Tender for Android

It’s extremely, painfully realistic. The aliens will ghost you, insult you for no apparent reason, and are often cheating on their partners who show up to yell at you. I’m honestly not sure what the devs were thinking. They put a lot of cute and clever references and memes in the app, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any chance of actually finding someone you like and starting a ‘relationship’ with them. Many of the conversations won’t have good options and are obviously set up so you can’t ever make a successful match. Two stars for almost managing to be worth the money. I’d be willing to change it to five if they ever put out an update and add some success stories to go with the forced failures.

Tender is a roller coaster of emotions; it’s a thoughtful reflection on dating app culture and what it means to try to connect to other people using technology. The writing, art, and app are very well crafted. To be transparent, I helped the developers test the game while it was in production, but I think I would still really like it without knowing them :)

Not sure where to start with this. It is, after all, a dating game with aliens. The premise is cute, the art is cute. *Possible Spoilers* Almost all of the characters are either mean, emotionally unavailable, or just plain ghost you. Of the characters you swipe right on, less than half will match with you and then even fewer still will actually interact with you. Also, be aware a profile for your “ex” will pop up (when setting up your character you tell the system their name) and that may be difficult for some folks. Was this game worth the price? Eh….for me, no. I played through once (and “lost”, as in I maxed out the amount of dates you’re allowed to have before the game makes you start over) and will not be playing it again.

The concept and art style for the game are great! The pacing and actual stories… not so much. If I wanted to wait hours for barely any matches and a couple of lack luster messages, I’d re-download tinder. None of the replies are something I would actually say. For example, one of the characters genuinely tries to start a conversation with you and the only options are short one or three word replies. So of course the character unmatches you. What even am I supposed to do with that? I’m not this boring or short with people, and frankly I wouldn’t want to date the player either. Have yet to have a date go right… just seems frustrating that everything goes south and there are no good options to make things go right. I want to get to know the characters and enjoy a story, not act like a closed off jerk to them and end up feeling lonelier than when I started. I’d even take a crazy dramatic cheater or yandere twist over this lukewarm small talk. Ugh.

I came across the pride section and scrolled and saw this, I liked the art style and it looked cute, so I got it. Oh. My. Gosh. The art style is truly as good as it looked on the app store, the mechanics run smoothly, and the ending I got was pretty cute. The ending I got was joining Leela, and its a really sweet ending. I likes the first date at their little dance at the farm, and liked how theres ending dialogue. Overall pretty fun. I love this game, however I wish that the dates were longer, on the first date I did with a character I forgot the name of I noticed that the date didn’t take me more than a couple minutes, which made me a bit sad since you wait so long for the date. Thats really my biggest pet peeve about the game, you wait a long time for things. But, its accurate. Love doesn’t develop overnight, and it makes sense that goes the same for a simulated one. Overall the game was really fun, I've only played one play through, but definitely will start another!