“smooch.click” is a simple choice-based game in which the player goes through a handful of scenarios leading up to a kiss. After that, the story describes the eventual kiss, and the player can go through the series of choices again to compare endings.

Gameplay: There are four short scenes in the game, each culminating in a single choice. The choices only affect the ending (as opposed to later scenes), and they do so only by increasing or decreasing a hidden anxiety stat. Aside from the small variations in the endings, interacting with the game is a matter of reading the static vignettes and finding the different endings, the one you receive being purely a function of that hidden stat. 3/10.

Mechanics: There’s not much to do in the game; there’s not even any branching in the scenes until the ending. Having the available choices rotate over time rather than presenting them as a static list is a bit interesting, but the delay between changing them makes replaying the game more tedious than it needs to be. The author provides a walkthrough, but it’s there mostly just to explain the mechanics of the game. 3/10.

Presentation: I didn’t find anything particularly remarkable, positively or negatively, about the text. The endings vary in their seriousness, which is fine for a short game like this. 3/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’re looking for a short, five-minute diversion.

Score: 3