I’ll be upfront: I don’t normally cover magical dating sims. If I scrolled past Heartspell on Steam — a match-3 romance game set in a wizard academy — I’d probably keep moving. Sirens, werewolves, and “a little spice” isn’t the corner of the industry I live in.

But that’s exactly why I wanted to stop and look closer. Because every so-called “fringe” game is someone’s life’s work. Someone believed in it enough to pour years of time, money, and emotional energy into making it real. And if you ask why this genre, why this approach, why this moment — the answers are always more interesting than the features list.

When I asked Stephen (Heartspell’s writer) why he didn’t just write a book or a screenplay, his answer came fast: agency and achievement. Books and films can move you, sure, but they don’t hand you the steering wheel. Games let you shape the story, then make you earn the ending. It’s not the hero triumphed, it’s I triumphed. Even something as small as grinding stats or passing a match-3 puzzle builds that feeling of growth — and when the story finally pays off, you feel it in your gut because you lived it.

That agency is especially powerful in love stories. A novel can describe a romance; a game can make you complicit in it. You choose who to pursue, how to respond, what risks to take. And when it works, it doesn’t just tell you something about the character — it tells you something about yourself. Stephen admitted that writing Heartspell taught him more about his own fears, his own desires, than he expected. He hopes players walk away with the same.

But why land in the dating sim camp at all? The irony is that Heartspell started as an RPG in spirit. Stephen grew up on Dragon Age and Mass Effect, where romances often overshadow the Elder Brains and apocalypses. The problem was always the grind. Missed one arc? Too bad — replay hundreds of hours to see it. “I loved Tali’s story,” he said, “but what about the others? Why gate meaningful content behind gender locks and 100 hours of cover-shooting?”

Heartspell began as a rejection of those barriers. What if you could keep the intimacy of RPG romances but remove the friction — the genre baggage, the exclusivity, the repetition? Do that, and suddenly you’ve drifted into “dating sim” territory whether you meant to or not.

Dating sims get written off as silly or shallow. Stephen’s first response to that critique? “Yep, agreed.” But not in the way you think. “Humour is the armour,” he explained. “Real intimacy is scary. We lighten it with jokes, the same way we tack ‘lol’ onto a vulnerable text.”

Laughing it off is safer than sitting in the vulnerability. That’s why so many games in the space treat romance like a punchline — to defuse the tension of players taking it too seriously.

Heartspell is a deliberate push against that reflex. Yes, it’s playful, but its core stories lean into vulnerability rather than away from it. It wants you to feel the weight of reconciliation, the fear of ruining something good, the joy of finding connection where you least expect it. And it insists those emotions are worth exploring, even if you’re the kind of player who’d usually roll their eyes at the genre. Britt (Heartspell’s artist) was blunt about the bigger picture: “Romance novels get dismissed the same way, and they’re the top-selling genre of books. People like this stuff more than they admit.”

One of the pillars Britt and Stephen kept returning to was freedom. Not just in romance, but in identity. Why wouldn’t you let players romance whoever they want? Why shouldn’t you be able to experience every story in one playthrough? Why force a player into picking “the one” when relationships in real life aren’t always so binary? Britt remembered how playtesters came in expecting to “pick one,” then lit up when they realised they didn’t have to.

Stephen put it plainly: “Whenever there’s a question of whether a player can do something, we ask: why not? And if there isn’t a good reason, we let them.”

That philosophy led them to design an unusually inclusive system: romances across gender, species, multiple partners, or none at all. But it also meant making sure the world didn’t collapse into harem territory where every character exists just to please you. To avoid that, the team put real effort into believable relationships between characters, not just with the player. The result is a cast that feels like a community — messy, dramatic, supportive — whether you’re dating them or not.

For some players, that freedom will just be a nice feature. For others, it will be a lifeline. Heartspell aims to be a safe space to try on identities, to experiment with vulnerability, or simply to feel seen. And maybe most importantly, it hopes to catch the players who aren’t even looking for that — the ones who stumble in for the fantasy and leave with something more.

All of this lands in a moment where genre lines are fuzzier than ever. If Baldur’s Gate 3 can dominate the cultural conversation half as an RPG and half as a dating sim, then the labels don’t mean much anymore. Heartspell leans into that blur: part RPG in spirit, part dating sim in mechanics, part romantasy novel in tone. Stephen admitted it makes marketing a nightmare. “We’re the story and character content of an RPG, without the combat or loot. We’re everything you love about dating sims, but with longer arcs and more worldbuilding. That’s hard to pitch in a single line.”

The challenge is making sure players see the parts they want without assuming the parts that aren’t there.

But that blur is exactly what makes it interesting. Every time someone tries a game they thought wasn’t for them and walks away surprised, the genre stretches wider. “I love it when players say, ‘I didn’t think this was my thing, but it changed me,’” he told me. That’s not just a nice review — it’s a cultural shift.

Yes, Heartspell is set in a wizard academy with fairies, vampires, and sirens. But Stephen was quick to clarify: “Heartspell is not fundamentally about werewolves and fairies. It’s about flawed people with good hearts learning to connect and grow together.”

Strip away the robes and wings and you’re left with human stories: the anxiety of screwing up a relationship, the courage to reconcile, the relief of being supported. “At the end of the day, it’s just you and some pixels — a safe space to try on identities and maybe surprise yourself,” he told me.

That’s what made me stop and pay attention. Not because I’m a convert to magical dating sims, but because Heartspell proves the value of looking past your own lanes. If you only ever play what’s familiar, you’ll miss the stories that could change you.

So if you’ve ever dismissed a genre outright, maybe this is the moment to cross the bridge.

The Indieformer Team

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