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Will your love keep you alive? Couples’ games test levels of collaboration, care
How well would you and your partner cope in a world of angry monsters, life-and-death decisions, danger and deprivation? New videogames offer a different kind of role-play.
Looking to take your relationship to the next level? You might want to try a videogame.
Couples’ games such as Haven (2020), Until Dawn (2015), Overcooked (2016) and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (LiDS; 2015) aim to test how well romantic partners communicate, collaborate, support each other, and strategise.
In LiDS, for instance, players explore a vibrant galaxy in a large neon battleship that can only be controlled when the two work together, one manning turrets, lasers and shields as the other works the thrusters.
In the interactive game Until Dawn, the battleground shifts with each decision a couple makes. Meanwhile their friends’ lives and their own hang in the balance.
In Haven, the battle is more abstract. How much of a premium do we place on a partner’s happiness, when times are hard and not everything is going our way?
These games can be revealing for couples who have been together a long time, say counsellors. They can help answers such as, how has the dynamic shifted; and, is one of us too quick to act, thereby quashing the other’s initiative? They can impart lessons in love that carry over into the real world.
What is not advisable is to play such games if you are already facing problems as a couple, says dating and relationship coach Simran Mangharam. “These could add to the stress in ways that might be hard to predict. In an unsupervised environment, they could lead to damaging confrontations that could be hard to come back from,” Mangharam says.
Assuming all is well, here then are six new games to try out.
It Takes Two (2021)
This one begins, rather ominously, with a couple on the brink of divorce. The wife May is an engineer and the husband Cody, a gardener. The couple is raising a daughter Rose, who is upset about the impending split.
In a magical turn of events, Cody and May are transformed into cloth dolls. As they panic with their noodle arms, they are greeted by a talking book, The Book of Love, which tells them they’ll return to their human bodies once they work out their differences.
Their first challenge is finding a way to tell Rose what has happened. Through the game, Max and Cody must work together to make their way through various challenges, avoiding new perils such as an open tool box, and a vacuum cleaner angry at being discarded. Each obstacle can only be overcome if they work together. In the end, it’s a kiss that helps them break the spell.
Haven (2020)
Two young lovers, faced with opposition from their families, flee to a remote, abandoned planet so they can stay together. Through the game, they must scour this new world for things they can use to turn their ship into a comfortable home. They must also cook, gather valuable resources to get them through the day, and stay ahead of a corruptive contaminant called Rust.
Can one still make the time to forage for a partner’s favourite ingredient, and make them the favourite dish that brings them such joy? How much of a premium do we place on a loved one’s happiness, when times are hard and not everything is going our way? The game’s lessons seem designed to carry over into the real world.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (2015)
This sci-fi, space-based game hinges on communication and teamwork. As a force called Anti-Love threatens the universe, the players must navigate the galaxy’s mazes in a neon battleship that they can only control together (one must steer, while the other defends). The players must make it through asteroid belts, dock safely at space stations, rescue space bunnies, and gather gems in floating containers to gain new abilities.
Until Dawn (2015)
In this rather gruesome interactive game, a couple must try to save their friends as an array of monsters attacks them at a remote ski resort. The first choice is an interesting one: defend or attack? The couple playing can choose to help their friends evade the monsters, or kill the monsters in increasingly brutal ways. Each move alters the plot a little, in a version of the butterfly effect (think Black Mirror: Bandersnatch).
Until Dawn is built around the concept of choice. The two players’ actions determine who lives and who dies, which of their friends’ relationships flourish and which wilt; even how the non-player characters interact with one another. There are no guaranteed happy endings; too many wrong moves and everyone could end up dead.
Don’t Starve Together (2016)
Darkness is the enemy; players must find enough to eat as they build a base camp and battle monsters to stay alive. This will only work if they can divide the tasks up efficiently, maximise output, and play to each other’s strengths. Which partner is likely to be the better hunter? Can the other stay home, tend the farm and protect the base? Creativity is key. You could end the game surprised at what your partner can achieve with just a few twigs and a scrap of cloth.
