A Japanese company has released a promotional dating sim with a difference: your love interests are actually sneaky cockroaches.
As reported by Japanese news site ITmedia, insecticide manufacturer Earth Corporation released Gokigen Lovely Days on June 6 for browser and mobile. Spoofing typical tropes of Otome dating sims aimed at women, the free game has a cast of four romanceable guys all given seductive voice overs by top VA, Yuki Kaji (known for voicing Eren Yaeger in Attack on Titan).
From the get-go, Gokigen Lovely Days opens with a warning screen, informing the player that it contains “shocking” content and is not for the faint of heart. You play as the lonely young heroine who just moved to Tokyo to join Earth Corporation, and is struggling with the workload.
Caught in a sudden shower of June rain, you can pick whether to shelter in a Park or enter a cafe, which decides which of Gokigen Lovely Days’ four love interests you'll encounter. Go to the cafe and you’ll (literally) run into baby-faced Chaba and bad-boy Wamon. Go to the park and you’ll meet Prince-type Kuro and posh gentleman Yamato, who help save your important work documents from the rain.
After these brief encounters, both sets of men scuttle away from light or noise (the first red flag), prompting our heroine to try to seek them out again by coming back the next day. You’ll find Chaba hiding in the pile of boxes in the cafe, before he scuttles onto the seat next to you and successfully begs a bite of your order, before kabe-donning you into the cardboard boxes. “Havent had dessert yet, yeah?” he quips. At this point, he… chews your hair.
On the other hand, sitting near the kitchen nets you another encounter with cool guy Wamon, who gives you a wild grin and tells you that the smell of food is his favorite thing. Overcome by his charm, you accidentally snap your precious necklace. But no problem! Wamon multiplies into numerous copies of himself, who catch each of your stray pearls from under the counter, doubtless a nod to both cockroaches’ rapid reproduction cycles and preference for dark corners. Wamon reassures that ”my buddies will always help you.” All of this strangely doesn’t put our heroine off.
If you take the park route, you can choose to go under the gazebo, where you’ll encounter the polite Yamato again. True to his gentleman stereotype, he has brought you a bouquet… of cockroach eggs, and urges you to keep them warm for him (also prompting netizens to wonder if he’s actually a female roach in disguise). Heading to the roof of a nearby building means you meet Kuro again, who sprouts wings to save your phone.
Then the game skips to the weekend, when after texting your love interest all week, they suddenly show up at your apartment unannounced (like roaches do) with a special "present." The choice you make here triggers one of two transformation scenes for each guy in which their swole cockroach form is revealed in all its glory as romantic music plays. Your hunky roach could pop out of your laundry, aircon, kitchen fan, bathroom or plant pot, showing that no place in your home is safe from these pests. It is at this point that the heroine finally realizes she’s fallen for a bug.
Each scenario ends in the same way, with the main character deciding to reject her insectile love interest. “We’ll end up hurting each other the closer we get,” she concludes, bidding them, “Thank you, and farewell." The game then sharply cuts to a photo of Earth’s cockroach killing spray accompanied by a spraying sound effect, making for a rather dark and ambiguous ending.
You can see how this all plays out in the screenshot gallery below.
Over on social media, players have been sharing screenshots of each of the love interests and their thoughts on the game. While many praise Kaji’s sexy voice acting and the character designs, it seems some of the ominous rustling sounds (also made by Kaji, according to the actor’s X post) and the mild horror of the roach transformation scenes caught players off guard.
Gokigen Lovely Days is playable on Earth Corporation’s website until September 3 for free but in Japanese only. Its June 4 release date is no coincidence, as it is actually Bug Day in Japan. This is a word play on the numbers in the date 6 (mu) and 4 (shi) and the Japanese word for insect (mushi). The rainy, humid days of the rainy season in June often cause cockroaches to appear, making this parody dating sim a timely warning. Each love interest is named after and equivalent to a real type of cockroach found in Japan, and their bios tell you how “tall” they are (e.g. about 30-40mm), school name (i.e. latin name of the species), location, likes and other info that respond to the actual creepy crawlies.
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
