Harness the power of alchemy and create terrible homunculi in My Lovely Daughter, the latest title from Game Changer Studio.
My Lovely Daughter is a strange and twisted affair that is full of confronting themes, centring on child labour, abusive parenting and ignorant societies, and the creators of the game even warn you it is designed to make you feel uncomfortable. You awake in a room with no memories, a soul orb containing your daughters soul and the husk of your daughter decaying slowly in the bed. To restore your daughter’s soul you must create homunculi daughters using alchemy and various ingredients like water, clay, wood and metal. After you have made a daughter, you must infuse them with human characteristics such as sadness, joy, fear and anger by making them work for you in town, learning from the townsfolk and then eventually sacrifice them for your actual daughter’s soul. Sacrificing a homunculi will also give you a higher quality alchemy ingredient than what you started with depending on their current level. This is as twisted as it may sound since you must keep your newly created daughters happy while also exploiting them.
There is a lot of micro management involved in My Lovely Daughter to get the results you desire for restoring your daughter’s soul. Each daughter will level up the more they work, different emotions suit different tasks in town and eventually special tasks are given to you for them to carry out on top of their normal duties. You also need to keep your homunculi happy, you achieve this by either giving them gifts and treats or by spending time with one of them during your single day back at your house. There is a stark contrast in imagery from your character happily running next to, drinking tea or playing catch with your daughters to then mercilessly killing them for their essence and resources by setting them on fire, letting them drown, decapitating them or one of many other terrible fates. All for the greater good of your character’s actual daughter.
My Lovely Daughter is framed with a sketchy and hand drawn art style that gives it a dark and sinister feel that really sets the tone from the start. The mansion in which you live feels cold and eerie, strange things are seen outside the windows and when you eliminate a homunculi there is a trail of blood left from their room to your daughters room. Apart from the overtly dark themes there is also a lot of subtle references to the themes addressed in both artwork and character interaction, especially as the story starts moving along. Homunculi will become more attached to you and start changing how they talk to and address you, occasionally writing you letters to tell you how they feel. Daughters will also plead with you as you decide to kill them, making the decision even more difficult than just if you have enough essence built up or levels for a better resource.
At its core My lovely Daughter is a deep management style game with themes that are very oppressive and may put some people off but that really is the whole point. A great game that is worth your time but not for the overly kind or faint of heart.
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Mat Panek
Retromancer – Collector, repairer & fan of retro games & tech. Atari to Amiga, Nintendo to Sega! LD, Zip, Beta and a proud dad! One half of the TiredParents on Twitch.
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Disclosure: My Lovely Daughter [Nintendo Switch eShop code] was kindly provided by Toge Productions for this review.
