Love is Dead

Love is Dead takes the usual romance title and flips it into a darker comic idea, so the mood is clear before the first line of play. By our assessment, it fits players who enjoy offbeat puzzle or adventure games with deadpan humor, odd premises, and a little bite in the writing. The strength is that it does not hide what it is trying to be: a sharply pitched concept can make a small game memorable. The trade-off is that the joke has to keep earning itself, because a title like this leaves little room for surprise if the rest of the game is flat. In practice, the pleasure comes from the tone as much as from the mechanics, which means the writing and the structure have to carry each other. It sits nearer to darkly comic indie titles than to earnest relationship games, and the name does most of the framing work right away.