Games worth discovering

A cozy matchmaking sim with a talking cat?! Matchmaker Agency is an addictive management game

378 View2024-02-22

Matchmaker Agency

Dating SimRomanceInteractive FictionProcedural GenerationVisual NovelCasualLGBTQ+Time management

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SHOULD I PLAY MATCHMAKER AGENCY?

Play it if you like management games with an emphasis on story. In Matchmaker Agency, you take over your grandparent’s matchmaking service. Helping people find true love isn’t always easy, but thankfully, you have a talking cat familiar to guide you through the process. The story is charming, and the mechanics are a fun twist on more traditional management games. There were times when I wish it gave me a little more to do, but overall, I really enjoyed the story and gameplay.

TIME PLAYED

I played about six hours of Matchmaker Agency, which was enough time to beat the game and check out some of the features I unlocked during my playthrough, like a character creator and free play mode. Since clients can be matched with different people during each playthrough, there’s a decent amount of replay value, and I can definitely see myself going back to it in the future.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT MATCHMAKER AGENCY?

• Charming story and characters. Matchmaker Agency doesn’t have shocking plot twists or dramatic cliffhangers, but its story is sweet and genuinely heartwarming. The main narrative is about paying off debt and saving your family’s business, but there are also lots of smaller stories about people struggling to find love, like Elmira, the goth girl who thinks guys will be scared off by her alternative clothing, or Mateo, who wants to find a partner even though he’s not ready to come out to his family. My former clients occasionally checked in with me to let me know how they were doing, and I got a postcard from every couple I paired up during the end credits. The focus on story made matching characters a lot more fun.

• Great character designs. There are two types of clients in Matchmaker Agency: procedurally generated characters and special clients with more distinctive designs. The procedurally generated clients looked fine, but the special characters all had fantastic designs that gave me insight into their interests and personalities. As a matchmaker, it was my duty to pair these characters up with other people, but I would have been happy to take them out on a date myself.

• Fun management mechanics. I’ve played plenty of dating sims, and I’ve tried all kinds of tycoon and management games, but the way Matchmaker Agency combines these genres feels truly unique. Whether I was trying to bring in business with ad campaigns, interviewing clients to learn more about their interests, or investing in upgrades that would boost my business, I really enjoyed keeping my matchmaking agency up and running.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT MATCHMAKER AGENCY?

• It’s pretty repetitive. Matchmaker Agency is a cute, entertaining game, but after a while, it started to feel a little monotonous. As a matchmaker, I was able to guide my clients through dates and help them make decisions that would impress their prospective partner. I enjoyed this initially, but there’s not a lot of variety, so I was stuck playing through the same scenarios over and over again. The story segments helped to break things up, but I was definitely sick of walking my clients through dates by the end of my playthrough.

• You can’t decorate your dating agency. Matchmaker Agency let me invest in lots of different upgrades, but I never had a chance to update my office decor. Decorating isn’t an essential feature or anything, but characters were constantly commenting on the look of my office, which made me think I’d eventually get access to new furniture or other design tools.

At one point, an interior decorator suggested that I could redesign my office once I’d finished repaying my debt. I paid off my debt and watched the credits roll, but I still wasn’t able to give my office a new look. Obviously, I can live without it, but the constant talk about decorating just made me think about what I was missing. It’s mentioned so often that I think the developers planned to include interior decorating features, but scrapped them before the game was released.