Hello everyone, I hope you're all having a good day. I've attempting creating my first serious dating visual novel but I'm a little unsure on how to go about it. Frankly I'm not the best at writing romance anyway but I wanted to try something different. So if anyone is interested, could you let me know what you absolutely love or despise in dating sim type games?

If you play some MMO or certain RPG you will find that there is quite a similar concept. You level up your relationship with a faction to get benefits. Like being able to buy in that faction's shops or get exclusive equipment. Or for bragging rights. Morrowind was a high offender in that regard, you could even become guild leader of many guilds - as friggin side quest.

And also similar to dating sims there might be factions that are mutually exclusive. Gain favor with one, and the other might hate you for it.

My point is, from a game mechanic view, you might already have more knowlege about dating sims than you previously thought. The appealing thing about sims is usually that you have control over your actions, it is not a kinetic novel. And often you can lose the game. The typical scenario would be that you have like 100 days and limited resources to achieve your goals.