Developed/Published by: David B. Cooper
Released: 11/06/2021
Completed: 22/03/2026
Completion: Finished it with every ending!

I feel like every article I start recently has me open it by going “I had a research-related reason to play this…” and even though that’s usually true, how much it matters is debatable. I’m a man of rabbit holes, and it just happens to be the rabbit hole I found myself heading down was one of visual novels, and I wanted to play some quick ones to feel them out again. Although it’s a genre I like, I tend to rarely engage with it¹, and I don’t think I’ve played one since… Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney in like 2022?

(I suppose it depends on how genre essentialist you are. Ace Attorney is an adventure game, in many respects, and Paradise Killer and 1000x Resist skirt close to visual novel. I’m not really that bothered about genre, but in this case I was looking for what people think of as “pure” examples.)

Anyway, Doomed Love is in the dating sim parody genre? Sort of? It gives the reviewers of Edge what they always wanted (you can talk to the monsters) as you play a simple zombieman preparing for the “Icon of Sin Festival” with your friends Cacodemon, Revenant, Mancubus and Demon–one of whom you may wish to take to the festival…

I believe visual novel-style dating sim die hards rankle a bit at the way in which the genre can be treated as a joke (especially as a marketing stunt, as seen with I Love You, Colonel Sanders) but Doomed Love (I think) joins the like of Hatoful Boyfriend in taking the style seriously–even if it doesn’t go to the absurd lengths that Hatoful Boyfriend does. 

It’s a simple game–there’s only a couple of choices, and you can run through the game with every possible “date” within about twenty minutes–but it’s charming, and somehow there’s no friction with the game’s treatment of the cast of Doom as (essentially) high schoolers. I suppose you could complain that means that the Doom setting is really just a bit of set dressing, but I prefer that it takes the visual novel more seriously than it takes Doom.

I mean, I was really surprised by how in the short runtime each little narrative pays off. My absolute favourite being the Demon storyline, where the Demon becomes comfortable expressing their own unique identity and choosing their own name.

“It’s got a good heart” seems like a weird thing to say about a game about demons, but, well, Doomed Love has a good heart. 

Will I ever play it again? I’ve rinsed it, so I’m good. 

Final Thought: I googled David B Cooper and realised his name is… D. B. Cooper. Incredible to think he’d turn to writing visual novels after such a sensational crime.

1. Weirdly, this is because usually when I think of playing one I look at my shelves of unread books and think “you know, if I’m going to do all that reading…” and then I just read a bunch of random Wikipedia pages or something instead. ↩︎