Sucker for Love: Date to Die For Review – Visual Novel of the Year Contender

Sucker for Love: Date to Die For (DtDF) is the second game in the Sucker for Love series and is a visual novel with retro themes and artwork around dating eldritch beings. There’s rituals, item gathering and new to the SfL series is moving room to room within a house, slowly opening doors to see if there’s threats on the other side. There’s also love, of course, with an outer god.

There’s so much to cover about how DtDF is probably one of if not the best visual novel of 2024 that it’s difficult to pick what to dive into. You have amazing audio with delicious audio queues as you do everything within the game. Storytelling that’s unique and fits in with the Lovecraftian themes. There’s so much, but let’s focus on what truly makes this a standout game.

If you’re just curious what our opinion is: the game is addictive and for a horror game, one of the easiest to play out there. The reviewer is someone who can’t stand jumpscares and was able to 100% it on Steam (we have a guide too!):

Change of Scenery in Date to Die For

The first Sucker for Love game, First Date, focused primarily on D and his flat or apartment. In DtDF you’ve got an entire house to explore. There’s a first floor, a crawlspace and then the upper level. You move around the house similar to Danganronpa / old school dungeon crawlers (I’m talking DOS / NES) that are 360 degree 2D environments and a door mechanic where you can slightly open a door to peak what’s on the other side.

Unlike Danganronpa and more like Danganronpa 3, the rooms can have jump scares waiting for you. These are optional, there’s a setting to warn when something scary is about to happen, but the game does have a lot of emotion to it. It’s that creepiness Gone Home had with a sprinkle of something may be in that dark room.

You’re still casting rituals, which for me was the beauty of the first one, but they’re also less chaotic this time around. You’re given more advanced directions with clearer instructions and fewer steps, but you’re also more focused on either navigating the home or dodging threats (and to be fair, the house is safer than it is not).

A Large Cast and More Accessible Game

One thing to note is the game has more characters than the first did. You’ve got an entirely new story with a new protaganist. There’s a lot more characters roaming around this time to meet and a lot of interesting dynamics in their stories.

The game is also heckin’ accessible. The sound based mechanics have subtitles which are explicit. The jump scares are actually optional. There’s a feature in the settings that can warn when a jumpscare is about to occur, sometimes letting you avoid the encounter entirely. You’re given plenty of time to deal with everything in the game as well.

More horror games should take this route to not so much lower the difficulty, but lower the heart pounding anxiety you can feel. The game’s house is atmospherically creepy enough and wandering around it can be nerve wrecking.

Oh and as far as the things that come for you, everything is pretty much so well laid out. Without spoilers, it’s hard to describe.

Graphics and Sound to Date to Die For

The graphics have a retro anime / visual novel style to them that makes them really cozy. Similar to the first game, everything is lovingly hand drawn and this time it includes a gorgeous home that has so many various rooms, one of them during the ending of a chapter you only see for a moment but it’s still so beautiful. The entire house is fully remodeled every time, including rooms you’d normally not pass through.

There’s no “you can’t do that” or “I don’t need to go that way.” Instead they fully draw the entire house out and give you the freedom to move around every one of its iterations.

The sound is both part of the gameplay (you can avoid a lot of things through listening (with accessible subtitles!)) and atmosphere. The graphics do the job of painting the visual but the surreal comes to life with the soundtrack. The music is consistently flowing between the different states of the game which range from serent to anxious.

The actual movement and game itself works perfectly fine and the visual novel needs are all there, including a spray bottle to avoid being hit on and ctrl to skip dialog you may have heard or just don’t want to hear.

The voice acting is just spot on as well, to note.

Date to Die For – A Game to Date For

Date to Die For is a worthwhile romp for fans of the first game, but also anyone who loves a good visual novel and wants an amount of scary that someone who never plays jumpscare type games is good with. It fits more with Alan Wake than it does Five Nights and the atmosphere is just beautiful.

You don’t need to play the first game in the series to get the second, although there are some reoccurring characters.

We highly recommend Sucker for Love: Date to Die For on Steam (steampowered.com). Even not on sale and even with its short play length (about 3 to 4 hours), it’s still unimaginably fantastic.

Note: We received a steam key for free from the developer.