Socialise your way out of inevitable cosmic doom in Universally Loved

Universally Loved tells a familiar story - you're the new kid at school, you're feeling a bit awkward, and then you're sucked through a swirling vortex in order to convince three cosmic deities that you're capable of talking down the apocalypse itself. Given that a third of your dialogue options are eyebrow-wiggling teenage innuendo, all of existence is probably doomed, but that's not going to stop you from giving it a try anyway. Brendan also liked what he saw of Universally Loved's prototype (ooerr) back in 2016, and its still-short (but final) version was released today.

There's really not a huge amount to Universally Loved - just a collection of silly dialogue trees and a few lightweight mini-games, but oh, what dialogues they are. Engage in a freestyle rap battle with a surly god, get yourself sexily separated into your component sub-atomic particles by attempting to hump an extradimensional entity, or just get the sun dropped on your head for being presumptuous. There's a ridiculous number of ways to die (thankfully never too graphic in their description), and most of them are funny, so losing is as much fun as progressing.

One of the minigames (where you need to clear bubbles to make sure a physics item drops into the right hole) is a little too fiddly and unpredictable, but otherwise I enjoyed my 45 minutes or so with the game. It's all just one big, weird long-form joke with multiple punchlines that made me laugh, and that makes it worth the £1.69 (nice), in my opinion. Just remember that when a god wants to give you a hug, you need to commit. Also, keep your pants on. They're probably the only thing keeping you moored to the third dimension, anyway.

Universally Loved is out now on Steam for £1.69/€1.59/$1.99. You can also find the old alpha build on Itch here.