COMPLETE: Five Nights of Love
Sep. 1st, 2018 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoI played Can You Escape Fate? a while back, which served as this blog's introduction to "looks like Cheap Bootleg Play Store Atrocity Tourism Hell except it's actually surprisingly good" specialist JCSoft. First off, I am thrilled to learn that the latest in the Can You Escape series, Can You Escape Heartbreak?, is now out. I don't know when I'll get around to it, especially since I kind of want to give JCSoft's releases room to breathe in between each other, but rest assured that I will be playing (and blogging about) that one someday.
In the meantime, I felt like getting one of their earlier efforts out of the way. Five Nights of Love is pretty much exactly what it looks like: a shameless FNAF bootleg dating sim.
(The Play Store link lists its title as "Five Tries At Love", but every screenshot there and even the URL in that link call it "Five Nights of Love", which is also the name it has on your system when you install it. I'm going to assume FTAL is the incredibly thin veil to avoid takedown notices, while FNoL is its actual name because come on you're not fooling anyone. I'll refer to it as FNoL in this review.)
The player has a power gauge, and can do things at various costs. It takes 3% of your energy to sweep the floors in the control room, which is how you earn extra money. It takes 1% to visit one of the other rooms instead, and if there's an animatronic in there, it takes 10% to talk to them. When you run out of energy, you can end the night. The animatronics have an affection gauge that goes up when you talk to them, give them gifts, or successfully answer them when they quiz you about things they mentioned when you talked to them. If you can get any animatronic to 100% before your five nights are up (which really is not hard to do,) you get their ending.
There isn't a ton of gameplay, here. There are something like twelve animatronics in this release, and you pretty much get the point of how to grind numbers after the first one. If you stick around after that, then it's mostly just to see everyone's routes. This being both a dating sim and an FNAF bootleg, there's a mix of characters with actual wholesome romances, mustache-twirling "Mwahaha, you idiot, you thought I actually liked you? I was fooling you to get your guard down, AND NOW YOU DIE" endings, and of course a ton of yandere "together forever" mixtures of the two. A few even have actual jumpscares when they turn on you.
But hey. The perils of being attracted to creepy evil things, right?
Even though "better than expected" is JCSoft's entire thing, I kind of went into this one... well, not expecting much? JCSoft appears to be on an upward trend with the quality of its releases. The original Can You Escape Love? actually wasn't bad and was quite enjoyable for what it was, but Can You Escape Fate? improved on it so dramatically that by comparison CYEL maybe does look a bit shabby after all. Five Nights of Love is one of their earlier releases, so I was worried it might show.
Does it? Well, yes, but not as much as you're probably expecting it to. This is early JCSoft, but it's still JCSoft, meaning it's actually not terrible. I came in with an admittedly low bar, but the game did clear it. Solid C+ to B- effort, here.
In conclusion: If you go into this game briefly just to cozy up to one or two of the more attractive characters, get the point, and move on, then you had a decent amount of fun for about 15 minutes all for the cost of Free. I'm not saying this is the greatest and highest quality game ever made, but it's... why not, you know? I'm glad this experience exists.
In the meantime, I felt like getting one of their earlier efforts out of the way. Five Nights of Love is pretty much exactly what it looks like: a shameless FNAF bootleg dating sim.
(The Play Store link lists its title as "Five Tries At Love", but every screenshot there and even the URL in that link call it "Five Nights of Love", which is also the name it has on your system when you install it. I'm going to assume FTAL is the incredibly thin veil to avoid takedown notices, while FNoL is its actual name because come on you're not fooling anyone. I'll refer to it as FNoL in this review.)
The player has a power gauge, and can do things at various costs. It takes 3% of your energy to sweep the floors in the control room, which is how you earn extra money. It takes 1% to visit one of the other rooms instead, and if there's an animatronic in there, it takes 10% to talk to them. When you run out of energy, you can end the night. The animatronics have an affection gauge that goes up when you talk to them, give them gifts, or successfully answer them when they quiz you about things they mentioned when you talked to them. If you can get any animatronic to 100% before your five nights are up (which really is not hard to do,) you get their ending.
There isn't a ton of gameplay, here. There are something like twelve animatronics in this release, and you pretty much get the point of how to grind numbers after the first one. If you stick around after that, then it's mostly just to see everyone's routes. This being both a dating sim and an FNAF bootleg, there's a mix of characters with actual wholesome romances, mustache-twirling "Mwahaha, you idiot, you thought I actually liked you? I was fooling you to get your guard down, AND NOW YOU DIE" endings, and of course a ton of yandere "together forever" mixtures of the two. A few even have actual jumpscares when they turn on you.
But hey. The perils of being attracted to creepy evil things, right?
Even though "better than expected" is JCSoft's entire thing, I kind of went into this one... well, not expecting much? JCSoft appears to be on an upward trend with the quality of its releases. The original Can You Escape Love? actually wasn't bad and was quite enjoyable for what it was, but Can You Escape Fate? improved on it so dramatically that by comparison CYEL maybe does look a bit shabby after all. Five Nights of Love is one of their earlier releases, so I was worried it might show.
Does it? Well, yes, but not as much as you're probably expecting it to. This is early JCSoft, but it's still JCSoft, meaning it's actually not terrible. I came in with an admittedly low bar, but the game did clear it. Solid C+ to B- effort, here.
In conclusion: If you go into this game briefly just to cozy up to one or two of the more attractive characters, get the point, and move on, then you had a decent amount of fun for about 15 minutes all for the cost of Free. I'm not saying this is the greatest and highest quality game ever made, but it's... why not, you know? I'm glad this experience exists.