Preview: Sucker for Love: Date to Die For makes asexuality the star
Asexuality is becoming a more common identity to represent in games, particularly dating sims. But those depictions often feature routes that are both asexual and aromantic, or are fully optional. But developer Akabaka and publisher DreadXP’s upcoming project Sucker for Love: Date to Die For — which we got to go hands on with during PAX West — takes a different and refreshing approach to representing asexuality: making it the main narrative mechanic for our hero.
In Sucker For Love: Date to Die For, we play as a young woman nicknamed Stardust who has just returned to her hometown of Sacramen-Cho after receiving a strange letter from her parents. Things in this rural little town have gotten strange in recent years, with the local residents developing a strange purple gaze and multiple unsolved disappearances plaguing the area.
Not long after arriving back home, Stardust is very nearly one of the missing victims herself when she has a harrowing encounter with a local. Desperate to escape, she flees to her childhood home, only to find it in disrepair. As she explores the building, she finds evidence of occult activity, eventually discovering a whole eldritch altar in what used to be her bedroom. Stardust realizes that the town has been taken over by a cult, and after finding a spell book someone left behind, she decides to try her luck at summoning a deity called the All-Mother to try to save the town.
The thing about the All-Mother — a busty, multi-eyed goat woman — is that she’s a goddess of fertility, life, and ultimately desire (which usually manifests as lust). Because of that, people who come into her presence are usually overcome with lust for her and become part of her cult, which has actually become the problem. Luckily, though Stardust is romantically attracted to women and her brain shuts down around them, she doesn’t experience lust or sexual attraction. This makes her immune to the All-Mother’s allure, leaving her clear-minded enough to avoid becoming part of her out of control and violent cult.
Going hands on with this demo, I was immediately excited to see that this was an asexual character being put at the front and center of a story, rather than a side plot or as one of several potential romance options. Beyond that, Stardust’s asexuality matters to this story and is an important facet of who she is, one that even an eldritch goddess of lust can’t change. That tension is present within the demo itself, and adds really interesting layers to both the All-Mother and Stardust as they have to work together, despite their apparent differences, to uproot the goddess and escape with their lives.
Sucker For Love: Date to Die For is a genuinely creepy and exciting horror game that also manages to blend in romance and asexuality seamlessly. After what we saw at PAX West, we can’t wait to head back to Sacramen-Cho when the full game releases.
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