Anime girl dating clicker games

As video games grow in popularity, many genres, such as sports and adventure games, began requiring more investment from players. Pretty much every genre implicitly requires the player to be an active participant in the game. What if you didn't want to invest that much time into a game and yet still progress? Welcome to the world of "idle" games, where players do minimal amounts of effort yet reap massive rewards. This particular genre took off in 2013 with the advent of Cookie Clicker and subsequent games like Adventure Capitalist. 

On paper, an idle game doesn't exactly sound like the most thrilling game around. Thus, developers had to go out of their way to find some kind of hook to attract players. This often involved fusing game genres, like Clicker Heroes, which combined idle gameplay with adventure RPG elements. Some idle games find more provocative ways to gain attention, like Crush Crush or Blush Blush. These games strive to combine a dating sim into an idle game. Believe it or not, the combination of these two genres gel together better than one might initially think.

Related: What's the Appeal of Idle Games?

Crush Crush is probably the best example of how an idle and dating sim game can be both low-key and fun at the same time. The main objective of Crush Crush is to build rapport with multiple different love interests. Initial relationships with the girls are poor, generally because the main character caused some kind of accident leading up to their meeting. Thus, players must work their way up from being hated to being a potential love interest. There are a couple of different ways to build affection with a love interest, with the primary method being clicking. By clicking on a character's face, the player will be able to produce more "heart" points. That's just the beginning, though.

Most relationships won't be able to continue until the player has met a certain requirement in a specific personality trait or a particular job. This means the player has to complete certain activities (like surfing) or do specific tasks (like lifeguarding). However, all these activities take "time," which is measured by a time gauge. This can be filled with hobbies, work or dates (to name a few). Players can only partake in certain activities at once, making the player think about how they want to spend their idle time. As the game progresses and rapport builds, players will find themselves meeting new love interests and having to balance their activities to cater to specific characters. It won't take long before players find themselves micromanaging each time slot to fully maximize their stats and job output to impress certain girls.

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There's no doubt that the game also fulfills an innate desire within players of the game. Having multiple romantic partners who throw themselves at you for barely any effort probably realizes some inner fantasy. It also doesn't help that most of the love interests players encounter are idealized versions of their romantic interests. And for the most part, it works. Players want to keep building relationships and admiring their favorite characters. Before long, players will have a virtual harem right on their desktop.

That isn't to say the games aren't without flaws. Since it's an idle game, players will often have to invest absurd amounts of time to achieve anything worthwhile. For the casual crowd, this is perfectly fine, as they can "play" the game while doing something else. For those who are completionists or want to hurry things up, they'll have no choice but to wait or cough up money for a speed boost. Additionally, it does feel bad to be in multiple relationships at once. It feels a bit disingenuous to be taking one love interest to the beach while simultaneously texting another for pictures. It's just a video game, but it was hard to erase that sense of subtle sleaziness.

Idle/dating games like Crush Crush are a game combination most wouldn't expect to be fun. Simply clicking one or two buttons and waiting doesn't seem much like gameplay, but it completes its purpose in forcing the player to slow down and enjoy the ride. Next time you feel like relaxing after a long day, consider booting up an idle/dating sim game.

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