Preview | Don't Take It Personally, I Just Don't Like You (But I Really Like This Game)

Last month, Christian DeCoster put out a tweet asking if his followers would support a Kickstarter for his game. On Friday, the campaign to fund Don’t Take It Personally, I Just Don’t Like You reached two-thirds of its £3,808 goal, just three days after it launched. Described as a lo-fi, anime-inspired dating sim where “some of the girls don't actually want to date you and just want to be friends and chill”, it’s being sold on the promise of an engaging narrative involving multiple characters and slice-of-life college hangouts. From what I’ve played, it nails it.

“I've been planning this for over a month now,” DeCoster explains about the campaign, “first making sure there was actual interest, then advertising, creating teasers and trailers, everything.  It's like a second job on top of everything else, but it's worth it.” Getting things in place so quickly was a lot of work, but the success has taken him by surprise. “I did not expect to be this far along this quickly.  Up until I hit ‘launch’ my worry was that it was going to quietly fizzle out at around 15% on the first day, so you can imagine my surprise when we raised over half our funding within twelve hours.”

To help set up the general vibe of Don’t Take It Personally there’s a short, free prologue available on the game’s itch.io page. It begins with a few decisions like naming the protagonist and welcoming you to pick which pronouns you’d prefer. It’s nice to see a small detail like that, and DeCoster told me that you’ll experience the same story regardless of what pronouns you choose. The prologue opens with you waiting for friends in a parking lot, getting ready to go on an overnight camping trip. The friendship and romance throughout feel very real—your interest is someone new, someone your friends don’t really know yet, and trying to assimilate them into an existing circle is an awkward affair. You want everyone to get along, and that leads to some uncomfortable decision making and picking of sides. Choosing your friends may be the socially “correct” thing to do when it comes down to it, but it hurts.

““You can imagine my surprise when we raised over half our funding within twelve hours””

There’s quite a bit going on in Don’t Take It Personally, I Just Don’t Like You, and I was curious to hear what inspirations DeCoster drew on. “One big influence would be Date Nighto's wonderful relationship horror game We Know the Devil,” he tells me, “which is about a group of teens at a religious summer camp being sent off to literally meet the devil. It's got a distinct theme of interpersonal conflict, even with people you care about, that definitely stuck with me.” He does note, however, that the game doesn’t draw on all those elements, explaining “Don't Take It Personally isn't going to be nearly as horror influenced or as quietly fantastical.” Rather, it will play into the social aspects.

I haven’t had pancakes in months and I miss them, so this moment really spoke to me.

That’s where it seems like the game will shine—it’s not going to veer off into cosmic horror or some larger mystery narrative, it focuses on friendships and romance with multifaceted characters. “You can expect to spend a lot of time hanging out with friends, going to class, hitting the local diner, and plenty of fun camping trips. You're just college kids, so there's no need to run off and save the world.  All of the conflict is at a much smaller and more personal in scale.” Oftentimes those small-scale interactions are side stories to the wider plot, so it’s interesting to see a game put them front and centre.

The prologue largely focuses on two characters: Rose, a preppy class president type and the current love interest of our protagonist, and Maria, an uppity and hot-tempered punk with a penchant for bending rules. The interesting thing is the way the characters’ personal politics rebound off one another. These are kids who extrapolate their feelings about school, friendships and overbearing adults into larger feelings about national politics. Their frustrations with corrupt student councils turn into wider anger at the state of “the system” in that sort of jokey way that teens and young adults often come to terms with their political beliefs. It feels very natural and occasionally very awkward in all the ways you’d want.

““All of the conflict is at a much smaller and more personal scale””

I asked whether the political swipes in the prologue were indicative of the overall direction he’d take with the writing, and it seems like the focus remains on making the individual characters feel real and true to their personalities over working towards a key takeaway or message. “I won't say it's not a political game, because all media is in some way political,” he begins, “but the story of Don't Take It Personally is a very character driven one. Each route focuses on the life of one character and what struggles they're going through, which ranges from trouble picking a major to serious financial issues.”

The success of games like Don’t Take It Personally often rides on the attachment players form to the cast. Everything revolves around the writing of the characters, and that defines what players get out of their time. DeCoster is hoping for that kind of payoff here. “All in all, I want DTIP to be a bittersweet experience for the players.  There is something positive to take away from each route, no matter how dark each one gets. I guess I'm hoping that it'll be the kind of game that can make you smile even while it's breaking your heart.” The game is also surprisingly funny. I found myself laughing out loud at a lot of the writing, and I’ll probably be sneaking “oh, fuck me gently with a jigsaw” into my daily vocabulary now.

I think I’ve had this exact chat with a friend recently.

From the first scene, the game is dripping in vaporwave aesthetics and 90s vibes which, according to the writer, is “kind of jarring but beautiful”. Naturally, development hasn’t been a solo endeavour. The music, handled by composer Lofi Dreams, works in tandem with character art by Ashley O’Handley and heavy visual effects to make the game feel like a nostalgic hangout. “We've definitely got a lot thrown in there, but I think the CRT effects really tie it together into something that feels cohesive.” Characters kind of stick out from the photographed backgrounds in a way that really works and emphasises the art. Oddly, I’m reminded of the Danganronpa series and, more often, Red Candle’s Detention, which used hand-drawn character models to great and unsettling effect.

Speaking on the collaborative process, DeCoster told me about how all the elements came together. “At the start, I gave both Ashley and Lofi Dreams several pages of what the characters look like, how they act, what their body language is, and for Ashley I also sent some reference photos or sketches for different character poses or scene compositions.  But on the whole, I would say that what the game sounds like and what the characters look like are mostly due to their interpretation of the characters. They're both absolutely a joy to work with, they're turning out amazing work, and this game would not exist without them.”

““I guess I’m hoping that it’ll be the kind of game that can make you smile even while it’s breaking your heart””

DeCoster certainly isn’t exaggerating that last point. Don’t Take It Personally is his first major project on this scale. “I've been working on games for five years now, and this is by far the largest one I've worked on.  I'm no stranger to writing branching narratives, but this is by far the most expansive one with the most freedom of choice.” He goes on to explain that it’s been a long road up to this moment. “Like a lot of creators, I have multiple folders on my computer that are just filled with projects I started but didn't finish, and DTIP was one that I had put a lot of time into my third year of college.”

Apparently, it took a while before the ideas morphed into something more. “I fell off working on it because I didn't have much other than a kind of tired ‘dating sim parody’ story and a really, really basic outline of what would eventually become Sarah and Anne's story arcs.  I had no idea what it would actually look or sound like.” The idea got its hooks in him though, and DeCoster didn’t give up, returning to the project multiple times. “I just kept coming back to it, adding bits, workshopping new characters, and then suddenly it all started to come together into something that felt totally different then what I initially planned on, mostly by removing the more overtly parodic elements to create something a bit more sombre and meaningful.”

Based on what I’ve seen so far, I think the fragmented approach to making Don’t Take It Personally, I Just Don’t Like You could be part of why it works. People are inherently messy, constructed of innumerate bits of personality that form a flawed whole. Identities come together over time, and DeCoster slowly uncovering what he wants each part of the game and each character to be could lend itself to that focus on interpersonal bonds. It’s one to keep an eye on.

Don’t Take It Personally, I Just Don’t Like You is currently on Kickstarter, and the prologue is available through its itch.io page.