She was never seeing someone, she tells you this later when you talk.
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Ummm… to be fair , i think it is difficult to interpret between manipulative and romantic charm…
For example, many seem to think sending flowers, gifts , diamonds etc is an act of romantic charm… but it can also be view as manipulative right ? 
And could it be that the simple term of "I love you " be considered as manipulative ? Because when we say that word to someone, it is with a hope that we can gain a certain affection of feeling from the other person… would it be better that if we don’t say I love you at all, but quietly performing good deeds out of the interest of those we love ? However , for such person may be view as unromantic by those who prefer to hear the term i love you ? :-)
Hence , i think it all depend on how we feel about a person, for someone we are biased upon, no matter what he/she do will be considered manipulative even when the intention is meant for good will…
Perhaps if we can consider an action with a positive manner, we will notice there aren’t daggers hiding in every conner at all…
For the Ex to do what he/she does, it could be as simple as the Ex still hold dear to us
@No_This_Is_Patrick i meant the Ex could have socialise with friends , but not in a true romantic or love manner , she was not seeing someone could be interpret as she wasn’t serious with anyone ?
@Kaelyn
Yeah i agree with you, even if someone is considered to be manipulative towards us in their action, at least it is still a way of communication ? Like it is better than no interaction at all … it is like at least that person is making an effort to communicate in order to diffuse a situation
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It is really sweet how you always see the best in Exes, but I hope you are careful in RL, there are a lot of people who could use this to manipulate you. But I really like the way you try to interpret everything in the favor of the people, I behave a lot like this in real life, because most people are not acting to hurt others, but don´t realize that they do. It is always a good way to train empathy by thinking what reasons might be veiled by the behavior.
Most people act the way they do, not because of you, but because of themselves, to hide feelings or insecurities. It is difficult to explain^^
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Look, it’s a word we used in marketing the game. Just…chill about the word toxic.
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Perhaps the “Toxic” posts should be moved to their own topic?
Lol… don’t worry , i am chill all the time … it was meant to be a discussion without any bad intention , this is another great example on how sometimes the conversation we try to start end up be considered as a bad intention
The initial meaning for me to bring it up is also an attempt to promote interest to the game , by having more discussion about the characters and bring life to them… not as an attempt to condemn the game
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After finally powering through the game, (not to focus too much on the word toxic) but the only toxic person I see to the MC’s life…well is the MC themselves (with a side of the ex because even though I agree with them about them deserving respect and atleast a real explaination, you should leave people alone if its obvious they dont want anything to do with you…no matter how neurotic they are.). They constantly seem to have this inner turmoil with themselves about any and everything as well as this need to “fit in” and also become super infatuated with the ROs to the point of instantly jumping in a relationship with them. It’s almost like whenever the story asks how the player feels about a certain thing or what they should do, there is this disconnect where it really is just asking what the player “thinks” rather than the character. Kind of like someone telling you a story and asking you about your thoughts on it. Characters with flaws to me are just fine, but it has to be something I feel I can work with. Constantly letting me make a decision only for it to contradict what I picked (multiple times) isn’t enjoyable which is a shame because like alot of people are saying the writing style itself is great.
A big example of what I didnt like about the whole game was, when I just decided to go with Joan until the game allowed me to breakup with her. I wasn’t rude, but I showed as least interest as I could until I finally got the option to break up which ended up being pretty late in the game. During that scene, Joan brings up the reason I want to break up being Kaysha (I think thats her name) and the MC says that isnt the reason…followed by, in their head, that it is only partially true. Mind you, I have never showed interest in anyone actually cause as I said before in another post the ex relationship actually seems more interesting so I just focused on trying to get back with the ex (to the disdain of the game apparently) so when Kaysha shows up during Joan’s date I pick every option to show I have no interest in her. There is even a choice during that conversation to say “No, because I want her out of my face!” or something along the lines of that, I also didnt give her my phone number, mostly cause I tried to approach this game as a normal person would and nobody I know would be giving out their number to a stranger and for that matter, in Rae’s case, thinking about how great it would sound to say her name when you tell people your going out even though I literally just learned her name. Like what?
My point is, I showed zero interest and Kaysha wasn’t a factor in anything but later after breaking up with Joan the story tries to constantly include her saying something along the lines of how with your thoughts about your ex…and now with Kaysha in the picture to complicate things everything is crazy. At that point I had pretty much checked out of the story. Also even the ex ending wasn’t great. I thought it had so much potential like both the MC and the ex realizing their flaws/issues with each other and finding a compromise, how I think most good relationships are made, but nothing is learned by the end. They just get back together. Thats it. No in depth talk or any plan to focus on doing things differently. The MC is stuck being neurotic and the ex stays manipulative as far as I can tell. So much potentially good story to be told wasted. I don’t think I would be so critical of the romance in the story if that wasn’t the main thing the game was promoted on so much so that when the game isn’t talking about one of the ROs it kind of just flounders since there is no plot really outside of them. Honestly, the game seems like it was written with a predetermined character in mind, one that was into polyamory, ran from problems constantly to the point of up and moving to another city after a unclear breakup because for some reason rather not just sit and have a real conversation, then instantly jumping into another relationship with a random person not even a week after they arrive there, and even then being very unsure about any and everything they do in even that relationship while wondering why things keep going bad for them.Oh and also going directly against a choice that was brought up within the first few pages of the story that I picked which was they came to Boulder to focus on themselves and becoming whole.
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I liked the game…The first play through. I hope I’m not coming on too strong but this book’s routes felt…Lazily done? Not in the sense that the author didn’t try but after replaying it, each Ro route is the exact same as the other only with a few minor details changed. The sex scenes were also the same. It didn’t flow well, each RO didn’t have their own story or background, they just shared the same one and whichever RO got it depended on who you were romancing. For example I romanced Kaysha the first time and then at the John marry (or whatever place it was where RO takes you to meet their friends) I met Rae, apparently Rae and Kaysha had a bitter past because Rae stole one of her past lovers. It seemed interesting enough, but see when I replayed again except with my main romance Rae, the same thing happened but the roles were switched. The game seemed a bit rushed, and less developed then I would expect, along with the fact that each RO criticizes you if you keep them as your main romance, regardless of how hard you try and your stats. I had romance relatively high, with the sex stat about 15% percent lower and she still called me out on being too sexual all the time. On the plus side, I really enjoyed how the romances had moments that seemed pretty realistic and the fact that there were a lot of different choices or options as to how to spend your days.
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I replayed the game and it doesn’t matter if MC had sex at the first or second opportunity, Ray still told the MC that they’re only interested in sex 
I guess doing it once is just too much for him 
…Mutual masturbation?
But yeah, for me it was like:
After first date
Her: Noticeably aroused
Me: Well, it was a great date but I should be heading on home.
Next date
Me: Sex is an option tonight but I feel like we should talk first.
Her: Talk? No, no talk - let’s skip ahead to the sex. …Oh alright we’ll talk and then have sex.
Some time later
Her: I just, I just feel like you see me as just some piece of meat.
Like, can you ever think about anything other than sex?
Me:…
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I was really disappointed with the sex as a relationship bar thing. Sex after one or two dates is not my thing. Honestly, I think the biggest downside was I wasn’t really enjoying the relationship. The MC spent most of the time worrying over every little thing. There’d be a cute romantic moment immediately followed up by fighting and it just didn’t flow naturally. The whole relationship felt like it was constantly on the edge of breakup despite the two just meeting each other. And I’m not giving specific names because they all follow the same plot anyway.
I mean I don’t date a lot in real life but I hope this is not a common experience for people. This sounds awful.
The writing is good as others have pointed out and I like the concept of a romance focused game like this. Some of the jitters the MC was getting on dates was realistic and I’ve felt those myself at times. But I just felt like I was playing the game in a different way than the game wanted me to play. Maybe I’d have enjoyed it more if I was into open relationships or jumping easily from one relationship into another?
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It kinda pains me to update, but replaying is disappointing. My first playthrough was awesome, and I was absolutely playing a rebound. When I got called out on being too focused on sex with no emotional commitment, it was right. So, I thought it was a great stat system behind the scenes actually evaluating the choices I was making.
Second playthrough… another RO was basically the same, and now my first RO was the jerk… I don’t expect an ‘open world’ experience with these games, I think the ROs need their own personalized issue to have the confrontation about if there’s sort of a standardized relationship sequence. The activist thread touches on him being too busy, the healer complained I didn’t ask for a second session (I didn’t notice an option) so he could really need his partner to get into alternative medicine, and I’m not really sure what Ray’s issue was. I made the mistake of thinking Ray (as the second RO in my first play through) was slutty, so I went with his advances when focusing on him in my 2nd playthrough, but then he got miffed.
So, I loved the first playthrough. No regrets. But playthroughs have become just sort of a curiosity to see what tiny side elements there are to read, like the difference between calling the homeless guy’s sister or taking him to the shelter yourself. I love the writing. I like the RO options/personalities, I just wish the sequence/issues in the relationship developments were different.
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About the spoiler thing. So much yes. That was my main complaint about the game. Add to it a number of other issues (too many to count, you’ve covered a few of them in your post) - and you get a negative experience all in all.
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2 playthroughs ended up alone both times because I get annoyed at the manufactured issues. Literally nothing happened to warrant it but you are expected to apologize.
You completely blow off the character that tries to get you to be unfaithful but the narrative still tries to make you feel guilty somehow.
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Hi. I started “Love at Elevation” few days ago. Could you please tell me who are the romance?
I don’t remember the names but the ROs are a hippie character, a sports focused character and a activist focused character, plus the player’s ex, all of whom can have their gender selected.
Ok thank you
I just finished this one a few minutes ago. It was… interesting.
I’m very new to these types of games/stories. This one appealed to me because it seemed very slice-of-life – no speculative fiction, takes place in the real world, focused on relationships, etc. Not that spec-fic, etc., is bad, but this one offers a nice variety against the rest of the options out there. I honestly got it because I thought it might be a good one to play at night, assuming that if I fell asleep and forgot bits, I wouldn’t be too out of the loop next time I picked it up. Call it “Choice of Ambien” 
But, as it turned out, I started reading it during the day quite a bit – when I was fully awake, no less! – so it must’ve been pretty engaging to me.
First off, it’s a love letter to the city of Boulder. You’ll get to know places, sights, scents, foods… there are sooooo many restaurant names. After a while, this gets a little overwhelming and doesn’t necessarily help me with the narrative. But the author definitely knows their stuff, and the Boulder Chamber of Commerce should hire them to do tourism brochures!
Even beyond just the heavy level of detail about the city, there’s an odd level of minutiae that doesn’t always seem to have much game impact. Several times, when you are at one of these (awesome-sounding) Boulder restaurants, you’re given 6+ choices of what to eat. Other times, when you’re at home, you’re given 6+ choices of what to wear. And frequently, with the clothing choices, they were all kind of “out there” – very distinct choices you’d wear to make a specific impression. There were relatively few “I’ll just dress normal” options. This felt a little off.
The game was super-ambitious. A 325,000-word interactive-fiction game that’s essentially “slice of life”? Very ambitious indeed! The way the ROs were handled helped with this feeling of ambitiousness. You had three choices (plus maybe your ex back home?), and you could date them in any order, and even date more than one of them at once from what I could tell. You could decide to break up with them, to keep the relationship focused on sex, etc. Though I only played through once, I made some assumptions that I could have made very different choices and had the structure play out very differently. I went from dating one RO to breaking up with them and having a sex-only relationship with a second RO and then kind of flirting with a third RO. It seems at least possible I could’ve made choices to be dating all three ROs at once. The structure alone to accomplish this level of variance seems impressive to me – though I’m very new to these types of games.
The flip side of that, though, is that there were some inconsistencies. Frequently, I’d think my relationship was fine, and the game would seem to indicate my relationship was fine… only to tell me a page later that it wasn’t fine. The game kept telling me it was perfectly fine to have a sex-only relationship, but then it would tell me I was worried about my relationship and why wasn’t I trying to advance it more? Similarly, near the end, out of the blue, the game kept telling me that I didn’t think I was fitting in well in the city of Boulder – which was news to me! I thought I was doing great, especially since the MC’s relationship with Boulder is arguably the most important relationship in the game (moreso than any of the ROs).
One drawback in a “slice of life” game is that we all have different slices in our lives, and you can only cover so many in one game. This game presumes your character is interested in fitness, new-age healing and social justice – those are not bad things to be interested in, but your character doesn’t really have a choice, and at times, the narration even comes off a little preachy. Like, “These are the three reasons you came to Boulder!” I realize that it’s not that different from a spec-fic game saying “These are the three reasons you must slay the vampire!” or “These are the three reasons you must join Starfleet!” But when you’re dealing with such real-world motivations, the lack of other real-world motivation options becomes more obvious.
There were also a few weird mysteries that did not get resolved. Not sure if this is just because of the choices I made or if they never get resolved in any playthrough. I’m thinking specifically of the person who keeps watching you in the opening chapters and the person who dumps recycling on your front door. Who are these people? Are they they same person? I have no idea!
I know that’s a lot of critiques I’m offering, but I was overall impressed with this from a structural/technical perspective. And the story itself, though it got too bogged down in the details sometimes, was fun and quirky and seems a nice balance to the heavy, sci-fi/fantasy/horror options out there.
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Excellent review and I agree with most of it. I would definitely be interested in seeing more romance games akin to LAE in a specific location and/or time - it actually reminds me of a relaxing game I started recently called Lake which is all about delivering mail to a small mid west town in the 80’s that you grew up in and your interactions with the locals. Choice games similar to that where the stakes aren’t so high could be nice, especially for Hearts Choice. I also agree that LAE is ultimately a little forced in the assumption of interest in specific issues and being limited if those don’t quite appeal. Still a game I enjoyed overall though!
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the mixed signals I keep getting from Ray are kind of frustrating.
We’ve slept together twice, both of which he mostly initiated. Later on he expresses concern that I’m the one in it for sex (I’m not) and we manage to remedy and get through it. Shortly after he keeps initiating and i don’t know what to do
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