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Emily is Away is a short Interactive Fiction game created by Kyle Seeley. It is freely available on Steam
and Itch.io.
The game takes place in a five year span, from 2002 to 2006. All interaction is handled through an instant messaging client similar to America Online's IM client. You have a few friends on your friends list, but you only directly interact with your friend Emily (screen name: emerly35), chatting about each others' lives and relationships.
In October 2016, Seeley announced Emily Is Away Too, a successor to the original game unconnected to its story or characters. It was released 26 May 2017 and takes place over the 2006-2007 school year with the same instant messenger. This time, you're chatting with two friends: Emily (emerz35, no relationship to the first Emily) and Evelyn (punk4eva). The sequel expands upon the foundation of its predecessor with multimedia elements, such as links to real YTMND pages and faithful reconstructions of retro YouTube designed by Seeley himself.
A third game in the series, Emily Is Away <3, was announced in March 2019 and released 16 April 2021. This time, "it's 2008 and AIM is dead," per the game's tagline; you're now on Facenook, a thinly-veiled stand-in for Facebook in its early years. Continues the multimedia elements of Too with a smorgasbord of interactive webpages mimicking 2008 YouTube as well as other websites popular in the era, like Digg, IGN, Hype Machine, and even PostSecret.
Compare and contrast Digital: A Love Story.
emerly35 is typing...
Shared Tropes
- Ambiguous Gender: None of the games specify the gender of the player. The third game lets you select a silhouetted profile picture; while some of these are more masculine or more feminine, no pronouns or gender identity are ever given.
- Anachronism Stew: While the series is incredibly faithful in its portrayal of The 2000s, very occasionally characters will use slang or phrases that didn't reach the greater online lexicon until The New '10s. One example is "shitposts" (shitposting, as in surreal low-effort meme-y text and image posts, only picked up in earnest on Tumblr in 2014).
- Central Theme: High school relationships are fleeting, and attempts to pursue or prolong them into adulthood are usually doomed to fail.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Taking place in the 2000s, all the games take care to portray that decade authentically, and feature text, media, and dialogue that might be considered dated or offensive in the present day.
- Dogged Nice Guy: You, the player, can end up being this. Especially prevalent in the first game, where getting with Emily is impossible.
- Interactive Fiction: Applies to all the games, but the sequels lean all in on this, featuring many elements that require external engagement from the player outside of the game. Examples include weblinks to music the characters are listening to, or their social media profiles (which lead to replicas of early YouTube and Facebook hosted on the game's own website), or chatlogs and other files that are sent directly to your own desktop. At the start of Too, you are asked to select a pixelated replica of one of the classic Windows XP wallpapers, which appears as a file on your desktop that you are then encouraged to use as your actual wallpaper for an even more authentic experience.
- Recurring Element: Every game has its own Emily. While they share similar personalities and interests across all the games, they are not the same people. Also goes for Evelyn starting with Too.
- Slice of Life: All three games focus on the everyday relationships of high schoolers in the 2000s.
- Time Marches On: A few of the youtube videos linked to you in chat in the second and third games have since been deleted or made private by their Real Life uploaders.
Emily is Away
- all lowercase letters: You and Emily chat like this to emphasize the easygoing friendship you have. At least up until the middle of Chapter 4, where your friendship begins to fade away.
- But Thou Must!:
- You can't actually type your responses to Emily; rather, you have to mash keys on the keyboard until the game finishes the pre-made response for whatever option you picked. This fuels the Wham Shot in Chapter 5, where you keep trying to ask Emily about your relationship with each other, only for the game to backspace those questions and make them boring.
- Also, no matter what you say or how you act, there are only two endings. Both of them involve the two of you going your separate ways.
- Cannot Spit It Out: The main flaw that stops you from getting together with Emily.
- Downer Ending: Emily has mixed feelings about having met you at your college (if that option was chosen) and gets back together with Brad/Travis. The only other girl you may have been interested in hooks up with one of your former college friends. And the final moments of the game suggest that you and Emily will never speak to each other again.
- Easter Egg: DOZENS of them, all of them doubling as a Shout-Out to video games, popular Let's Players/streamers, or
memes. - Featureless Protagonist: Nothing is known about you other than that you're a (presumably American) high school senior in 2002. Everything else, including your gender, is unspecified.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You have to provide a username and first name to log in at the beginning. Both carry through the rest of the game, unless you start Chapter 1 over. The bonus Easter Egg icons are unlocked by inputting specific usernames during Chapter 1.
- It's a Small Net After All: Justified, seeing as the game takes place in the earlier days of the internet, before social media sites existed in the capacity they do now.
- Last-Second Word Swap: Done in bits and pieces throughout the game, sometimes to fix typos, sometimes to hide your true feelings for Emily. Played for Drama in Chapter 5, as you keep backspacing the questions about yours and Emily's relationship, replacing them with banal questions about the weather and school.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Many of the Easter eggs do this. The wall gets shattered when Emily makes references to current games, websites, and YouTube in 2002.you: "but it's 2002, twitch/youtube/lets plays doesn't exist yet."(game displays message below your text box) oh shit, you're right
- Love Triangle: Between you, Brad/Travis, and Emily. Possibly Emma, as well. In the end, Emily gets back together with Brad/Travis, and Emma hooks up with Mike.
- Master of the Mixed Message: Emily, who will get upset with the players decisions or inaction when it comes to courting her throughout the game. And then in the end, they don’t end up together no matter what you do.
- Ironically, Emily treats the player like this, despite the fact that she’ll get upset at you no matter what the player chooses to do.
- Musical Gag: Some of the icon Easter Eggs have Emily reference the band you chose.
- One icon is John Cena, which references the Unexpected John Cena meme, complete with theme song and shouting. Emily is very confused by this.
- A couple more jokes involve typing out the lyrics of the Nyan Cat song, and the original Pokémon theme.
- One icon is John Cena, which references the Unexpected John Cena
- no punctuation is funnier: Most of yours and Emily's dialogue has very little punctuation up until Chapter 4, when things get serious.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Played for Drama in Chapter 5. Eventually, you WILL run out of things to talk about, so you will end up saying goodbye to Emily. The only exception to this is if you were uncooperative when Emily wanted to talk in Chapter 4, in which case she'll do this to you instead.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: All the efforts the player made to court Emily or just be a friend to her end up being for naught as she’ll end up with her ex no matter what and shows no interest in even continuing a friendship with the player by the end of the game.
- Take That!: Toward Valve Software note and/or Square Enix note depending on how the reader chooses to interpret the joke.
- Verbal Backspace: Justified, since you will occasionally make typos that will be automatically backspaced as you type. You'll do the same with your true feelings towards Emily.
- Video Game Caring Potential: You can be a supportive friend to Emily...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...or you can be a complete jerk to her instead.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: If you decide to be a complete asshole to Emily, then she leaves the chat room at the end of Chapter 5 instead of you.
- Wham Line:
- Chapter 3 can deliver the first major one, when Emily reminisces about Travis's party if the player character attended.emerly35: well, why didn't you kiss me?"
- Chapter 4 can deliver a second one, a year after Emily may have visited you at your college.
- A possible minor one from the same chapter if Emily had visited, before you delete it:you: you wanted to hook up
- A possible minor one from the same chapter if Emily had visited, before you delete it:
- Chapter 3 can deliver the first major one, when Emily reminisces about Travis's party if the player character attended.
- Wham Shot: You, the player, get one when the more personal questions you want to ask Emily in Chapter 5 get replaced with dull questions as you're typing. Eventually, your dialogue options will be reduced to saying goodbye to Emily before logging off.1. goodbye2. goodbye3. goodbye
Emily Is Away, Too
- Betty and Veronica: The player is offered two romance options with sweet Girl Next Door Emily and tomboy punk-rocker Evelyn serving as Betty and Veronica, respectively. Emily is sensitive, likes moody alternative music, doesn't drink alcohol and is a virgin; Evelyn is rougher around the edges, goes to Warped Tour, likes to drink and party, and is experienced with serious relationships.
- Bittersweet Ending: Even the best endings of the game are tinged with bittersweetness due to Emily/Evelyn planning to attend a different college from the player after senior year, which they acknowledge may make them being together difficult. While the player has the option to reassure them about the strength of their bond, the game ends after their conversation, leaving it unclear whether they will last.
- Downer Ending: If you're dishonest with Emily or Evelyn throughout the game, one of them will eventually tell the other and ruin your relationship.
- Golden Path: Pursue a relationship with either Emily or Evelyn, decide to stay together through college, and remain friends with the other girl.
- Just Friends: While it's clear that they both have feelings for you, you can keep your relationship with Evelyn and Emily platonic throughout the game or mutually break up with one of them at the end of the game while remaining on friendly terms.
- Long-Distance Relationship: Regardless of who the player chooses to date, they are faced with this issue, as Emily and Evelyn will both end up going to a different college than them after senior year. Both will express concern about whether the relationship will survive, and will discuss couples who have broken up over these issues, to which the player will be given the option to either reassure them, suggest they break up, or ask them what they would like to do. If you choose to stay together, the game will end after the conversation, leaving it unclear whether the relationship will last through college, although the player is reassured that they are still in love.
- Love Triangle: Nothing is stopping the player from choosing romantic dialogue with both Emily and Evelyn in the first two chapters. However, in Chapter 3, both of them will message you in an emotionally vulnerable state, and you'll be forced to prioritize your attention to one over the other. The one you don't respond to quickly enough will feel hurt and stop talking to you until you make amends in Chapter 4. Later on, both girls will share a class and become friends, preventing you from pursuing a romance with more than one of them.
- Maybe Ever After: Do you and Emily/Evelyn stay together through college? You can promise to remain a couple and even float the possibility of transferring, but given the inherent difficulties of Long-Distance Relationships and how few high school couples actually stay together in Real Life, the actual prospects are uncertain at best.
- Multiple Endings: Unlike the first game, there are multiple endings based on the choices you make throughout the game. Depending on your choices, you could end up with Emily or Evelyn, remain friends with them, or ruin your relationship with both.
- Relationship Values: Has this with Emily and Evelyn. Depending on what you say to them, you could become a happy couple with one of them, remain Just Friends, or part on bad terms after graduation. And no, you can't romance both of them.
- Romantic Runner-Up: If you're friendly and understanding to both girls throughout the game, both will develop feelings for you, and even after you're forced to choose one of them the other can remain a very admiring friend after you get back in touch.
- Take Your Time: Much like the first game, time doesn't usually pass until you hit enter on your next message. This is consciously subverted in Chapter 3, where both Emily and Evelyn message you about a personal crisis, and the game suddenly places a time limit on your responses, requiring you to answer quickly to help talk them through the issue. If you miss too many messages with either of them, they will sense that you aren't giving them your full attention and log off. Since both are messaging you at the same time, and the dialogue progression for both conversations is staggered at mutually-dependent checkpoints (so you can't just have a full chat session with one and then start the other), this chapter effectively forces you to choose which girl you want to focus on for the rest of the game.
Emily Is Away <3
- 100% Completion: There's an achievement for that, requiring you to play through all the game's Multiple Endings — quite a dedicated feat (see Guide Dang It! below).
- All for Nothing: If you dump Emily or Evelyn in Chapter 4 for having a male friend, she just gets together with the guy anyway, further underscoring just how pointless and cruel that choice really was.
- Alternate Timeline: The second playthrough path you unlock after completing the game can possibly be interpreted as this, as there are differences in how Emily and Evelyn behave and respond to your behavior in Chapter 4, showing more confidence and self-respect and less tolerance for manipulative behavior.
- Ambiguous Situation: A few endings leave the ultimate fate of your relationship with Emily or Evelyn unclear:
- If she tells you she doesn't feel the same romantic spark as before, provided you don't just break up, you can mutually agree to "take a break", though whether the two of you will actually get back together later is anyone's guess.
- If you forced her to stop talking to Jeff or Steve, once she calls you out for your manipulation you can admit you were wrong and apologize to her. While she does forgive you and doesn't leave you, it's unknown if the relationship actually survives.
- Best Friend: You can choose one between your friends; your choices are either Mat or the girl whose party you didn't attend at the start of the game. The one you choose will invite you to an end-of-senior-year party in Chapter 5.
- Bittersweet Ending: The first ending you'll likely get ends, at best, with you and your chosen paramour "taking a break" as she continues to drift towards Jeff or Steve. On the plus side, Mat sticks it out for you and the two of you go to another party.
- Bookends:
- The first and last person you chat with in the game is your friend Mat Gursky. The story also begins and ends with the two of you attending a party.
- Emily and Evelyn mention recently becoming single after a failed relationship. At the end of the game, depending on your choices, this may become the case once again.
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: In the "Broken 2" ending, your girlfriend dumps you for trying to impose an ultimatum against their friendship with their male classmate, but you can potentially make up and get back together with the two-way support of your mutual friend Mathew.
- But Thou Must!:
- In the previous two games, there was a relative range of choice over your exact relationship with Emily and Evelyn. Being much more explicitly focused on romance, <3 does not let you remain Just Friends with the girl whose party you attended in Chapter 1, though you can end up that way with her by the end...
- Emily/Evelyn always drifts apart from you at the end of your first playthrough, no matter how much time and effort you put into strengthening your relationship, provided you don't dump her or make her stop talking to her new friend. It's hard-coded into the game. After completing one playthrough, you unlock another "timeline" that allows you to replay the game and get a better ending with either of them.
- Central Theme: Friends are just as important as romantic relationships, if not more so. The latter can only remain healthy with the support of the former.
- Creator Cameo: An out-of-the-way facenook profile accessible in Chapter 2 belongs to a certain Krill Sprealy...
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: A few of the endings require you to be, at best, a possessive douchebag towards your girlfriend. And getting every ending is a requirement for 100% Completion...
- Differing Priorities Breakup: The main reason why Kelly Struman dumps Mathew Gursky midway through the story.
- Disproportionate Retribution: You can cruelly kick your girlfriend to the curb just because they befriended a guy you didn't know without your "permission".
- Downer Ending: If you dump Emily/Evelyn in Chapter 4, they move on to Jeff/Steve in Chapter 5. The other girl you didn't pursue also gets a boyfriend, and Mat gets together with Anna, leaving you the only single person in your friend group (besides Kelly, who seems to be moving on).. The best you can get out of things is to apologize to Emily/Evelyn and reconcile somewhat, but you're both long past getting back together.
- Dumped via Text Message: Or in this case, facebook chat. If you dump Emily/Evelyn in Chapter 4, or if she dumps you at the end of the game, it happens while chatting online, as no face-to-face interactions occur in these games.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: You can't stay together with Emily/Evelyn on your first playthrough without being a major douche to her. To get a "good" ending, you have to complete one playthrough and begin another on the second "timeline" you unlock afterward. Once that's done, pursuing a romance and not being possessive about Jeff/Steve in Chapter 4 should unlock the Golden Ending.
- Featureless Protagonist: Bucks the trend! For the first time in the series, you can select a silhouette of your character's likeness as your profile picture. While some of these are more masculine or feminine, you still never specify your gender in the game.
- Framing Device: The game technically takes place in 2020, but you're reliving an experience from 2008 through an anniversary notification.
- Foreshadowing:
- The game begins with Mat sending you the music video for Don't Trust Me by 3OH!3, a song about a person who acts romantically faithful while pursuing other people. This becomes the central conflict of chapters 4 and 5.
- Mat's breakup with Kelly, and her reasons for dumping him, are all a prelude to what happens with you and Emily/Evelyn in your first playthrough, provided you don't start drama over Jeff/Steve.
- Chapter 3 ends with Emily/Evelyn writing a status on Jeff/Steve's wall, alluding to the imminent drama in the next chapter...
- Golden Path: On your second save file: romance the girl of your choice, be there for Mat while he's down and don't spread any rumors about him, and don't get insecure about Jeff or Steve in Chapter 4.
- Guide Dang It!: The path to obtaining every ending for 100% Completion is convoluted, to say the least. The best way to explain it is that the game has two playable "timelines", the second of which is a sort of New Game Plus unlocked after beating the game for the first time. The first timeline you play through has three available endings: "Together", "Ultimatum", and "Broken" (see Multiple Endings below). The second timeline has the "Broken 2" and "Together 2" endings available, but not any of the endings available in the first timeline. Even more confusingly, unlocking "Together 2" with a given girl turns all future playthroughs with that girl into a "second timeline playthrough", regardless of which timeline you've selected in the main menu. This means that you can potentially lock yourself out of getting all of the first timeline's endings if you got the Golden Ending with both Emily and Evelyn before playing through every other ending.
- Inciting Incident: It's late August, senior year is about to start, and two of your friends — Emily Singer and Evelyn Merem — are each throwing their own end-of-summer rager. You can only go to one girl's party, and the one you choose will change your relationship with her forever...
- Informed Location: Unlike the previous Emily games, <3 has an identified setting — Natick, Massachusetts.
- Intentional Heartbreaker: It's perfectly possible to play the game this way if you really want to, sweeping up a wayward girl into a loving and devoted relationship before coldly dumping her the moment you see her being friendly with a guy you don't know...
- It's All About Me: One of the dirty tactics for getting Emily or Evelyn to end their friendship with Jeff Fischer or Steve Dreyer is to guilt-trip her: when she points out how hurtful you're being to her, counter by asking how you must be feeling right now.
- It's All My Fault: Patching things up with Emily or Evelyn in one of the Downer Endings hinges on you having the maturity and self-awareness to admit this to her. Alternatively, you can do the opposite and burn what remains of that bridge for good.
- Karma Houdini: You can, if you so choose, spread rumors about Mat being a Serial Adulterer to rationalize his breakup with Kelly. You face no blowback for this, not even from him, and he remains your friend to the very end.
- Kick the Dog: There's no nice way to dump Emily or Evelyn in Chapter 4. She will beg and cry and plead with you every step of the way, telling you how much she loves you and how much your relationship means to her, and even promise to stop talking to Jeff or Steve just to stay together. The game won't let you give your relationship a quick death; you'll have to put a pillow over it and slowly smother it.
- Let's Just Be Friends: Can happen in certain endings, under varying circumstances. If you agree that your relationship no longer has the same spark or that your disagreements are impossible to reconcile, you can agree to break up but remain friends. If you dumped your chosen romance in Chapter 4 and successfully got her to forgive you, you can both agree to be friends again.
- Love Triangle: Emerges in Chapter 4 with Jeff Fischer (if you're playing the Emily path) or Steve Dreyer (if you're on the Evelyn path), who start exchanging friendly statuses with your girl that verge on the flirtatious. Indeed, she'll gradually drift towards him and lose interest in you after graduation unless you force her to stop talking to him. In your second playthrough, the friendship doesn't lead to anything as long as you keep your cool about it and brush it off. Incidentally, whichever girl you don't date will always couple up with the respective boy in Chapter 5.
- Make Up or Break Up: The pivotal event in the story is how you, the player, react to learning about your girlfriend's close friendship with a guy in her class. You can let it slide, or you can start an argument that potentially ends with you dumping her, or vice versa.
- Manipulative Bastard: Of the "shitty high school boy/girlfriend" variety. If you're really pressed over the idea of your girlfriend talking to a guy you don't "approve" of, you can twist her arm and force her to break up the friendship by threatening to dump her or using your own hurt feelings to guilt her into it. She doesn't suffer it for long, though, and confronts you about it a few months later.
- Meaningful Rename: After breaking up with Kelly, Mat Gursky starts using his full name Mathew, signifying his more mature and low-key personality.
- Mistaken for Cheating:
- At some point either Emily or Evelyn (the one you aren't romancing) will tell you that your friend Mat Gursky has been unusually friendly to her lately, leading her to suspect he might be unfaithful to his girlfriend Kelly. This isn't the case though, and the two of them later break up for unrelated reasons.
- In Chapter 4, Emily or Evelyn strikes up a close friendship with a boy in her class. After Mat tips you off about it, you can accuse her of cheating on you. She's not, though, at least not at first — but she may lose interest in you and drift towards him later on, and if you dump her she absolutely will move on to him.
- Multiple Endings: This one has five, and getting them all is required for 100% Completion. Interestingly, the final ending (where you remain in a happy and drama-free relationship with your chosen girl) is impossible to get until you complete one playthrough, meaning you have to see through one of the "bad" endings no matter what. Each ending is named for the label they're given in the game's code:
- "Together": This is a misnomer, as Emily/Evelyn loses enthusiasm for your relationship, preferring a more "label-free" situation with fewer "expectations". You can either dump her, let her dump you, or agree to "take a break", with the prospects of getting back together uncertain at best. Mat tries to cheer you up afterward, and the two of you go to a graduation party. This is likely to be the first ending new players will get, provided they don't make a big fuss over Jeff or Steve.
- "Ultimatum": You confront Emily/Evelyn over the guy she's talking to and convince her to stop talking to him. A few months later, she confronts you and calls you out for being manipulative; unless you agree that you overreacted and apologize, she'll leave you then and there.
- "Broken": You do not take the Jeff/Steve friendship well. You angrily confront your girlfriend and terminate the relationship then and there, either because you "saw what was coming" or just wanted to punish her. She goes to prom with Jeff or Steve and later becomes his girlfriend. After graduation, if you agree to her request to talk again, she lays down just how badly your actions messed her up, and you can either refuse accountability or apologize and get back on speaking terms (as Just Friends). Easily the bleakest possible ending.
- "Broken 2": Similarly to "Ultimatum", you ask your girlfriend to drop their friendship with Jeff or Steve, but this time she refuses to put you before her friends and dumps your ass. A few months later, Mat intervenes and encourages her to reach back out. If you agree to talk, you can either double down or apologize and reconcile, potentially getting back together later on. Like the final ending, this one is only obtainable after your first playthrough.
- "Together 2": The Golden Ending. The story progresses normally, and as long as you don't bring up Jeff or Steve (or if you believe your girlfriend and drop it when she tells you everything's fine), you remain a happy couple through the rest of senior year and beyond. Unobtainable on your first playthrough.
- New Game Plus: Of sorts. You unlock a new "timeline" with a different pair of obtainable endings after beating the game once, but it's really just a slight variation of the story (albeit with a more desirable ending to obtain) than an "enhanced" version.
- Never My Fault: One option in Chapter 5 when Emily and Evelyn call out your manipulative behavior from the last chapter, should you take that route, is to double down on your misdeeds and refuse to take any accountability.
- Nice Guy: Mat/Mathew Gursky is one to the end. He might be immature and irreverent and a little too friendly at times, especially with girls, but he's fundamentally a well-meaning dude who's always down for a good time and remains your most loyal and supportive friend throughout the game.
- Red Herring:
- As it turns out, the rumors about Mat's supposed infidelity are nothing more than that, and she actually dumped him for the most prosaic reasons imaginable: college was coming up, they each wanted different things in life, and she felt they were drifting apart.
- Nothing, from your music preferences to the score you get on the "compatibility quiz" in Chapter 3, has any bearing on your relationship with Emily or Evelyn. What actually matters is how you handle her friendship with a guy in one of her classes in Chapter 4 and the follow-up conversation with her about it in Chapter 5.
- Romantic Runner-Up: Depending on your playthrough:
- Playing through the game the first time, you'll likely become this as Emily/Evelyn gradually loses interest in you and drifts towards Jeff/Steve instead. If you just dump her instead, she gets with him later on, leaving you the runner-up by no one's fault but your own.
- On the second run, if you handle the Jeff/Steve situation maturely, she eventually drifts apart from him and remains your loyal and loving girlfriend.
- Serial Adulterer:
- Subverted with Mathew Gursky. While he says things that sound flirtatious and suggestive with other girls while he's dating Kelly, he doesn't mean anything by it and is just being friendly.
- You can accuse your girlfriend of being this in Chapter 4 based on a handful of ambiguously flirty statuses shared between her and a guy from her class.
- Take That!:
- Despite taking place on facebook (or a copyright-friendly composite of it), the prologue of the game pulls no punches with its portrayal of the modern version of the platform, taking snipes at its overflow of ads, abuse of content algorithms to keep you scrolling through a never-ending feed, and (mis)use as a mouthpiece for angry political rants by your terminally online relatives.
- An advertisement for a Fallout-like game assures the reader that they would never make the game online...
- Another ad takes a jab at X-Men Origins: Wolverine ("Hex-Men Origins: Down Under"), just one of Sony's many contested X-Men movies.
- Then there's one for The Final Destination mocking the franchise for its perceived Sequelitis.
- The ad for "GAMER: An AR/VR FPS MMO RPG POS" lampoons hyperaggressive video game marketing that cynically jangles genre buzzwords in gamers' faces to get their attention.
- Wild Teen Party: Begins and ends with one. In Chapter 1, Emily and Evelyn are each throwing their own party to end the last summer of high school with a bang; you have to choose which one you want to attend. In Chapter 5, Mathew Gursky helps plan a beach trip to "the cape" (likely Cape Cod or Cape Ann) to celebrate graduation.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- You can baselessly spread rumors about your friend Mathew's alleged infidelity to his girlfriend Kelly. You face absolutely no consequences for this.
- While the first two games gave you sporadic chances to be mean to Emily and Evelyn, <3 lets you be absolutely horrendous to them. When you learn about your girlfriend's close friendship with a guy in one of her classes, you can brush it off as no big deal.....or you can force her to break up the friendship if she wants to stay with you, or even dump her altogether. Breaking up is unsurprisingly the nastiest option — you coldly reject her desperate pleas to reconsider (she even offers to stop talking to her friend if it makes you happy!) until she finally gives up, heartbroken beyond words, and unfriends you.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Being a Jerkass to poor Emily or Evelyn doesn't come without consequences.
- If you bully/guilt-trip her into cutting ties with Jeff Fischer or Steve Dreyer and you're not on New Game Plus, she will message you at the end of the game and fry you for your manipulative and controlling ways. If you don't apologize, consider yourself single. If you are on New Game Plus, she'll refuse to let you jerk her around at all and dump you on the spot (though Mathew will coax her to reach back out to you later on).
- There is absolutely no upside to dumping her to "punish" her for having a friendship you don't approve of. You cannot get back together later; she will begin a new, happy relationship with the guy you dumped her for befriending, making your actions All for Nothing, and unless you own up to your actions and apologize when she confronts you at the end of the game, she's out of your life for good. To twist the knife further, all your other friends are happily partnered up with somebody, adding a decisively lonely note to the end of your senior year.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Even Mathew will be bewildered if you choose to end things with Emily and Evelyn in Chapter 4. Your now-ex girlfriend will also message you after graduation, furiously telling you just how devastating and hurtful your actions were. She will similarly call you out if you tried (successfully or not) to get her to stop talking to Jeff or Steve.