FMV games have been through a fascinating evolution since their inception. The trailblazers were predominantly interactive B-movies, featuring trashy pulp fiction scripts with acting that matched, despite often featuring serious Hollywood actors. The likes of Night Trap, Phantasmagoria and American Hero live on in the memory because they were so bad, they were good again.
Over time, there was a revolution at the core of FMV games. The quality increased. They got serious and started tackling mature themes. Immortality topped more than a few GOTY lists back in 2024, while Wales Interactive have created a cottage industry out of publishing scarry/comedy FMV games.
Despite this, there’s still a few FMV games being released these days that hark back to the schlocky ‘good ol’ days‘. SNR Interactive’s debut title ‘Love: Fall In Death’ is one such game, and despite being of Turkish origin, has been localised into English.
Drop-Dead Gorgeous. Literally.
In Love: Fall In Death, you decide the actions of the hapless protagonist Kutay (played by Yusuf Kaan Çoban, who also starred in FMV game First Date: Late to Date). Out drinking with a few buddies, the group watch as a stunning woman called Ayşil enters the bar (played by Beste Yarali, most famous for the 2024 TV show ‘You’ve Made Your Bed, Now Lie in It’). Egged on by his friends who wager he couldn’t pick her up, Kutay approaches and attempts to chat her up.
What Kutay doesn’t know is that his attempt to start up a romantic conversation is setting him up for the wildest and deadliest night of his life. He’ll get trapped in a vampire love/thirst triangle, or get dragged into the plot of a vampire hunter, or simply become the next snack for a blood sucker. Regardless, Kutay is about to fall in love, or fall in death. His fate is in your hands.
Before we ever get to drop an ill-fated chat up line however, we get to decide what kind of Kutay we wish to play as. By plotting our desired place on a triangle area graph, we get to decide the base stats of Love: Fall in Death’s main man. Each vector of the graph determines 3 characteristics – Strength, Charisma and Intelligence. Raise one stat and the others will fall, but all of these stats will come in handy throughout the game in one way or another.
A Branching Fan-ction
Love: Fall in Death features a branching narrative. Throughout the game, and very regularly, the player is given an option of which way to steer Kutay’s next move or dialogue. These choices are boiled down to a selection of 2 or 3 short summaries of what to do next at the bottom of the screen, and you’ve got a few seconds to choose which you wish to pick.
Each and every choice impacts the path the narrative takes. This occurs in two distinct ways. The first and most traditional is that each new choice opens up a new scene. While the narrative might bring you into the same scene later in the game, there are dozens of unique scenes to unlock by exploring all of the options available.
The second way that choices impact the narrative is with your relationship with Ayşil. Represented by a heart that sits in the top left of the screen, this will fill or empty depending on your choices. Direct Kutay to drop a line that Ayşil likes, and the heart will top up a little. Deliver a clanger and upset Ayşil, and the heart will empty.
Cosying up with Ayşil isn’t always the best course of action however. At certain junctions in the narrative, you won’t get a choice of what happens next. The next scene that plays will be determined by how much of this heart you’ve managed to fill. To see everything Love: Fall In Death has to offer, you’ll have to play the game multiple times, keeping this heart above or below certain thresholds that will lock in a particular path if you’ve done otherwise.
Deadly Dice & QTE’s
“Why do we even have to pick Kutay’s stats then?” I might hear you ask. Well, dear reader, that’s because Love: Fall In Death has another few tricks up its sleeve. During various points of the game, you’ll get the opportunity to do something more risky.
In conversations, this means picking a dice icon. Here, you’ll role a D20 in an attempt to hit a particular number. If you packed some points into Kutay’s Intelligence of Charisma, you’ll also get a bonus to your dice roll. Succeed and you’ll unlock a new scene. Fail and you’ll suffer the consequences (and likely frustrate Ayşil in the progress, emptying the heart).
For those that invested in Kutay’s strength, this’ll come into play during other scenes where the protagonist gets to be more physical where it makes the proceedings marginally easier. When the lead character is called to act, there are scenes where you’ll have to succeed a series of QTE’s. Whether it’s arm wrestling a vampire hunter or just fighting off some street punks, these QTE’s aren’t particularly taxing regardless of how much you invested in the lead’s physical prowess, so this feels a little less helpful than the other stat boosts.
Still, these little twists and elements of luck give Love: Fall In Death a little bit of mechanical complexity compared to most straightforward modern day FMV games.
Old School Appeal…
The story itself is cheeky, never takes itself seriously and would feel very at home in 1980’s or 90’s. It’s far from perfect, with more than a few scenes feeling stilted or awkward (potentially because of what might be lost in translation), but it takes every possible opportunity to attempt to make the player smile or laugh. Love: Fall In Death revels in its absurdity: one example is when a pair of vampiric femmes fatales are fighting – literally – over who gets to eat/enslave Kutay, he sits back and a disembodied hand passes him some popcorn or an ice cream as he watches them go at it. The game regularly breaks down the fourth wall too, looping the player into jokes.
The tone of the script, with its tongue firmly pressed into its cheek, is carried by the acting on display. While no one’s going to be winning any awards for the performances here – in fact, some of it is painful to watch – it’s clear that the cast had an absolute blast filming this FMV game. The English dubbing for Love: Fall In Death is perfectly fine, but as I mentioned before, there are times when there’s a long awkward silence, and either the script asks for an unnecessary pause, or the dubbing is a little off.
The same came be said about the subtitles (yes, I’m old, I watch and play everything with subtitles). There are times when the subtitles shown on screen don’t match what’s actually been said. There’s a few typos. The game will occasionally freeze or stutter on PS5, and after this, the subtitles can lag behind what’s happening on the screen.
Despite its issues, one element of Love: Fall In Death that deserves to be complemented is the cinematography. The game is well shot and edited, giving a convincing feeling to the surroundings and events on screen.
…Meets Modern Day Features
Despite harking back to the tone of the 1990’s FMV games, Love: Fall In Death does come with a number of modern day quality-of-life updates. While you can’t skip content that you’ve already seen like most modern day FMV games, you can speed up (all slow down) all scenes in the game. This enables you to speed run through scenes you want to replay to take a different path – and it does add a humorous element as the actors squeak their way through their lines.
Love: Fall In Death also has a narrative map in the main menu that allows you to instantly start a scene you’ve seen before. While this does cut down on the number of replays to explore all of the game’s content, it isn’t entirely helpful because it doesn’t change the relationship level of Ayşil which is a prominent factor in exploring some branches of the narrative. You’ll still have to do quite some backtracking in order to explore the 3 distinct latter game paths where decisions made early on will determine where you head next.
Dead on arrival?
I imagine Love: Fall In Death will be a divisive title. Compared to the serious, mature modern day titles that are spearheading the renaissance of the FMV genre, this game is puerile, irreverent and schlocky. The appeal of this game will likely hinge on whether you grew up on ‘Her Story’ or the polar opposite, like ‘Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties’. There’s no judgement either way here, but if you consider the latter to be a guilty pleasure, you’ll get more out of Love: FID.
Even objectively, for every positive element the game has, there’s an accompanying fault. While it’s mechanically more complex than most straightforward FMV games released these days to its credit, the game stutters and judders which upsets the vocals and subtitles.
Love: Fall In Death is available now on PS5 (review platform), PC via Steam or EGS and Xbox.
Developer: SNR Interactive
Publisher: SNR Interactive
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we purchased a copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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