Validate: Struggling Singles in Your Area – First Impressions

ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area is a romantic visual novel about 13 adults in Jercy City navigating new relationships and the harsh realities that come alongside them. I’ve talked about this game a few times; Veritable Joy’s dedication to including authentic BIPOC and LGBTQ+ representation in Validate definitely caught my attention. So, I am super happy that the team gave me a sneak peek at the demo before its public debut!

Game Details

  • Genre: Slice-of-Life | LGBTQ+ | Modern Romance
  • Platforms: Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation and Xbox, Itch.io
  • Projected Release Date: August 2022
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Melanin Friendly Games – ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area

Hey  Blerdy Tribe!! It’s Monday once again and I want to kick off the week with some melanin friendly games! If this is your first time here at Blerdy Otome, welcome!

Every Monday I spotlight video games that focus on stories surrounding more diverse casts of characters—for folks like me looking for a bit more representation in their games. Video games are for everyone, so shouldn’t their stories and characters be just as diverse as the people that play them? So I created this series to celebrate games that strive to tell much more diverse stories centering on Black and Brown individuals. But, I welcome all diversity and the series has expanded to include games featuring LGBTQIA rep and characters from other underrepresented groups.

So, if you’re interested in seeing previous Melanin Friendly Games posts, click HEREThis week, I’m spotlighting the upcoming romance visual novel, ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area, from Veritable Joy.

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Behind the Games – Interview with the ValiDate Team

Hey Hey Blerdy Tribe, it’s been awhile since I did a Behind the Games post—but I figured it was high time I revived this oft forgotten series. For those of you just joining the party, Behind the Games is a segment where I interview the folks ‘behind the games’ I review. Giving you guys a chance to get to know the developers that spend so much time carefully crafting the games you enjoy.

Last time, I spoke with Chu-3, the founder of the indie game studio, RoseVeRte Games—the developer of the Eroolia and Cafe 0 series. This time around, I had the chance to chat with the team behind the upcoming LGBT+ positive romance visual novel, ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area.

Validate Struggling Singles in Your Area

ValiDate is a romantic visual novel about 12 adults in Jersey City navigating new relationships and the harsh realities that come alongside them.

Plot Synopsis

Anywhere can be the city of love if you’re willing to try hard enough, and some of these folks from Jercy City are desperate. ValiDate presents a smorgasbord of relationships to bear witness to— but the dating scene is difficult even when you aren’t marginalized in six different ways, so happiness continues to fly just out of reach for these unlucky lovers.

The team working on ValiDate consists entirely of people of color and they each bring their own experiences and unique voice to the project. What makes this game so exciting for me is that, like the development team, the main cast of ValiDate is very diverse featuring characters from a wide range of backgrounds, sexual orientation, and gender identity. And with 12 playable characters and over 30 routes, this game promises to shake up the indie gaming scene when it is released Q1 2021. In the meantime, four of the members of the ValiDate team—Dani, Alexis, Lisa, Percy, and Kevin—let me pick their brain about the upcoming project! So, let’s turn things over to them…

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