Sucker for Love: Prelude ★★★★☆

Sucker for Love: Prelude, more like a sucker for smooches.

Sucker for Love: Prelude and every other video linked to it can be seen on our Patreon, and if you’re wanting to know what other games we’ve played and have posts for, here’s our list of current games.

• Choices Matter
• Hand-drawn
• Horror
• Indie
• Romance
• Singleplayer
• Visual Novel

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Not Now Mom Podcast Transcript

This is the transcript of our podcast episode for Sucker for Love: Prelude on Not Now Mom, I’m Gaming.

[scene] means it’s a scene within the game.

All links within this section do not pertain to the game itself, and don’t need to be clicked. They are affiliate links that take you to random products I think are interesting.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Not Now Mom, I’m Gaming.

My name is Kay and on this episode we’ll be talking about Sucker for Love: Prelude.

This will not be a very long episode, because the prelude is very short. Also, I’m not really sure what the full game is going to be like, if this is even part of the full game of it’s just kind of a section that they created first and it’s separate from Sucker for Love: First Date.

Maybe this is a game where you want a smooch, but the full game you want an actual date then?

But people smooch on the first date, don’t they?

I actually don’t know. I’ve never liked smooching. Something about swapping saliva grosses me out. But I’ll read all about it and more in smut books, so there’s that.

Speaking of smut, this game is why you shouldn’t always listen to what the tags on Steam games say, because it says sexual content, but this game doesn’t have that kind of content, unless people are mistaking wanting kisses for being insatiably horny.

Like…friends…let’s go by the fact that if it’s on the Hub, it’s probably sexual content. I guess some people can watch two people kissing and hit the finish line, but holy hell what am I even talking about at this point.

Just, don’t always look too into Steam tags. They aren’t always right.

The blurb for Sucker for Love: Prelude states this:

Put the love in Lovecraftian! We all know what it’s like to be lonely. But what if you simped for the biggest E-girl (Eldritch girl) in all the cosmos? How would you even get her to notice you? Luckily, with the power of a strange pink necronomicon, you have the chance to make your restless dreams into a dark and terrifying reality!

As of this moment, the reviews sit at a very positive with an all-time peak of 25 players, but I’m pretty sure this game was showcased mainly for itchio and not Steam. Plus, it’s just the prelude, not the full Sucker for Love games.

Also, there are no achievements, but just the smooch is enough.

Now for the gameplay review.

The title screen has the eldritch woman of our dreams coming in for what looks like a smooch, though due to her…tentacular lips, it’s hard to tell what she really looks like here.

As far as the settings, you can turn the voice-over on or off, and have the game at full-screen or windowed. If the box has an X, that means it’s enabled, just so you know.

A little thing with the full-screen, the game flickers. I don’t know if it was just me and my computer specs that caused it to have the problem, but it’s really bad. The flickering is so bad it was messing with my eyes and I can handle such things to a certain extent in games.

But if you go windowed mode, it’s small. And you can’t increase the size of it by maximizing the screen.

So that all around kind of sucks, but it’s what I went through.

The title screen also sort of has the kind of effect that happens in VHS–bits of the screen distort. I’m not sure if this is supposed to represent our sanity being challenged, but I don’t think it really comes across as that. I mean, it makes sense that’s why it’s used due to her being an eldritch being, but I wonder if there was a better way to interpret it or not.

I also can’t forget to mention that our cursor is a pointed finger.

I assume because we’ll be reading from a book and people will sometimes follow words with their finger to keep track where they are.

When we start the game, we find out we’re trying to get in touch with an eldritch being that had appeared in our dreams a year ago, who called herself Ln’eta. And so for an entire year we’ve just been buying these fake books that were supposed to be a legit necronomicon for contacting this being.

The book we get is pink, which makes it questionable on authenticity, but it’s also very well crafted.

Once we get to the objective of performing The Calling ritual, I, sadly enough, got a bit stumped on what to do.

I had no idea how to start the ritual and what I needed to click on to trigger it, because there was nothing to tell me how to proceed.

Most people will realize we just got a book. And that you need to open the book to read the ritual.

But the thing with me not understanding this is because whenever I’m in a bit of a point-and-click style of game and there’s a bar of some kind at the bottom of the screen, I automatically go into hidden object game mode. And if you’ve never played a HOG, there’s typically a bar at the bottom where items go that you pick up.

So because the “bar” on the bottom is empty, I thought I didn’t have anything on my person, when in reality, it’s not a bar, it’s a book.

Not a lot of people are going to get stumped on this part.

But now maybe you understand why I did, if you ever watch my play-through of the game.

When you open the book, the ritual name is written on the opposite side of the instructions, and in order to complete the ritual, you must do everything within the instructions. I don’t think you can even speak the chant if you don’t do the instructions correctly.

To speak the chant, you must slowly drag your cursor over the text.

If you mess up by going too fast, you’ll have to chant it from the start again.

Some of the instructions will require you to wear something or pick something up. You can tell what you have on you by clicking on the items tab on the left and a silhouette of your character will appear with slots on it. Depending on what you have is where the item will be if you’ve picked it up.

After performing The Calling, an eldritch being will appear.

And if you’re wondering what wish we want her to grant…

It’s to have a smooch.

[scene]

Her reaction is on point.

Before I get too far ahead, I really like how she came in initially portrayed as this dark scary being silhouetted in red and then turned into this cute adorable female squid-faced eldritch. I don’t think I’d be as into her as our guy is, but…it’s the face.

[scene]

I love her voice.

It’s so girly and perfect for sounding flirty and making you feel like you’re a good boy for getting the rituals right. It also contradicts her being a scary eldritch being that can destroy all of humanity and shatter your mind.

Eventually she sees the book you have and states that it’s a survival guide for dating her.

Perfect.

Literally the thing we’ve spent a year looking for.

Now that we have the book, she states that as long as we make it to the end of all the rituals, she’ll make it worth our while. Which means we’ll get our smooch. And the only reason we’re reading through the rituals is because it’s going to protect our sanity.

To start the date off, we’re performing Invoke the Depths.

It states at the end of the page that we’re not to look out our window from now on after completing it. If you’re like me and curious what will happen if you do so, you’ll get a bad ending.

There’s no manual saves, but it shouldn’t take too long to catch up to where you were, no matter where you screw up in the game. I think the longest it’ll take for you to get where you are is if you finish the game first and then want to go back for another ending.

There’s not much to show that you’ve brought the outer depths closer aside from a more greenish-blue light coming through the windows.

Now we’ll be performing Metamorphosis.

This is the first ritual where it’s going to be on two pages.

Also, I’m not sure why it states that you need to perform the two initial rituals first, unless you can actually turn to this page and try completing it first. I’ve not tried it, but I figured that every other page is in gibberish until you get past the required ritual.

What’s funny is on the second page of the ritual it states to remember the second step on the previous page, which says “This is the point of no return” and uses your name.

I assume it’s using the name you chose on your Steam profile, not the username.

After you’ve spoken the ritual lines, you’ll notice some changes.

First, the cursor is no longer a pointer finger, but a tentacle. Second, the mannequin in the background has tears of blood oozing out of its eye sockets instead of a mask, meaning the mask is officially your new face.

I don’t know if this means we’re turning into an eldritch being ourselves or not, because she still ends up saying we’re going to die once all of humanity is gone.

The next page is labeled Breakup.

I did not do this ritual until after I’d already completed the game, so I don’t know exactly when is an appropriate time to do it and when it’s a bad time–if there is even a bad time to do it.

But you have to chant it three times in a row, and when you linger too long on the page…

[scene]

Yeah, she can be a little scary.

Instead of risking my life right after she threatened it, I moved onto performing Prepare Offering.

This is the first time you’ll be changing the image on the chalkboard by the window. Don’t accidentally click the window. It won’t end well.

At this point she states that she’s going to go out and take a walk, which is kind of rubbing it in our face that she’s able to leave the apartment while we’re stuck here unable to even look outside without our brain fizzling out.

It also might be a really good moment to try out the Breakup ritual, though I didn’t.

Performing Reach Into Oblivion requires another life-form in the form of a turtle.

Ironically, I don’t think the turtle dies despite being a bloody mess afterwards. Unless you place the dead thing back into its cage just so you’re not carrying the carcass around the room.

On the wall, “Her Name” is written all down it.

I don’t know why it says those two words and not her actual name over and over.

Another questionable visual is the fact that we don’t have a tentacle hand anymore; it’s now a bloody pointer finger hand, maybe signifying we’re human again and slowly dying from being too close to an eldritch god that happens to be somewhere close by.

Maybe that’s why Ln’eta left?

When you next open the book, it flips through several pages of a creepy face and hand coming out of the darkness towards you, and during the page-flips you can read the line, “Nothing is just your imagination.”

Now our objective has shifted to Survive, and things become a little more tense.

Mainly due to the fact that the page states:

Once you start this ritual, complete all three pages quickly. You will be vulnerable until you finish.

Which sets up a time limit. And I do believe there is something of a time limit going on here, because when you finish this page, you will see tentacles coming in through the window, and they stretch further into the room, creating a sense of urgency.

Especially when it comes to changing the images on the chalkboard.

Eventually Ln’eta comes back while you’re rushing through your chants and comforts you with the choice of being destroyed first or last when she actually wakes up.

I’ve actually got a question on that.

If she’s out there still asleep and not quite awake yet, what part of her are we talking to? Is it a sliver of her consciousness made manifest or something else? How is she both out there and in here all at once?

Everything is seemingly back to normal–as normal as tentacle hands get–when we perform Dark Communion, just know that the offering it wants isn’t the turtle, it’s the slice of cake that’s in the fridge.

I honestly forgot all about the cake after being so frazzled about almost dying.

It wouldn’t be so bad since we know we’re going to die anyway, but we need our smooch first.

Finally, we get to our Final Pledge, which will apparently be the last words to be spoken by humanity, though I’m not sure I believe that, because there’s a lot of people out in the world and we tend to never stop talking.

During the ritual, we’re stabbing ourselves in the heart several times with the ritual knife.

And obviously I was wrong about not having the last words of humanity, because I’m no longer able to talk at this point. Ln’eta is talking for us, and she has a wonderfully logical reason as to why the world is going to end.

[scene]

Makes sense, right?

And hey, we got our kiss.

Just not really sure why our eyes are glowing red, but also, Ln’eta looks like she has a tail even though it’s a tentacle from her actual self outside the window.

All right, we still have one more ending to get and when I loaded up the game again, I decided to perform the Breakup when she was laying on the bed for a nap. Maybe not the wisest point to try it, considering she asked for all the lights to be out and we have to turn them on for the ritual, but she didn’t wake up.

I’m also not sure if I have to read the lines three times in a certain amount of time before she catches us.

I was pretty quick about it because I’m just that afraid of her.

Plus her outside self was freaking me out by showing snippets of itself as if it knew what I was doing even if she was still laying on the bed.

After the ritual is completed, Ln’eta has become even more adorable, if not a lot more sad.

She’s now a baby squid.

That’s not why she’s sad though. We kind of severed our connection, although she thinks she’s still in control of the situation because at this point, we haven’t gotten our smooch as far as she’s concerned.

Here’s our take on that.

[scene]

Absolutely horrifying. Our lips look like we’ve got stung by a bee on them and we’re having an allergic reaction. That punch was absolutely deserved.

And I love how it says it’s a good enough ending.

And that’s the end of Sucker for Love: Prelude.

Very short game, but man does it deliver, in more ways than one, clearly. I just wish I could’ve played it in full-screen instead of windowed mode, but it didn’t really matter too much in the end. I managed to finish it without having to deal with all the screen flickering.

Like I said, I don’t know if the full game sets off from where this ends, or if this is part of the full game, or if it’s just a kind of teaser at this point and the full game will pretend that this never happened in the first place.

Either way, we’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to smooch an eldritch being, and it’s enough to want more.

Until our next date, if you’re found swiping right on an eldritch being, just say, Not Now Mom, I’m Gaming.