Kitty Powers Love Life Review

Sequel to Kitty Powers Matchmaker, Kitty Powers Love Life puts you in charge of starting and salvaging relationships in a new community.

In one of Kitty’s Love Villages, you must build your community from the ground up, encourage couples to come and stay by building facilities and utilities, and help them navigate those difficult conversations. Like, what should they eat for tea tonight, or how does their hair really look? It’s down to you whether they tell the truth or lie their way through.

You can schedule appointments with your residents, setting them individual or group tasks, or perform hynotherapy on them if they’re getting into bad habits that could impact their love making. Of course, your success is measured by your ability to help them get married and stay together. Do that, and more and more people will come to your Love Village. Fail, and Kitty is not going to pass you for inspection.

The clues to a successful relationship can be found in the Kittyfeed. There, your residents talk about their day to day life at work, how they’re getting on at home, what types of activities they like to do, and if they don’t like someone or something. A situation that can arise once you get more than one or two couples in your village.

The cool thing is that the game has tons of different combinations of couples with different looks, habits, likes and dislikes, and they’re all procedural generated, meaning you can have all kinds of possibilities throw themselves up during a game. Each one has various needs and wants and it’s down to you to figure out what those are in order to achieve maximum happiness throughout.

The truth is, Kitty Powers Love Life is a surprisingly detailed and deep management simulator. It’s peppered with quirky mini games, like roulette wheels, rewiring plugs, playing cards, stemming a flow of water through the correct pipes, and picking a topic of conversation using love eggs. You’ll have to bundle your way through memory games during wedding ceremonies and answer their cries for help when needed.

The pacing is a bit slow, though. It’s nice that the game takes the time to ease you in, show you the ropes, explain how things work and get you started. But because you only start with one couple and have to build your way up to more, you’ll find yourself skipping through days with nothing to do until after work. I feel like there’s a chunk of time lost here and it’s a bit of a waste.

Other Management sims let you look at profit margins, gain resources, explore around the area and develop a strategy for future interactions. But here, you’re basically twiddling your thumbs from 9am to 5pm, fast-forwarding through each day. And then when your residents are back, they are either visiting your utilities to begin with or chatting to their other half.

You’re only ever called to action when you book an appointment in or you can eavesdrop on a scenario which helps improve a relationship or person’s individual characteristics. Once your village expands, though, the game really does open up, and there’s a lot to tend to with so many different couples to support. Though you do seem to get the same mini games more often than you’d like when building a relationship early doors and this can feel a bit repetitive.

It’s very similar to Matchmaker in some ways but deeper and more resource filled in others. For instance, when you’re trying to match couples who may not seem a natural fit through their dates, hoping to find some common ground. You only have three attempts to help a couple get engaged, then married, and of course, once they do get together you have to try and keep that relationship sweet.

It also has this subtle British wit to it which is actually quite refreshing. Characters seem to casually rip into words and phrases used in today’s social media, occasionally overdoing it with their replies and statements to humorous effect. Though some replies do come across a bit awkwardly and fall a bit flat.

Taking all of that into consideration, Kitty Powers Love Life can be a busy, occasionally fun, sometimes fulfilling little game that isn’t bogged down with micro-transactions or invasive material. It’s light, can easily be played between other games or while watching the telly and fill a void for an hour or two at a time. Surprisingly deep and often enjoyable. Matchmaker fans will love the improvements.

Pros
+ Quirky Art
+ Surprisingly deep management sim
+ Lots of possibilities

Cons
– Very slow-starting and pacing issues
– Some humour falls flat
– Content can feel repetitive after a few hours play