Way back in the fall of 2012 developer Black Pants Game Studio released their debut title on iOS, a logic puzzler called About Love, Hate, and the Other Ones ($2.99). It was a story about two characters, one named Love and one named Hate, who accidentally transport themselves into a strange world by pressing a big red button. To be fair, who wouldn’t press a big red button if they came across it? At its most basic, the game is about getting either Love or Hate to the big red button at the end of each level with the ability to swap which character you’re controlling on the fly.
These levels are filled with other strange characters too, literally the Other Ones in the title, and while playing as Love you can command an Other One to walk towards you, and while playing as Hate you can repel an Other One away from you. While there can be some variations to these basic mechanics by way of the special abilities of the Other Ones, you’ll generally need to direct the Other Ones in a level to positions that allow either Love or Hate to safely make it to the big red button each time. The logic puzzle design is solid and the game is charming as all heck with its character designs, animations, sounds, and little animated cutscenes.
That’s a lot of words to talk about a game that’s not even the game I’m trying to talk about for this specific Game of the Week post, but in spring of last year Black Pants released a sequel to About Love, Hate, and the Other Ones on Steam, and while the first game was released on iOS first and made its way to PC a couple of years after, this sequel has gone in reverse as this week it is just now available on iOS after being on PC for the better part of a year. Whatever the order of the release, I’m just happy this sequel, called simply About Love and Hate 2 ($2.99), has made its way home to mobile.
I also spent so much time explaining the first game because basically all of that applies to About Love and Hate 2 too. The big change this time around is that the game is in 3D, and that’s not just a fancy visual upgrade but the levels themselves are in three dimensions. The original game was all on a 2D plane so now you’ll need to think much more spatially when determining how to order around and position your Other Ones. Speaking of which, there’s a bunch of new Other Ones as well with a bunch of new gameplay mechanics to really test your logic puzzling abilities.
The original About Love, Hate, and the Other Ones was a mobile puzzler from a simpler time, where you could just fork over a few bucks in exchange for a bunch of well-crafted levels and that was that. No daily log-in bonuses, no consumable special items, no thousands of levels with uneven difficulty spikes. Thankfully About Love and Hate 2 is cut from that same cloth and it’s so refreshing to pick up a game for a single set price with a healthy amount of challenging levels and the type of polish and charm that can only come from a developer who is passionate about their craft. If you enjoy puzzlers then take a trip back to the “Good Old Days" of mobile gaming with About Love and Hate 2.
