Having played quite a number of dating games at this point on the Switch, when I see a game billed with that general description it sets up certain expectations in my mind. Some preliminary light conversations, getting to know what makes the other person tick, and then depending on the game a variety of potentially romantic components. With this involving a giant woman, I was actually expecting something positively weird like the portion of Gulliver’s Travels where he visits Brobdingnag, which got quite freaky considering it was assigned reading in school. Then, only a few minutes in, when Saeko simply decided to eat someone I was talking to, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be going in that direction… at all.

Welcome to the world of rug pull pseudo-horror, in case that wasn’t already clear. Since you’re not as heavily invested in the illusion when the tone changes, when compared to something like Doki Doki Literature Club this doesn’t pack the same wallop, but it does at least do a fair job of making you uncomfortable. The reason for that is that, ultimately, you end up being the arbiter of who’s getting eaten every day, compliments of some food that will make them extra tasty, so there’s no avoiding some grim decisions. Though being honest those decisions have serious constraints so they don’t feel like you have total control either, diminishing the illusion just a bit.

The flipside of that Giantess Survivor portion of the experience involves you talking to Seako every night, which opens the door to some potential for interesting insights, but instead also feels like it becomes more of an exercise. The challenge here is that you’ll need to be an attentive and responsive listener, but at the same time not too “noisy”. Don’t talk enough and it’s game over, talk too much it’s game over, disagree with her a little too much and it’s game over. Sure, in this sort of power dynamic it’s perfectly believable that you’d need to walk on eggshells every moment, and that provides for much of the game’s horror. That said, it also feels like a convenient way to get railroaded as a player, losing agency and an ability to make the game feel less linear. If you’re looking for something unnerving and odd, there’s no question that this delivers that well for a few hours, just be sure to understand that it has a number of guardrails that constrain your ability to dig deeper into the experience.