GAME: Pocket Love by HyperBeard

GENRE: Simulation, decoration

PLATFORMS: Android, iOS

Human beings have an innate desire of setting up a home, especially with a partner. Many also like to think about the furniture and layout of their current or future home. Pocket Love is a simulation game for exactly that aspiration.

The gameplay is surprisingly simple. You move into a new house in a cosy neighbourhood with your partner and pet. The house is just one room, but it’s still home. You slowly fill the room with furniture and decorations in any way you want. Eventually, you expand your house by buying more rooms. That is pretty much the cycle, to keep decorating and expanding your house. You choose how both the avatars look, and also whether you own a cat or a dog. There are no restrictions on your or your partner’s gender, clothing or hairstyle.

There aren’t explicit goals. With just an empty virtual house with two avatars, I started creating my goals in my head. Since I created the avatars to look like me and my partner, I quickly bought a sofa so that we wouldn’t get tired of standing. I then went ahead and bought a bed, a TV and a cupboard, because how could we live without these basic amenities? And even though the avatars didn’t care, I tried to make their life comfortable by rearranging the furniture according to my real-life knowledge of ergonomics and Feng Shui.

The best part about this game is that it’s non-addictive. You’ll mostly play for a few minutes at a time and log off. When you log in again, the game gives a free furniture item. Ads are not intrusive at all, but you can watch them get some extra money or furniture.

When you’re not furniture shopping, just observing the avatars reveals cute dialogues and interactions happening idly between them. And once every day, there’s a small story snippet showing the everyday life of your avatars as a couple, like going to the park or a restaurant or talking to a neighbour. These delightful snippets made me want to open the game at least once every day.

The over-simplified nature of the game, however, starts to become boring after a while. There is a limit to the variety of furniture you would want to buy. I would have also liked a multiplayer where you can customise a shared home with your partner, or visit other people’s homes. Even though I liked playing it, not all people would enjoy such a game. It depends on what stage in life the player is in to be able to relate to it.

VERDICT: Pocket Love is a cute and simple simulation game about setting up your home with your partner, which is something many people aspire to do at some point in their lives. The interactions are refreshingly simple, and it’s great that the game doesn’t demand a lot of your time. You can engage with it for a few minutes every day and that’s all it will take for the game to delight you. But the game starts to get monotonous after a few days and has nothing new to offer. I’d rate it a seven out of 10.