It's not them. It's you.
Don't Take It Personally, I Just Don't Like You is a "lofi-anime" Dating Sim by indie developer DeCoster, released on April 28th, 2023. You're a college freshman with college freshman problems: you've got an awful professor, your roommate's kind of a flake, and this week really just hasn't been going your way. Luckily, you've got just the thing planned for this weekend: a date to the fall formal with the girl you've been (sorta?) seeing and your new (sorta?) friends. But things are never that easy...
A free, stand-alone demo/prequel, subtitled The Camping Trip, was released December 2019. The demo can be downloaded here
Don't Take It Personally, I Just Don't Like You contains examples of:
- Betty and Veronica: In the demo, Rose acts as the Betty and Maria acts as the Veronica. Though certain events in Maria's route hint that there is more going on with Rose, which could reverse their roles in the full game.
- Camping Episode: The demo takes place over a one-night camping trip with the protagonist and two of the game's potential love interests.
- Dating Sim
- Did Not Get the Girl: Happens in one of the demo endings, and, presumably, several of the endings for the full game.
- Multiple Endings: Four in the demo alone, including a Nonstandard Game Over.
- Rose: Maria drops the player and Rose off. They go off together and get breakfast.
- Maria: Maria drops Rose off, then takes the player to go pick up their lost gear.
- Alone: Maria drops the player and Rose off. Rose leaves the player, citing some homework she has to finish. The player gets text messages from Anne and Todd, explaining where the calls came from and suggesting that the player try again for a better ending.
- Todd: The Nonstandard Game Over. The player and Rose go check on Todd rather than go camping.
- Painting the Medium: The game is stylized like a hybrid between an early nineties computer interface and a VHS tape, and anytime anyone starts to argue the picture degrades, to the point where the screen becomes almost completely obscured by static in one particularly nasty fight. And, in the demo, arguing too much with Rose will cause her to rewind the tape.
- Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: While there's a little initial awkwardness and some disagreement between Maria and Rose, by the time the fire is lit they've started to get along much better. But then Rose asks Maria about the location of the campground...
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Maria, almost constantly.
- Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: A weird, demo-specific inversion. While a total of six characters are shown on the marketing material, only two (Rose and Maria) actually physically appear in the demo, with three others (Anne, Todd, and Sarah) communicating via text. The sixth character (Dale) is frequently mentioned, but never interacts with the onscreen characters.
