2018 was a strange year for mobile gaming in that the Venn diagram of “games designed for mobile” and “games designed for everything else” were starting to overlap in a real industry-shaking way. Pocketable hardware was powerful enough to run modified ports of console-level experiences, but in my opinion the peak of mobile at the time came in the form of games designed around our devices’ specific characteristics and the ways in which we interact with them. That year, two mobile games had made it to my top ten list: The first was Florence, a visual novel that employed the various input methods we use daily like tapping, swiping, and more to tell an emotionally wrought story about love and heartbreak. The other was Twinfold, a brilliantly designed mash-up of roguelike and puzzle elements by developer Kenny Sun that I still believe to be one of the best games on my iPhone.
In 2021 while the aforementioned Venn diagram continues to shift closer to perfect fusion between the two circles, I found a different kind of fusion in the form of Tender: Creature Comforts. Miraculously, Tender is a visual novel that employs the various input methods we use daily like tapping, swiping, and more to tell an emotionally wrought story about love and heartbreak — this time by Twinfold’s Kenny Sun, along with collaborators Gideon Lazarus and Jie En Lee.
Tender takes the form of a fake dating service, and upon downloading the game you’ll be asked various questions about yourself to best inform perspective dates about your whole deal while also making the app feel more natural to use. What’s your name? How about your birthday? Do you usually capitalize sentences when messaging someone else, or do you write in all lowercase? Are you a “haha” person or a “lmao” person or even a “hjskdfhialf” person? Once this information is entered, the game begins, and it sure looks exactly like dating apps you might have used before. You’re presented with various creatures who have profile photos and short bios that are punchy or too revealing or say nothing at all, and it’s your job to swipe left or right if you think they might be interesting. And then you wait. And you wait for a while sometimes! Tender takes place in real time, which means it might take multiple days to match with someone, and even if you do it might take another few days for them to respond to your opening message. If you play your cards right and choose all the correct dialogue options in conversation, you might even be able to schedule a date which must also happen in real time. Tender will send you a notification when it comes time to “attend” the date, and what follows is a beautifully written choose-your-own adventure story about how you did or absolutely did not connect with this creature.
The genius of Tender is that everything I’ve described involves procedures and concepts and input methods you’re already intimately familiar with. We don’t need to be told how a dating app works in 2021. When “playing” comes so naturally that input doesn’t need to be taught, what’s left is artwork, storytelling, and emotion. More than anything else, Tender is a platform for character studies and the ways in which we can inform them through interaction. A couple you match with on Tender looking for a third might break up based on your innocuous questions to make sure everyone is on the same page. You might then see both individually in the dating pool the next week when they’ve each decided to get back on the horse. A seemingly innocuous invitation to visit the Museum of Humanity for a date might pave the way for some speculative science fiction twists that are both too horrifying and too hilarious to spoil — by the time you’ve finished reading the information around the exhibits you realize you’ve ignored the date entirely.
By taking place in real time, Tender asks a lot of its players. For the 10–14 days spent playing, you’ll also be signing up for near-constant notifications and emotional gut-punches at inopportune moments in your real life. The frightening heart of Tender is that it’s almost too good at being a facsimile of online dating. This can be a lot to handle, especially for those who are already using dating apps in real life. But at the end of the day the secret to Tender and the secret to Tinder are one in the same: Be honest with yourself, be open to new experiences, and at the very least you’ll have a story to tell.
In 2021 while the aforementioned Venn diagram continues to shift closer to perfect fusion between the two circles, I found a different kind of fusion in the form of Tender: Creature Comforts. Miraculously, Tender is a visual novel that employs the various input methods we use daily like tapping, swiping, and more to tell an emotionally wrought story about love and heartbreak — this time by Twinfold’s Kenny Sun, along with collaborators Gideon Lazarus and Jie En Lee.
Tender takes the form of a fake dating service, and upon downloading the game you’ll be asked various questions about yourself to best inform perspective dates about your whole deal while also making the app feel more natural to use. What’s your name? How about your birthday? Do you usually capitalize sentences when messaging someone else, or do you write in all lowercase? Are you a “haha” person or a “lmao” person or even a “hjskdfhialf” person? Once this information is entered, the game begins, and it sure looks exactly like dating apps you might have used before. You’re presented with various creatures who have profile photos and short bios that are punchy or too revealing or say nothing at all, and it’s your job to swipe left or right if you think they might be interesting. And then you wait. And you wait for a while sometimes! Tender takes place in real time, which means it might take multiple days to match with someone, and even if you do it might take another few days for them to respond to your opening message. If you play your cards right and choose all the correct dialogue options in conversation, you might even be able to schedule a date which must also happen in real time. Tender will send you a notification when it comes time to “attend” the date, and what follows is a beautifully written choose-your-own adventure story about how you did or absolutely did not connect with this creature.
The genius of Tender is that everything I’ve described involves procedures and concepts and input methods you’re already intimately familiar with. We don’t need to be told how a dating app works in 2021. When “playing” comes so naturally that input doesn’t need to be taught, what’s left is artwork, storytelling, and emotion. More than anything else, Tender is a platform for character studies and the ways in which we can inform them through interaction. A couple you match with on Tender looking for a third might break up based on your innocuous questions to make sure everyone is on the same page. You might then see both individually in the dating pool the next week when they’ve each decided to get back on the horse. A seemingly innocuous invitation to visit the Museum of Humanity for a date might pave the way for some speculative science fiction twists that are both too horrifying and too hilarious to spoil — by the time you’ve finished reading the information around the exhibits you realize you’ve ignored the date entirely.
By taking place in real time, Tender asks a lot of its players. For the 10–14 days spent playing, you’ll also be signing up for near-constant notifications and emotional gut-punches at inopportune moments in your real life. The frightening heart of Tender is that it’s almost too good at being a facsimile of online dating. This can be a lot to handle, especially for those who are already using dating apps in real life. But at the end of the day the secret to Tender and the secret to Tinder are one in the same: Be honest with yourself, be open to new experiences, and at the very least you’ll have a story to tell.