DaRmaZat Limerence promises a branching narrative thriller about love and digital intimacy, all experienced through a smartphone interface, with an underlying warning about the dangers of becoming dependent on AI. However, the preview build provided for this article is clearly still a work in progress. Between a dull opening, broken progression, and a narrative that doesn’t seem to know where it’s going, there’s still a lot of work to be done before the game can deliver on its otherwise highly intriguing premise.
In Limerence, you play as Claire Redfern, who has just bought a shiny new phone, the RecVR 6, which seems to be all the rage. Naturally, the first thing she wants to do is let her friends and family know about her new purchase, all from the device itself. However, none of the messages you send through the Parley chat app are actually typed by you. Instead, they appear in a read-only field, leaving you with nothing more to do than hit the send button. Occasionally, you are presented with multiple-choice options, which should make subsequent playthroughs a little more interesting.
One thing becomes clear almost immediately: this game is best played with a keyboard. Controllers don’t seem to support the dedicated in-game smartphone interface, which is where you will spend virtually all your time. As you explore the phone, you gradually learn all sorts of things about Claire. You discover that she subscribes to NYQuist for music streaming, believes in astrological predictions, and is dealing with more sensitive personal matters that affect her emotional state, including looking into IVF. There is also plenty to learn about her brother, her parents, a rather wacky flight attendant, her best friend Genevieve, and her husband Jim, with whom things have their fair share of ups and downs.
As expected, progress in Limerence is tied to opening the required menus and items. Once you have done so, the game advances time after a brief black screen, although a temporarily available Next button occasionally lets you trigger this transition yourself. There is also a limited in-game music player to break up the silence during all that clicking. Its library includes some genuinely nice tracks that continue playing through transition screens. Unfortunately, playback stops after every song. Being able to queue tracks from an album or shuffle the music would have been a welcome addition.
One of the biggest problems with this preview build is the lack of manual save slots that you can reload whenever you need to. Softlocks occur far too often, sometimes trapping entire sections in a loop or breaking progression altogether. Since autosaves can leave you stuck in a broken state, a single softlock can potentially ruin an entire playthrough. Starting over is hardly an appealing alternative, either. There are countless long conversations that cannot be skipped, and having to reopen all those messages and sit through them again makes replaying several hours of progress an incredibly tedious prospect.
Perhaps an even bigger issue, and one that is much harder to fix, is that very little actually happens. Even installing the LiAIson app does not seem to lead to much. I was expecting a compelling central narrative to emerge, especially given the promise of a branching thriller about love, obsession, and an AI partner who understands you a little too well.
Instead, the experience feels rather uneventful. There is no palpable sense of danger, no major plot twists, and no clear overarching storyline suggesting that something significant is about to happen. Most of the time, it feels less like an immersive narrative thriller and more like a tedious exercise in scrolling through someone else’s phone, reading their everyday conversations with friends and family. At least, that is how things stood until my playthrough softlocked yet again after several hours.
Preliminary Thoughts
Limerence has a long way to go. Even setting aside the technical issues, the opening is bogged down by lengthy, painfully dull conversations that cannot be skipped, making it a tedious experience to replay after yet another softlock. Hopefully, the release build, expected to launch in early 2027, will prove more engaging. For now, though, it’s difficult to see the branching narrative thriller it promises, and the game still needs considerable polish. At least the developers made the right call by postponing the launch because of this.
Additional Information
Release Date: 2027
Previewed On: PC. Download code provided by the publisher and PR agency.
Developer: Salix Games Ltd, Gameinaframe
Publisher: Salix Games Ltd
Relevant Links: Available to wishlist on Steam.
