Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim is a Japanese indie adventure game by Safe Havn Studio and published by Hyper Real. As the name suggests, the story follows a young man who must endure an experience with a woman hundreds of times his size named Saeko. While this obviously carries certain implications for a niche audience with certain proclivities, I was interested in exploring this title for its potential thanks to a distinct brand of indie horror. It’s worth noting that this is not a hentai game, though there are still some sexual themes to parts of its script.
Worth Peanuts
By and large, Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim presents as a horror story, complete with a tense soundtrack full of drum & bass with ambient sounds to add to the atmosphere. It also comes with a pixel art visual style with expressive use of animation, a somewhat rough set of icons, and generally darker color schemes, albeit with an at times cutesy tinge (particularly during some animations in the drawer with the shrunken people) to give it some proper contrast.
In the fall of 2008, you wake up as a young amnesiac man named Rin, stuck inside a dark room with a few strangers who seem…off. After interacting with those around you, the room shakes and is revealed to be the desk drawer of a young woman named Saeko, who towers above everyone in the drawer.
Saeko has the ability to shrink people she comes across, which she has been using to kidnap them and turn them into her playthings. Once per day, she will devour one of the residents of the drawer, specifically the one who she finds to be the most “appealing”, with appeal being a parameter determined by whoever the player decides to offer food for that evening once Rin gets appointed the job of drawer “supervisor”.
As Saeko’s personal favorite, Rin must also accompany her in the evenings. This is where the “dating sim” element really comes into play, as she will often make small talk about things like television programs she watched or clothes she found interesting. Of course, she is not one for patience, so not letting the conversation roll the way she wants it to (or just ignoring her outright) is a great way to get turned into freshly squeezed Rin juice.
Squeeze Me, Love Me, Tease Me Till I Can’t Take No More
As a horror story, Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim has its share of strong moments. The pixel art is both gorgeous and unsettling in a way that gives it an unnerving vibe without ever being too hard to look at. It offers a share of contrast that works rather effectively with the story being conveyed. Saeko is not a good person, something she acknowledges, but she has some distinctly relatable qualities that humanize her just enough to actually make her more uniquely terrifying given everything she does in the story.
If I had to describe what playing through this game was like, it would be…strange. Nobody really comes off as a good person in this story, provided they even live long enough for you to develop an opinion of them. Nonetheless, given you’re ostensibly the one in charge of who gets to live to see another day, it left an odd feeling as the one holding the mouse deciding who becomes Saeko’s snack for the day (itself being a rather icky way to watch someone die if you aren’t into vore). There are a lot of salient bits with the way characters interact, both in the scenes in the drawer and with Saeko herself. There are also certain actions which, while necessary to progress, the fact that the player has to input them evokes a different feeling than just having them happen as a cutscene.
While a generally short little adventure game, Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim offers a surprisingly expansive amount of peripheral depth. Something I appreciate is that at certain checkpoints, you get access to Saeko’s cell phone where you can do activities like read little webnovels, check the news (which tends to tie into the story in ways that slowly reveal themselves to the player), peruse Saeko’s email, or even play a little calculator-type game. Of course Saeko will stop you from checking anything too sensitive, but even that becomes relevant. It offers just enough worldbuilding to give the story some life beyond “people just get trapped in a sociopathic cannibal’s drawer.”
And I Must Scream
Alas, despite the size of its main attraction, Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim is a rather compact game in a way that leads to some of its greatest issues.
You really don’t have all that much agency in affecting the actual outcome of the game, with a couple of different endings that don’t deviate all that substantially in terms of course beyond a few events very late into the story. While it first seems like you pick and choose who lives and dies each day, the way the numbers work out for the “appeal” stat means that there is less deviation in this aspect than I would have hoped. The game’s flow of progression doesn’t really let these choices feel all that powerful or compelling after the initial shock wears off, much less offer significant opportunity to get to know certain characters who often die before any real chance to spend time with them. Typically if you try to game the system, Saeko will just kill you and force you to try again, limiting your options.
In some ways, Saeko herself becomes one of the biggest problems with the experience of actually playing the game. During the “dating sim” sections, she’s prone to getting very impatient with you if you respond too often to her questions, or if you go too long without responding to her. These points often feel exceedingly arbitrary, which isn’t helped by the fact that most of your responses are “yeah” and “I see”, responses so plain that it becomes odd when multiple show up and one of them elicits a negative reaction while the other doesn’t. As well, at times the actual icons, font, and user interface aren’t the easiest to see due to certain visual effects. And if you mess up and tick her off, she crushes you to death, forcing you to redo the entire conversation from the beginning.
I’m not sure if this is an odd consequence of localization (the script is otherwise generally fine outside of a couple minor typos, weird anachronisms, and the use of the word “otokonoko” in place of a more common equivalent like “femboy” or “androgynous”), but it results in a share of tedium where I felt punished seemingly for agreeing with her when she specifically wanted me to. This was particularly irksome on replays when I just wanted to hold fast-forward to try to get to alternate endings. I imagine this is why the couple of endings I got after my first didn’t quite hit as hard as the first one did. This isn’t even getting into a couple of the parts where attempts to “humanize” certain characters fell somewhat flat for me, despite some of my earlier praise for the attempts to do so.
Verdict
There’s a share of good and bad to Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim. It’s certainly one of the more unique horror experiences I’ve experienced, enough that the novelty alone makes it worth consideration even if you aren’t inclined towards the particular kink this game ostensibly is marketed towards. It left me with enough moments to kind of dwell on thinking about how I would respond to this situation. The fact that much of the cast really doesn’t come out at the end of this story looking like a good person might not be for everyone, but it gives it a fairly believable side. The first ending I got was unsettling in a way that was genuinely interesting, one which worked particularly well given what all you do in this game.
At the same time, it can be a somewhat tedious experience to play given all the repetition. Though I wouldn’t call it quite an “ironic dating sim” despite it using the genre for means beyond conventional romance, the “dating sim” side of things can feel somewhat more burdensome rather than the neat little twist on the genre it perhaps could have made for.
This game offers a memorable experience, though a noticeably flawed one in part due to the relatively small package this giantess dating sim comes in that keeps it from reaching its full potential.
SAEKO: GIANTESS DATING SIM IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another visual novel, you may enjoy Putrika 1st.cut:The Reason She Must Perish. We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Many thanks go to Hyper Real for a PC review code for Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
