“I’m In Love with Your Dead Grandmother”: A Dating Sim Even More Offensive Than Its Title

Random Select is a recurring Polygon feature spotlighting the obscure corners of the gaming world. Every week, a contributor is tasked with a blind dive: downloading a mystery title and committing to at least sixty minutes of gameplay. The goal? To provide an unfiltered, honest appraisal of whatever the digital lottery provides. This week’s specimen is the bizarrely titled I’m In Love with Your Dead Grandmother.

There exists a specific genre of games that lean into the absurd with a sense of playful innocence—think Hatoful Boyfriend, the infamous pigeon-dating simulator where the preposterous premise is played for laughs. However, I’m In Love with Your Dead Grandmother occupies a much darker, more disquieting space. It feels like the product of a late-night brainstorming session where every bad idea was mistaken for genius under the influence of something potent. Far from the lighthearted satire it attempts to be, the experience feels more akin to a psychological horror show.

Developed by Kimulator’s Films, the game utilizes live-action performances to chronicle the exploits of Noah (played by Alain Lagacé), a 28-year-old social pariah embarking on his first real date with Michelle (Marie Gervais St-Amour). Structured as a branching visual novel, it functions as a low-budget satire that prioritizes awkwardness and crude caricatures. I managed to reach the credits twice in roughly an hour, making it a brief diversion for those looking to kill time, though “fun” is certainly not the word I would use to describe the ordeal.

During the date, Noah’s behavior escalates from eccentric to predatory. He serves his date food made of Play-Doh, remains blissfully ignorant of her clear discomfort, and treats her with utter disregard. The “humor” takes a darker turn when he reveals a camera hidden in his clothing, mentioning his habit of sharing unsolicited photos in a group chat with friends. But the true pivot occurs when Noah hears about Michelle’s grandmother, Betty. He immediately becomes obsessed, plotting ways to “seduce” the elderly woman through schemes that feel less like comedy and more like a manual for harassment.

Source: Kimulator’s Films

The truly unsettling aspect of Noah’s character is how grounded his toxicity feels. He is a grotesque magnification of the “worst date” archetypes that frequently go viral on social media—specifically reminiscent of the Brazilian TikTok trend where women shared appalling voice notes from entitled men. He embodies the type of man who demands a refund for dinner if he doesn’t get his way, or who delivers long, self-congratulatory monologues about his own perceived “charms.”

Noah represents the dregs of a fragile, outdated masculinity. He oscillates wildly between unearned confidence and crippling insecurity, hypersensitive to his own ego while viewing the woman across from him as a mere prop. The vibe sits somewhere in the uncomfortable valley between the surreal sketches of Tim & Eric and the cringe-comedy of I Think You Should Leave, but without the underlying wit.

The gameplay forces the player to inhabit this skin, acting as a guide for a man who seems to be playing a role he doesn’t comprehend. Navigating his dialogue choices feels like trying to calibrate an alien entity attempting to pass for human. Should he lie? Should he recoil from a kiss? He has no internal compass. Any attempt to make the player empathize with him fails because Noah is fundamentally repellent.

The only time Noah displays any conviction is within his own delusional fantasies. A significant portion of the game transitions into crude, hand-drawn animations depicting his internal world. In one particularly warped sequence, he imagines winning over Betty by posing as a plumber, hoping to manipulate her into a date as payment for his services. In his mind, predatory exploitation is the height of romance. The game presents this as comedy, but the punchline never arrives.

While I’m In Love with Your Dead Grandmother clearly wants to evoke the raunchy, boundary-pushing energy of early 2000s cult films, it mostly just succeeds in being repulsive. Between the grating sound of Noah’s voice and the skin-crawling nature of his “moves,” the experience is one of pure friction. For a comedy to work, the humor must resonate; here, it only alienates.

Source: Polygon