Year 2021+ Essays

Why You Should Play "Mystic Messenger"

        Mystic messenger is the best dating simulator game because of the plot and how the game changes its outcome through your choices. It was developed by Cheritz, being released in 2016 on platforms such as IOS and Android. Just a year after Mystic Messenger's debut, it was awarded Best Indie Game at the Korea Game Awards.  This establishes good credibility because that means Cheritz went against hundreds of other Indie games that were also competing for the award and still won.

        While Mystic Messenger is similar to most female dating simulators, which are games where you are a female and "date" online fictional personas, you can change your gender if desired. From a computer hacker to a businessman, Cheritz provided a wide variety of persona's, all with an equally wide variety of backstories. The more you learn about these digital humans, the more you want to explore deeper into their lives.

        Alongside these glorious fictional characters are a vast amount of routes and endings. All of these hinge on the ability to make wise decisions. Unlike the majority of simulation developers, Cheritz created the ability to get bad endings. Not only are there possibilities of getting bad endings, but characters can die from them too, which creates high stakes for making a couple bad choices. Every action has a reaction. Mystic Messenger's characters come alive before the player's eyes. They act and react like a normal group of friends would, all having a deep connection with each other. In saying that, there are also the ones that don't get along well, love rivalries, and most of all, the eerie feeling of danger.

        At the start of Mystic Messenger, the character you control gets a message from an unknown person through a mysterious app they had downloaded. This unknown person leads the main character to meet the Rika's Fundraising Association (RFA), which is composed of the game's potential love interests. The main character is practically forced into living in the creator of RFA and its former party organizer's apartment, being tasked in hosting the next RFA party. This job involves gathering guests and sending emails to persuade them to come to the party. All the while, there's a constant threat of an unknown group shadowing over them.

        The system in which all of this is controlled is completely real-time based. Similar to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, different things happen at different times. A few easy ways to avoid missing chat rooms are by setting alarms or creating a calendar with all of the times upon it. Some players find the chats that open at 12am, 3am, or 5am troublesome due to sleeping, but just because the chats will most likely open around those times, it does not mean you are required to stay up all night without sleeping. A very simple and easy way to fix this problem is by setting alarms for whenever you would normally be asleep. Each chatroom only takes about five minutes to complete, so when done, the player can go right back to sleep. This short amount of time spent playing Mystic Messenger at night is extremely similar to waking up to use the restroom or eat a snack, if not shorter.

        Adding onto the aspect of the creativity Cheritz has had so far, they went the extra mile to create background music, separate messaging, and phone calls. Each individual character having a voice actor. After most chatrooms, one of the RFA members calls or separately messages you to check in. This is an awesome aspect and provides an extra layer of the feeling that the game is real. The calls however are in Korean, with words on the screen of what they're saying in English, which is a lot better than being in the dark. The background music changes based on what the topic at hand is, drawing the player into the emotions embellished in them. Sometimes chipper and sometimes solemn, the music makes the plot all the more entertaining.

        While this game has won awards and is considered to be very good, some people do not like the game due to its hourglasses. Hourglasses are a way to open different modes of the game or go back to any chat rooms or calls that you've missed. People don't like hourglasses because they take a long time to collect, are very valuable, and if wanted more immediately, money has to be spent. This then leads to people getting upset at the game for the time they would need to wait for those hourglasses, or the money they would have to spend to get them. However, a way to help with this is by collecting hearts from the love interests. Hearts appear any time you say something to one of the love interests that they like, or find funny. 100 hearts can be traded in for 1 hourglass. In the end, the different way to gather hourglasses is well developed, along with the overall plot and well designed characters that make the game enjoyable.

        Cheritz made Mystic Messenger, along with other games, to make people happy. They wanted people who stumbled across their apps to be fully immersed in their works. Cheritz strives to give people something that they might not have, such as a significant other. Making games makes them happy and they truly love bringing smiles to people's faces. Even though they provide these however, the main character has to work for them, like in a real relationship. Just like in a non-fictional relationship, there's emotional labor.

        All of these different aspects make up what people love about Mystic Messenger, what defines it as a whole. That is why Mystic Messenger is the best dating simulator game there is, because it includes many aspects that make it an overall detailed game in which you choose your destiny. Throughout all of the trials sent towards the player, it just makes them even more motivated to uncover the secrets behind Rika's Funding Association and the dangerous group looming from the shadows, once and for all. The hurdles thrown their way make them try even harder to unlock every route, unlock every mode, find every good and bad ending, and feel the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment for finishing Mystic Messenger.

CITATIONS:
https://kotaku.com/hit-dating-game-mystic-messenger-makes-a-game-out-of-em-1787296199
https://twitter.com/cheritz_dl/status/931409725530423296?lang=en

[Early 2021-English]