I Just Want To Be Single!! is a dating sim where you don't want to date anyone, you just want to be friends.

It begins as every Japan-set dating sim worth its salt does — with a transfer student.

It’s Aya’s first day at the ominously-named ‘Love-Love All-Girls High School’, and they’re (understandably) a little nervous. Shy and socially anxious, they hope they’ll manage to make a friend or two. Turns out their classmates are eager - perhaps a little too eager - to get acquainted. Aya is set upon by a stampede of besotted young women, but Aya doesn’t have romance on the brain themselves. “I Just Want To Be Single!” they yell. Cue chirpy acapella theme music.

I Just Want To Be Single!!: Season One, recently released on Steam in Early Access, is a game you’d be forgiven for overlooking on a Steam Store that today is packed with visual novels from Western indie devs. A handful carry a reverence and understanding of the medium (the excellent VA-11 HALL-A, for example), but many take a mocking, ironic approach, or exist primarily to titillate, such that fans have grown wary. Tsundere Studio’s debut, I Just Want To Be Single!! stands out from this crowd.

Billed as ‘aromantic, asexual, and nonbinary’, I Just Want To Be Single!!'s player protagonist, Aya, is a reflection of its mononymous lead developer ‘m.’. “I’m still figuring things out about myself and this game is an extension of that,” m. tells me over Discord. “The story in this game is largely about finding yourself and who you want to become.”

  • Lime Buzz (fae/she)@beehaw.orgEnglish
    11·
    15 days ago

    Hmmmm, a bit confusing it’s a dating sim if it’s meant to be about an AroAce person, but it’s somewhat understandable if somebody is trying to figure themselves out.

    Might check it out once it’s complete (early access is too hard to trust especially with a newly made studio).

    • Goretantath@lemm.eeEnglish
      16·
      15 days ago

      Yeah, i’d just call it a visual novel. If you aren’t dating in it then its not a dating aimulator.

      • Sas [she/her]@beehaw.org
        5·
        14 days ago

        Disclaimer: I’ve not played the game and don’t know if it’s accurate but it could be about going on dates with the expectation of it just being a friend date but then the other person wants more and stuff like that. Like how in BG3 you just want to dance a bit with Wyll and he randomly tries to kiss you

      • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        It’s an anti-dating simulator… Kind of like an anti-joke or an anti-game, they’re subcategories of jokes and games

        If you invert the game mechanic, you’re still using the mechanic. That’s very different from not using the mechanic