Island of Hearts (PC) review: I played this raunchy FMV dating sim so you don’t have to

By the way, if you didn’t already know, Island of Hearts is actually a Singapore-made PC game. Produced by Titan Digital Media and publisher 4Divinity, it was led by Singaporean influencer Tan Jianhao.

The funny thing is that the game doesn’t even try very hard to disguise what it really is. Underneath the branching dialogue choices and relationship routes, Island of Hearts feels far less like a traditional narrative-driven game and much more like a giant piece of interactive fan service designed around its cast. You play as a recently single guy who finds himself on an island surrounded by attractive women, and from there, the experience mostly revolves around spending time with them, making dialogue choices, and trying to steer your relationships in different directions.

Less of a game, more of a fan service fantasy

The cast lineup itself makes that intention pretty obvious. You’ve got Siew Pui Yi as Emily, Debbie Wee as Gabby, Nahyun Kim as Mia, Baby G as Sophia, Ayako Ogawa as Chloe, and Leah Usami as Lily. If you already follow these creators online (ahem), then a large chunk of the appeal here is simply the novelty of interacting with them in a semi-romantic, interactive setting. Every character gets moments that feel carefully tailored around their public image and personality, whether it’s playful teasing, flirtatious conversations, or scenes designed to make fans feel like they’re getting a more personal version of the people they already watch online.

That’s also why I struggled to view Island of Hearts as a “proper” game at times. The gameplay systems technically exist, but they almost feel secondary to the fantasy being sold. Most of your time is spent moving through conversations, picking dialogue options, and occasionally taking part in mini-games that feel more like pacing breaks than meaningful mechanics – they are maddeningly simple, or maybe that was the point. The branching storylines and multiple endings do give the game some replay value, but honestly, the real hook is simply seeing how the cast members react to your choices and watching different interactions play out.

Oddly enough, that’s also where the game becomes strangely compelling despite itself. Some scenes feel surprisingly natural, especially when the conversations slow down and stop trying too hard to be flirtatious. There were moments where I almost forgot I was playing a dating sim because the interactions actually felt relatively grounded. Then there are other scenes where the dialogue becomes so aggressively awkward that I had to breathe slowly and paused before selecting an option, because I genuinely did not want to hear the line delivered out loud.

Unfortunately, curiosity always gets the better of me.

I can’t believe I kept playing it

That became the running theme throughout my time with Island of Hearts. Half the experience involves cringing at the dialogue choices while the other half involves picking them anyway because you desperately want to see how badly things can spiral. The first-person perspective makes this even worse because you’re not watching somebody else embarrass themselves – you’re directly responsible for every terrible pickup line and overly confident response. There were multiple occasions where I instinctively lowered my speaker volume whenever a family member walked past my room, not because the game was particularly explicit at that moment, but because trying to explain what I was playing somehow felt infinitely more uncomfortable.

At the same time, though, I can’t deny that the game understands its audience remarkably well. It knows exactly why players are here, and instead of pretending to be some deeply emotional narrative experience, it leans fully into being a slightly cheeky fantasy. There’s an almost refreshing honesty to that approach. Island of Hearts never feels like it’s trying to be prestigious or emotionally profound. It simply wants to place players into this playful, mildly raunchy scenario and let the cast do most of the heavy lifting.

That’s probably why I ended up sticking with it longer than I should. As a game, there isn’t much depth here. The mini-games are forgettable, replaying routes means revisiting familiar scenes, and eventually you start seeing the limits of the branching structure. But there’s still something oddly entertaining about the entire experience, even when you fully recognise how silly it all is. Maybe it’s my nostalgia for that old FMV era, maybe it’s curiosity about the different relationship paths, or maybe it’s simply because the game commits so fully to its own ridiculous premise that it becomes difficult not to admire the confidence behind it.

By the time I finished Island of Hearts, I still wasn’t entirely sure whether I genuinely liked it or whether I was just fascinated by how unapologetically committed it was to being exactly the kind of game it wanted to be. Either way, I can now officially say I reviewed this, so you don’t have to.

P/S: If I’m being honest, there’s a decent chance some of you are already opening Steam to buy the game anyway.

Island of Hearts is available on PC (Steam) and macOS now.