A while back, I wrote an article about my growing appreciation for dating simulator games, having spent a significant amount of time playing Dream Daddy, as well as some other games that took the genre and turned it on its head in a variety of ways. There is certainly no shortage of this type of game if you look on the Steam store, especially of the anime variety. There’s also no shortage of these types of games that are much more, let’s say, “enticing” or “alluring” than a simple family-friendly dating simulator. Thanks to my time with Dream Daddy (and especially House Party) I was being recommended a number of dating games that were in the Adult sub-category by Steam’s algorithms. One in particular kept popping up and it had Overwhelmingly Positive reviews. I’m always pretty skeptical of such positive opinions in a niche genre like this, but I decided to give Being a DIK a try.

The Short of It

What I Played

Season 1 Story from start to finish
A couple alternate paths taken
Played an honest/neutral session and some time as a DIK

Pros

Story takes some unexpected turns
Grammar errors are few and far between
Some legitimately funny moments & characters
Many characters whose personalities stand out rather well
A lot of subtle differences and nuance to the dialogue with the slightest change to your character’s personality

Cons

The way “college” operates is not realistic, even if you ignore the more ridiculous stuff
Plenty of cliche characters who are either forgettable or so determined to be archetypes that they seem wholly unrealistic
Some sexual animations and skin textures look a bit odd or even goofy
Uncanny Valley all over the place
Despite there being a lot of songs, there are many that are better off muted or skipped
Arguably a tad misogynistic in some spots

The Rest of It

Plot

You are a young, handsome, white dude (with a massive D) in a small town who has been accepted to B&R University. Coming from a somewhat impoverished upbringing with just your dad, it’s an exciting new adventure for you to finally be able to go off to college and hopefully accomplish great things to make him proud. However, there’s this girl, Josy, with whom you’ve been obsessed while working at the local store over the summer. Only on the weekend before you go to college do you finally work up the courage to let her know that you’ve had a crush. It seems like there could be something there, but there are obvious obstacles in the way. Despite those obstacles, college awaits and possibly a romance with her.

Upon arriving at B&R University and meeting the colorful cast of characters with whom you’ll have many encounters (both good and bad), it becomes apparent that there’s a lot more going on at this university. There doesn’t seem to be much education to be had in this place, but there’s certainly a lot of hi-jinks and sex, which is what most people seem to think college is about these days. So, maybe college should be free for that reason alone.

Regardless, things do not go well and you end up in a complicated situation involving pledging to the Delta Iota Kappa (DIK) fraternity. Whether your character was ready for the party lifestyle or not, and whether he was going to be a lady’s man or a forever-friend-zone dude, you’re still going to have to endure a lot of hazing and absurd situations. And while your character is busy trying to adjust to college life, there’s some seedy business going on behind the scenes, and some slightly disturbing situations surrounding many of the side characters as well.

As I mentioned in my dating sims article, I don’t go out of my way to play this genre of games unless there is something special to see, and I don’t mean the porn pieces—it’s not like that type of content is in short supply or unavailable elsewhere, so an HBO-style hook to pull me into the game’s story isn’t necessary. When taking a moment to read the comments and reviews from the community around Being a DIK, however, you wouldn’t immediately think it’s an adult game. Most of the positive reviews were focused on the story more than anything else. Since I had such a fun time with House Party due to its clever writing, they convinced me that the story was worth experiencing.

At first, I wasn’t too impressed with the story or the characters. I was also rather put off by the somewhat simplistic view of how a college supposedly works. For example, you get accepted and then you, apparently, have to go there the next week? Your first day thereafter orientation puts you into two general ed classes immediately? You can just sign up for any class you want on any day once you’re accepted? If you get accepted to the school later in the semester (by two weeks), you can just join a class in progress? It’s all rather weird and contrived for the convenience of telling a story in a short amount of time, with college as the backdrop. As I was playing it, I couldn’t help but think that the developer of the game had a very skewed perspective of college, as though they got their inspiration and “research” from watching raunchy teen/college comedies like Van Wilder, Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, American Pie, etc. Maybe they never went to an American college to understand the experience better, maybe they didn’t see the side of college they’re portraying, or maybe they just didn’t care enough about those details to make them accurate. Who am I to judge or assume?

That being said, once I got over the initial suspension of disbelief issues I had, and started settling into how I wanted my character to respond to certain situations, I started to get hooked. There were certainly some stereotypes and archetypes for characters. In particular, the jocks seemed like they were modeled and ripped straight from Revenge of the Nerds. However, there were some characters who had a little bit more to them and were more intriguing. Most of the time, character complexity could be found in the girls you could pursue, both for romantic opportunities and otherwise. There was one character, though, who really settled in as the foundation of my entertainment.

Derek starts off as this ridiculous caricature of a typical party boy in college and only gets more outrageous as you spend more time with him. He walks around shirtless all the time, treats women like sex objects, does not align with or understand the ideals of modern feminism or veganism, is completely obsessed with sex, and only displays signs of intelligence when it comes to coming up with ways to cheat on tests. He is also the funniest character with some of the best lines and moments in the entire game. I won’t say Derek is a deep character, but the writing surrounding him, what he says, what he does, and the interactions you have with him are the stars of the show. If you don’t like characters that act like I just described (Patrick from House Party, for example) then you may not like Being a DIK, because Derek is a big centerpiece of the experience. I certainly couldn’t complain because I thought he was hilarious.

Being a DIK is not all about Derek, though. There are a few big plot events that take place to drive the story along, and while they’re a bit outrageous in some respects, they’re still effective at setting the stage and the pace of the story. There’s certainly some shady stuff going on in the background with some characters, which leads to the assumption that the protagonist is going to get caught in the middle of some really screwed-up situations at some point. Some of these situations already occur pretty early on in the game. Being a DIK opens with a trigger-warning type disclaimer about the content you’ll see when you first load it up and continues to remind you that you’re going to see some things (other than the porn) that might be shocking, disturbing, dark, or even a bit beyond the pail. Since this is only season 1, it’s barely scratched the surface, but I’m already invested in wanting to see where this story goes.

Gameplay

It is a dating sim, so there’s not much “gameplay,” per se. However, that isn’t to say there is not much going on with Being a DIK. For one thing, there are a variety of minigames to break up the tedium of simply reading conversation pieces and responding to text choices, as you might expect from the genre. The mini-games aren’t necessarily the deepest experience and can be a bit repetitive if you want to be able to get all the monetary rewards that will help you excel in certain spots, but you also have the option of not playing them at all, if that's your thing. I’ve gone through the game twice and never really got tired of them.

The most interesting thing about the gameplay is the “morality system.” It’s not really morality, but I couldn’t help thinking of the Mass Effect Renegade vs Paragon system when I looked at it and the color coordination. Essentially, there are numerous opportunities in the dialogue and activities throughout the game that will adjust and determine if you are more of a DIK personality or a CHICK personality. Are you more of an Alpha male or a Beta male personality? I’m sure there are many people out there on the internet who would take offense to even the concept of making that a system in a game, but I think it works quite well as a bit of a replayability hook. There are countless small choices that adjust your personality in these ways. There are also bigger decisions that affect how much of a DIK or CHICK you can be. If you go all in on DIK actions in these moments, there will be a point where you can’t even swing yourself back over to the other side even if you start acting nicer and more passive.

I mostly stayed in the neutral range during my first “honest” playthrough in which I took the opportunity to cast my “male gaze” around a few times, but still pass all my tests, lend my shoulder for a girl to cry on, have some unprotected sexual encounters, and generally tried not to be a complete asshole to anyone who didn’t deserve it. When I went back through again and played as the biggest DIK possible, I got to see all the dialogue options that I simply couldn’t choose the first time around because they weren’t options as a neutral or CHICK person. I also got to see moments in the dialogue and activities that changed slightly because of the personality shift, and that’s what I found really interesting.

I won’t say that it’s a revelation or anything, but there are numerous instances in which your character will be talking to someone and the dialogue that appears is slightly different in that situation, based on your personality range. For example, there’s a moment early on when you help a girl with her abusive boyfriend and you break the ice by telling a joke. As a neutral guy, the joke centered around the food in the cafeteria, while, as a DIK, the joke was about her boyfriend. I don’t believe that Being a DIK is complex enough to make you go down wildly different paths based simply on the differences in your personality, but this subtlety, attention to detail, and extra effort goes a long way. I also don’t know what will happen in Season 2 and how it relates back to the choices you make that might determine how big of a DIK or CHICK you are.

Presentation

As most dating simulators go, a majority of the game is presented with still images. Unlike your typical anime sim, Being a DIK uses 3D character models and detailed textures to render the characters and environment. During certain scenes, the characters will animate slightly like a repeatable GIF file to simulate movement. There’s a bit of an uncanny valley look to it sometimes, especially when you see some characters who look strikingly similar to other unrelated characters, or when you compare the detail of one character versus another. You also tend to see the same sort of skin texture up close during the intimate moments with a variety of ladies—some of which should probably moisturize. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t say Being a DIK is a bad-looking game. There were some surprising moments when the extra detail went a long way and impressed me, like the tennis minigame, for example.

Being a DIK also boasts of a long library of songs, allowing you to skip to the ones you might like by simply clicking the skip button in the upper right of your screen. However, after the first full playthrough, I had already heard all those songs several times over, so I muted the music and played from my own library instead. I still played mostly punk, since that’s what a majority of the soundtrack is, but punk that I actually enjoyed. Maybe you’ll like it, but I didn’t find it all that great to listen to by the third time around. Regardless, music isn’t really a downside, since you can do exactly what I did and still get a pretty similar experience.

The last thing I’ll say about the presentation is simply to applaud the fact that I rarely, if ever, saw any grammatical or spelling errors that weren’t intentional. I certainly tend to see them plenty in text-heavy games that are made by multiple people, so I was expecting to see some in a dating sim made by a small crew. Yet, the writing was solid throughout the game and helped add to the polish of the experience.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Being a DIK is a dating simulator that has a variety of mini-games, a plethora of characters, and plenty of graphic sex scenes that would make a lady blush. You could certainly play it for that last reason if you want, but I’d say you’d be missing out if that were your only interest. After the somewhat unconvincing start, the game’s plot really hooked me before the end of the first chapter. I wanted to see the twists and turns that the story would take. I also wanted to spend more time with the hilarious horndog, Derek. There’s a lot more nuance, subtlety, and effort to Being a DIK than your average dating sim game is likely to put into the experience. If you’re only interested in the sex stuff, there’s plenty to go around, but if you’re also interested in a story that is willing to go in some nutty directions, with some ridiculous humor thrown in, then I can’t help but recommend Being a DIK.