Love, Ghostie, The Romance Management Game

Ghostly matchmaking at its finest

Let Love Blossom And Unfold

With Your Ghostly Powers, Bring Smiles To The Residents

Love, Ghostie is a cozy romance management game where you play as the ghost haunting the manor and are tasked with setting the residents up together and helping them find their one true love! With over 60+ different combinations of couples between 12 residents, the fun starts with choosing which one to pair together.

Combining elements of dating sims, management sims, and visual novels in a cozy and relaxing way, players will have the liberty to do what it takes to make sure that these residents find their boo (pun intended). Use your supernatural ghostly powers to read through the residents’ diaries to figure out their personalities, their likes and dislikes. The information you acquire from your sneaky-not-so-sneaky escapades can then be used for the betterment of your matchmaking—setting them up on “chore dates” (inconspicuously titled…Definitely Not A Date) or sending them gifts that they like that are supposedly from the other person (they’re not).

As the relationship deepens, unique relationship scenes will also unlock! Different pairs will have different special scenes, so make sure to mix-and-match to your heart’s content to see all of it. And that’s not all—since the residents are happy about getting along with each other and even finding love, their overall happiness will also increase. Love and happiness for everyone!

Many Pairs, Many Playthroughs

But of course, it’s not only the residents who would be growing! Ghostie will also get to improve themselves, their matchmaking prowess, or the manor, depending on how delighted the manor’s residents are. Happiness and heart-raising relationships are important in the game; thus, Ghostie will be amply rewarded for their efforts as well.

After you finish your initial run with a certain set of pairs, don’t worry! The additional New Game+ option will take you right back into matchmaking with a handy-dandy memories board. The information retained in the memories board will definitely help progress relationships faster. With that said, a single playthrough is about 3-6 hours, depending on whether you’ll be experimenting with different pairs or immediately pairing those couples you’re missing from your list. Per playthrough lets you pair up 6 couples, and with 66 pairs to follow through, it will take players at least 11 runs of the game to see all the content!

Healthy Relationships: The Game

Janbeh Games is a small indie game development studio led by Jennifer Goto, whose employees are mostly based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Already with experience as a software engineer and wanting to scratch that itch from college where she took some game development classes and finding it “the most fun she’d ever have in her life”, Goto then “took the leap” to work on her own indie game and that is how her own indie studio was born.

Love, Ghostie is their debut title, and has been in development for over 3 years and more. And they definitely put their heart and soul into the creation of the game—Goto revealed on her personal X (Twitter) account that there are “116 date scripts (12,770 words), 264 relationship talk scripts (44,952 words), 66 relationship epilogues (5,848 words) + diary entries, Deaddit forums, tutorials” in the game. No shortage of content whatsoever, and she also said that they proofread each and every line. Talk about attention to detail!

With that much conversation, one can wonder where they get the inspiration from. Goto explained that a lot of the relationship talks are inspired by their own real life experiences.

Inspirations from Fire Emblem

Head developer and founder Jennifer Goto was also recently interviewed on Doomcutie’s YouTube channel, called Confessions of a Gamer Girl, where she discussed more insights and information about Love, Ghostie. For one thing, one of the game’s influences is none other than tactical JRPG Fire Emblem—which can come off as a surprise if you put Love, Ghostie and any Fire Emblem side-by-side. However, the central concept for Goto’s game comes from Fire Emblem’s fandom culture, where “there are a lot of characters that you can ship and kind of matchmake in that sense,” so that even side characters can find their happy endings. She wanted the same concept in her own game, thinking that, “what if there’s a game that you [do] play as a Matchmaker and then people can just ship whoever they want!”

She also shared some thoughts and advice for women game developers who would want to excel in their craft in a male-dominated industry but are afraid to take their first step into the foray. One thing she pointed out is to find the right community and to get out there on social media in order to create and foster that community. Many indie developers would be more than willing to help each other out, as long as you take that first leap. Despite how tough it may seem, once you find that very community you need, everything will follow. Goto herself said that she would be happy to help budding developers, as she was in that very same position herself early on—and now she has her own studio, along with a charming little game that just made its debut!

Glowing Reviews For An Enjoyable Game

As a newly released game, the game garnered about 66 reviews as of writing, attaining a ‘Very Positive’ review score, with 96% of the reviews praising the game for being well-written and relatable, adorable gameplay and characters, and overall being enjoyable to play. Some have even touted it as one of the “best indie games” they have ever played, and others have even cried from its stories! Many are eagerly waiting for some kind of update or DLC, hoping that more characters can be introduced. And with the game’s continued success, this idea might not be so far off.

Love, Ghostie was just freshly released and is now available to play on PC and macOS via Steam! Grab it at a discounted price until August 21st, as it is featured in the ongoing Wholesome Games Steam Celebration.