Original Release: Deep Silver, 2004, PC
Singles’ angle on being a Sims knockoff is to focus on relationship conversations, provide full nudity and eventually reward you with clumsy groping animations.
Singles (PC, Deep Silver, 2004)
Where to Buy: eBay, Amazon
Review by: Master-B
The premise of Singles is like something from one of those “gonzo” themed porn sites that were getting popular around when this game came out in 2004. You choose two characters from a list – all the options being wild n’ crazy 20something singles – and drop them into a house together with the objective of playing pervy Cupid and guiding them to banging it out. Come to think of it, this is the closest thing to a “government-mandated girlfriend” simulator that I’ve seen yet.
Anyway, at first look you can tell it’s a Sims knockoff. It functions pretty much the same way, just with fewer options for managing the life of your little sexual lab rats (and fewer ways to torture them and generally cause mayhem). Aside from going to work (completely off-camera) and taking care of occasional basic needs like food and toilet use, the whole game consists of having them talk to and flirt with each other to basically grind up relationship points.
What’s your reward for all of this toil, for constantly wrangling your moody test subjects and listening to their inane conversations? Well, Singles stands apart from the PG nookie of the Sims games by giving you the full frontal and eventually some clumsy sex and groping animations featuring all sorts of clipping and odd motions.
So it’s basically just a lesser version of the Sims with poor “erotic” content that takes forever to get to. Unless you really get off on seeing early 00s polygon models nekkid and grinding there just isn’t much on offer here.
Links
The movie Singles has nothing to do with this game and is kind of a lame romcom but has a highly underlooked soundtrack full of 90s grungey bangers
Videos