answers that question by making you a ghostly matchmaker in a sharehouse. As residents live with each other, you can organize dates or “surprise” gifts to build relationships. Eventually, you form a romantic pairing that makes everyone happy.
Love, Ghostie creates the perfect environment for you to create the relationships you want. You can take your time and develop every relationship until you find the perfect match. There are no wrong answers and everything you do helps. Progress is slow at first and there’s significant trial-and-error before you know what you are doing. The game runs well on the Switch and is perfect for quick sessions, though you must invest lots of time.
You are a recently deceased ghost who is undergoing mentorship from an experienced veteran, Ghostina. Ghosts help people fall in love over time and your assignment is a sharehouse Ghostina has set up. As residents move in, you must experiment to find their likes and dislikes. Upgrade your house as Ghostina checks in while creating date opportunities and sending gifts. With enough time, you make an official relationship between two residents.
Being a ghost has significant advantages, letting you “deliver” surprise gifts without being seen as one example. It also makes it easier to observe your residents, reading their diaries or listening in to conversations. Your residents have interesting stories that change and develop based on who they interact with. This gives you motivation to not only find pairings but also learn more about your characters.
Your sharehouse can hold four residents at the start and eight after full upgrades. There are more residents than rooms and you can switch them out later on. This lets you build relationships and discover a fountain of information about each resident. Even after you create several official relationships, there’s always another pairing that provides more insight. Replayability is almost endless and there’s always something new to discover.
The cozy environment is reflected in the character art and environment design. Ghosts are round, happy, and emotional. Residents are animal characters with a range of expressions. Their rooms reflect several personality aspects but nothing excessive. It’s simple, adorable, and full of emotion. Seeing your characters express emotion in a cute manner makes it easy to get attached.
Every day you have a certain number of actions. You can “deliver” surprise gifts between residents, grab items, or assign chores. Each action helps you develop a bond between residents, boost their happiness, or learn more about them. By appealing to a resident’s personality, you can quickly boost the bond between them and someone else. You can also work on a different relationship if today’s activities aren’t suitable.
Love, Ghostie’s biggest strength is the lack of wrong answers. While some gifts and activities boost relationships more than others, everything has a positive effect. Even if you assign an activity between two residents and it doesn’t go well, they still grow closer. This also applies to gifts and helps you learn what isn’t working. But even if you don’t get things right, bonds are still forged and your relationship is getting closer.
This also applies for residents as well; any resident can be in a relationship with another. There are no limitations and you can bond with everyone before making a decision. This lets you build interesting pairs or residents that you think would get along. Without bad or suboptimal pairings, you can freely develop relationships without fear of doing something wrong. It may take some adjustment, but the freedom makes it a great cozy experience.
However, freedom is a double-edged sword early on. There’s lots of possibilities to work with and that means lots of information to track. While the game helps track information, many things require trial-and-error before you learn what works. You also don’t get information if gifts or activities don’t go over well. That often leads to knowing what not to do, but not what actually works.
You don’t get many activities to do in the beginning, meaning the days pass by quickly. While you can extend the number of activities later, it takes significant investment. This means grabbing a few gifts and planning a few activities as you get started. Until the amount increases, you won’t gather much information and progress takes time. That’s not inherently bad but it does mean you can’t speed up relationship building until everything is established.
Love, Ghostie is a fantastic cozy game for the Switch and runs with no problems. The art style is fantastic, building relationships is fun, and there are no wrong answers. You will spend lots of time doing trial-and-error and experimentation is slow in the beginning. But it’s hard to find a better relationship builder than this.
