This post was updated on Feb. 26, 2023 at 8:13 p.m. 

The virtual UC Love campus could be the perfect place to fall head over heels.

Even though Valentine’s Day has come and gone, Bruins can continue to experience an atmosphere of love with the anime-style dating simulator UC Love. The romance web game launched Feb. 14 as part of the Association for Computing Machinery at UCLA’s Student Run Studios project. It features one playable character that has the opportunity to date the personifications of various universities, including UCLA, UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California. UC Love devises a unique storyline depending on who is romanced in the game and employs a mix of music, humor and mini activities to engage players.

“There’s a whole lot to do,” said Cole Strain, a fourth-year computer science student and co-team lead of the project. “There’s nine different endings as well, so it’s a short game if you play one ending, but it has a lot of possibilities for longer play times.”

Bella Pham, a fourth-year communication and political science student and another co-team lead of the project, said the inspiration for the game originated from a 2020 trend in which artists would sketch personified figures of their colleges. Taking the trend one step further to create a playable dating simulator, Pham said she wanted to portray each character based on public perception of the school – such as designing UCLA’s character Ellie to wear clothes fit for Los Angeles weather and UC Berkeley’s character Kelly to act more stern and strict.

[Related: Student-made card game Loot Brutes seeks to tap into players’ greed]

Pham added it was important that the game portrayed women realistically. While many dating simulators can be perceived as suggestive, she said she wanted to create a wholesome game that did not fall prey to stereotyping women. Pham said the team used metrics such as the Bechdel test – in which two female characters must discuss topics other than men – to ensure characters were multidimensional.

“We wanted to kind of emphasize characters beyond their interests, their romantic interests, … that they had hobbies,” Pham said. “They’re not just these robots that will 100% fall in love with the player. They do have hesitations, they have worries of their own, independent of their relationship with the player.”

As a leader in developing the artistic and creative side of UC Love, Pham said she tried to ensure the game had a cohesive feel, especially because she struggled to keep the art in previous projects relatively consistent. With four lead character artists and different team members working on each step of the artistic process, Pham said the artists needed to constantly reference already-existing artwork to match each character’s style.

[Related: ‘God of War Ragnarok’ outshines predecessor with dynamic gameplay, thrilling story]

Strain, who led the game’s coding component, said it was crucial to find ways to coordinate between the programming and artistic teams throughout the process of creating the game. While it was easier for developers to work independently without disrupting the primary game, he said, holding joint meetings to discuss everyone’s progress and collaborate was still essential.

Although UCLA alumnus and lead character artist Joy Richardson said UC Love is supposed to be a satirical representation of students who complain about their school, she said she enjoyed seeing how absurd the ideas could get. Richardson said the team needed to find the right balance between keeping the game realistic and parodistic.

“Every goal that I wanted to add into the game is pretty much there, every element and every feature,” Pham said. “UC Love is something that has everything that I wanted. … I’m very proud that it’s a cohesive experience, and I pretty much finished all my hopes and dreams for UC Love.”