When the Daily Dot reported on a dating sim that involved buying your Tyrannosaurus crush a new ukulele, I was all in. After all, how many chances does a girl get to woo an apex predator of the late Cretaceous?
For those who aren't avid followers of the romance-game genre, dating sims are narrative games that let players determine the course of a date or relationship through branching choices -- kind of like electronic choose-your-own-adventure stories. They're incredibly popular in Japan, and just starting to catch on in the States. This would be my first one, but, hell — how hard could it be?
Pretty hard, it turns out.
The premise of Jurassic Heart is simple enough: Your classmate Taira, who just happens to be a Tyrannosaurs Rex, dropped and broke his ukulele at a performance you encouraged him to give. You've decided to invite him to the music store to pick out a new one at your expense. Things turned awkward at the music store. Taira insisted that I let him pay for the ukulele, but I stood firm: after all, I wanted to support him in his musical journey. Taira didn’t see it that way.
If I’d let Taira have his way and made a few more careful choices, I might have been treated to a date in the park and a ukulele serenade. Instead, I got a stark ending screen, and a lingering regret for the future that might have been.
There was no way I was going to let this game beat me. I reloaded and tried again.
This time, I wasn’t going to make the mistake of insisting on paying for the ukulele, but I still felt strongly that I needed to make a contribution, so I offered to split the cost in hopes that Taira might be open to compromise. My character cleverly sweetened the deal with a romantic touch by suggesting that this way, it would belong to both of us. Ukulele in hand, we headed to the park for dinner. Soon, it was time to go home, but Taira had other ideas.
Score! Maybe I could still get to second base! I wasn’t sure how we’d make it work, with the snout-to-arm ratio, but I figured we’d think of something. Soon, Taira shared was the root of his performance anxiety: a junior-high concert where he’d dropped his ukulele and been unable to pick it up because of his tiny arms. The audience, jaded by the cruel humor of sites like T-Rex Trying, had laughed and jeered.
It was around this time that we had a conversation that employed what I assumed to be one of the more novel euphemisms I’d encountered:
Nope. It turned out he really did just want to play the ukulele for me.
Maybe some people just aren’t cut out to date Tyrannosaurs. Next time I’ll try my luck with a Parasaurolophus.
