Jurassic Heart… it’s a dating sim with a dinosaur.

Sorry for falling off the map there for a bit. Lots of travel and a nasty sinus infection got me down. But I’m back with something that I hope will make up for it. Or rather amuse you as much as it amused me, then again, I am high on cold meds. I mean, how often do you come across a dinosaur dating sim?

Welcome to Jurassic Heart! It’s a dating sim, and for those poor souls who don’t know what a dating sim is, it’s basically a game wherein you try and hook up with someone. Sometimes they have stories, sometimes they’re flat out porn, and sometimes they’re really fucking weird. Back in my anime obsessed days of teenagedom, I loved these things whenever I could come across them. I remember downloading various Japanese-only .exe files just to try and see if I could get my own bishounen and then being suddenly very alarmed when suddenly there were boobs and rather poorly censored dicks everywhere. (I was, genuinely, a very innocent teen). Some are really fun and interesting and take awhile to build relationships, etc etc. SO, when I came across this one I was a bit nervous because, frankly, I didn’t want to see dinosaur porn, save that for ebooks.

As it turns out, Jurassic Heart is as innocent as it is ludicrous and is surprisingly charming.

The story starts off with you meeting a friend of yours at the train station. Now, this could be any friends, but we all know who it’s going to be. It’s your Jurassic friend (though technically the Tyranosaurus Rex lived during the late Cretaceous period, but I digress…). It seems that in this version of reality, dinosaurs are happily and peacefully living among us, or at least living in Tokyo. Better yet, they go to school! AND they wear ties! Though they ONLY wear ties… that’s hardly a fair dress code.

Anywho, Taira-kun is your tie-clad dinosaur pal who you’ve made a bit of a mess with. See, you convinced him to perform and he dropped his precious ukulele. And now you feel bad. So you’re meeting him to go and buy a new instrument so Tairu-kun can strum the worries away of his inevitable extinction.

The dating sim is fairly short, but you do have some options to choose from, from your appearance to how the ukulele is going to be bought. I personally went for halfsies, but you can either insist on paying for it or make the dino take the hit. Be wary that he has teeth as big as your face. Once the ukelele is bought, you find yourself in a park, like you do, chatting away with your best dino buddy. You have the choice whether to stick around or go do homework, but I mean… who wants to go do homework when you can hang out with a dinosaur in a park? If you decide to hang around he confesses to you that he has performance anxiety because it’s difficult for him to pick up his ukulele with his tiny arms. Awwwwwww.

I laughed an awkward amount at this, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit bad for him! All he wants to do is play the ukulele, but he’s got a massive head and little arms and he’s not really predisposed to playing the tiny string instrument. Poor dinosaur.

If you’ve made it this far, I’m sure you’re wondering if I’m alright in the head. Kristina, you ask, what the hell are you doing? Why are you even entertaining this bizarre game? Well, I answer, because how often can you make a Tyrannosaurus Rex blush? Also, this is hilarious, and it’s actually rather adorably written. Jurassic Heart is well aware of how batshit crazy it is, but it still follows the dating sim formula, plus it has amazing jokes.

See!

So yeah, if you get the “good end” it winds up with Tairu-kun serenading you with his ukulele in the park. I assume the bad end results in him eating you or something horrible. I’ve yet to be able to get it. It’s hard to piss this dinosaur off. I may just want to find my giant lizard-bird love too badly.

Go give it a whirl and let me know how you fared with our Cretaceous Casanova. You can play and download Jurassic Heart at their website.

All screenshots by yours truly.