If you see a game featuring a hot guy and a name like Eros Xavier’s Love Solutions, your mind immediately goes to dating sim, right? Well, you’d be wrong. You’ll find the complete opposite within — instead of encouraging romance to blossom, you’ll be working to cause relationship breakups worthy of a Taylor Swift song.
EGX 2022 introduced me to Eros Xavier’s Love Solutions, a narrative-driven puzzle game that has you step into the stylish shoes of Eros Xavier, a retired cupid. Despite having paired together some of the greatest power couples ever known, Eros is now cynical about romance and has opened a private business where people can hire him to destroy relationships instead of bringing them to life. He’s like us game journalists - cynical, broken, and distrustful of things we used to love. Poor guy.
Love Solutions has a private-eye feel to it. Like cops who become jaded and quit the force, Eros has struck out on his own. People knock on his office door — spurned lovers, meddling family members, or even friends — all asking for his help to ruin a relationship. The case files on your desk focus on matters of the heart. More specifically, breaking them into tiny little pieces.
After reading the case file about the troubled love lives of Cassidy and Himesh, especially their quirks and dislikes, I was thrown into their apartment to meddle. You are given a to-do list of things to achieve. For example, you’ll have to make the kitchen smell bad or ruin the dinner, but you have to figure out exactly how to accomplish that yourself without being spotted or making it all too obvious.
You can pan across the apartment and interact with objects, such as opening cupboards or grabbing things to move them around. The case file explained that Himesh was particular about his personal belongings, so naturally, I messed up his model plane display. The precious picture on the wall? Time to throw that in the bin, too. And, of course, by putting some bread in the toaster and burning it, I was soon able to stink the kitchen out without starting a house fire.
You don’t have to complete every objective, just enough to cause an argument and break your target lovebirds apart. The consequences of your actions are shown through a Frustration Meter on the right side of the screen, and once you’ve caused enough mischief, a pop-up will appear to tell you it’s time for a fight between our target couple.
At this point in the demo, I was expecting to pat myself on the back for a job well done, but the narrative took an unexpectedly dark turn. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s clear that this is more than just a bout of funny, mischievous shenanigans. The game's events aren’t as straightforward as you might think, and you’ll find Eros having to face his own emotional trauma from past relationships while also dealing with the consequences of ruining others. It’s a nice twist, and gives each individual case meaning while hopefully building towards an overarching narrative.
Eros Xavier’s Love Solutions has been designed and developed by Rafif Kalantan as part of her master’s program for the National Film and Television School. Her vision when creating games is to include dark humor, mental health, and diversity, all of which can be seen in abundance here.
It was one of my firm favourites from this past weekend's EGX 2022 in London, offering up an intriguing concept that inverts the normal gameplay of stereotypical romance games, though as much as I loved sowing discord, I can’t help hoping that Eros reignites a little passion in his heart as the story goes on.
“It's been wonderful seeing everyone's reaction to the game, it gave me and all the other team members more fuel to keep working on the game,” Kalantan told me. “It's been absolutely amazing getting all this support and hearing how everyone is excited about a full release! We truly hope everyone finds joy and understanding in this game through its narrative.”
Kalantan is currently still looking for a publisher to take Eros under its wing. You can support Eros Xavier’s Love Solutions and stay up to date with its progress on Twitter.
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=320&h=160&dpr=1.5)
