Love SICK

General Recommendation: Honestly I don’t think there’s any way to tell in advance whether or not you’ll like this game. The warnings are NOT exaggerating, but it’s got a surprising amount of humor and character mixed in with the debauchery. Consult with your doctor prior to reading if you have any heart conditions.
Preview: Can you make your anniversary with your sister extra special?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
Huh. Well, I enjoyed this more than I expected.
I was expecting something a bit like the more extreme parts of Trash or Basement Dwellers, but this story has a very different tone. It’s tough to say what exactly is different. I think it has to do with the perspective mostly. Rather than being narrated by a pathetic unmotivated character who gets beaten down, it’s narrated by a character who is pathetic in completely different ways and beats others down. This shifts the tone of the humor in a subtle, but important way.
I think the short length of this game really helps, it’s a simple concept, and trying to turn it into something longer would probably just result in it overstaying its welcome. As it is, the reader is quickly and violently thrust into an extreme situation, and thrust out of it just as quickly, before they really have a chance to orient themselves or decide how to feel about it. There’s no wallowing, no drawing out of the action. It’s all presented very quickly and neatly.
Gower put it best when he said this story is an experiment poking at the boundaries of what is acceptable. Just how many different forms of violence and degeneracy can be fit into a single game? Apparently, quite a lot.
Speaking of Gower’s comment, I also want to reiterate his assertion that this game can be seen as a CYS tolerance test. If you can read this game and laugh it off, then you’ve got the right attitude to prosper at CYS. This meta aspect of the game boosts its rating for me, since it feels like it’s got a wider purpose than simple shock.
This game does exactly what it set out to do, and it does it very efficiently. Like many of EndMaster’s games, I find this story stands alone, almost as its own unique genre. Any attempt to replicate it would be futile and pointless, as it perfectly occupies its own special niche on the site, and the world of storygames at large.

Specific notes:
-Well, as far as first lines go, this one’s certainly a grabber.
-“What rhymes with disembowel” lol
-Lol, “I thought you guys were against assisted suicide?” “That’s catholics!”
-Lol, “What? You think I do this for fun?”
-“Extrapolate” rhymes with “decapitate”.

Grammar:
Generally alright.
Mastery of Language:
Eh, could be better.

Branching:
There’s a lot of different choices the player can make, but they all end up pretty much the same way.

Player Options/fair choice:
Each actions represents accurately its outcome. That said, there’s not a lot of variety.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I usually don’t like stories that exist for the violence and nothing else, but this one had a lot of additional humor thrown in, which made it an enjoyable read.

CONCLUSION: I really don’t know WHAT to conclude. Readers will have to make up their own minds about where this game fits into the world of storygames.

Love SICK works because it's an experiment meant to explore what the outside boundary of high volume and bad taste is in this format; its goal is to plant a flag and say "I'm going to write this story exactly as foul as I want. Other sites would not be cool with this. Here it is. You can respond by laughing and saying "ew" -or- by getting offended and angry and feeling as if something should be done about it.
And that seems to be the real purpose of Love SICK. It's a winnower. If you respond the former way, CYS may be appropriate for you. If not, CYS is very much not for you.

Is it a good storygame as a storygame? No, I don't think so per se, especially compared to his other stories. I think it's much less interesting to read than his previous stories, by a long shot. But that's not the purpose of it.
This story is trying to do is shock. It's not about the prose or even the narrative (it's way too short for that) but about trying to figure out how to write this thing at the highest possible volume. That many of the choices actually end with exclamation points makes this literal. It wants to, as quickly as possible, show you incest, cannibalism, blasphemy, murder-porn, mutilation, molestation, etc. etc., very very fast, as if to say, how about THAT!? The choices offer you choices about whether you want a little story about torture or cannibalism, for example. There's no branching away from this grand guignol, regardless of how other reviewer note that amazing branching--it's just what theme you want your gore to be.

Do I *recommend* it? That's completely beside the point. I can read something gross and shake my head and read something else without getting all offended. Honestly, I am way more offended by (lack of) proper comma use. Does it serve an important role on the site? I think it probably does.

I have read Love SICK in whole or in part a few times over the years, but never did I rate and review it. After all this time, I finally sit down and write a review for the best romance story I know.

Now, this is one of those stories that has me laughing throughout the entire thing. The combination of the narration and the absurdly brutal events in the story is absolutely perfect.
Take this line that I think is a very good representative, “You take the vagina off your face and begin to do the “Mexican Hat Dance” around the body (that’s surprisingly still standing) as the blood squirts all over you. You my friend are one sick fuck!”
The events are so over-the-top that it stops even feeling wrong to laugh at them, and the frequent dissonance of Leslie’s happy thoughts with the tormented screams of his victims is hilarious.

There is no re-branching, and every choice leads to a new and wonderful path. Every path is worth a read, but it shouldn’t take too long to go through them all if you don’t have a whole lot of time. My personal favorite path is probably the one in which he has them all sing (well, all but one.)

Not only is Love SICK entertaining, but there are a lot of lessons to be gleaned from it.
“Sometimes sacrificing one’s own pleasure is necessary to appease the ones we love,” is a wise lesson on love and one worth learning early. After all, do you truly LOVE someone if you can only insist on having your way all the time?
If you think this bit on moral lessons was annoying, think of how annoying it’ll be for the literature students of the future and rejoice that you are not them.

There were a few places where words got switched out of order or something, but that was not too noticeable and never made the story hard to read.
There. That was my one complaint about the whole story.

If you hate dark humor, maybe this story is not for you. If you are still in elementary school, maybe this story isn’t for you. If you don’t like horror, that doesn’t matter; Love SICK is not scary in the least, and this story still might be for you.
Pretty much, don’t freak out and be a faggot if you ignored the warning in the description.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Love SICK is likely the greatest romance of the modern age and will be considered a classic of the twenty-first century, and you faggots reading this review best go read it now before the English professors get their hands on it and ruin the fun through excessive analyzation.

I can’t wait to play 🤪

Yuck, would not recommend this game even though it has some silly dark humor.

Probably a bit too dark for my tastes, but the depth and precision in the branching was really something to witness. Every decision dramatically changed the story. Its very short, especially if you're only going through one path, but for those that are into this sort of genre its definitely a strong recommend.

eugh

THIS SHIT WAS AWESOME! I BEAT IT IN LIKE 3 MOVES!!

I do have a kink for sisters (and daughters) and an extreme disregard for human life, so it's like he wrote it for me!😊

I feel like this is something Insane Clown Posse would write if they were literate.