#you didn't engage with them romantically but wasn't romoved from the plot either

[helladventurers]

To elaborate a bit on the tags of the last reblog, I wish games with romance options (not talking about games like romance VNs, where the whole point of the game is dating someone) treated remaining single as a route, instead of a "the result of choosing not to engage with the romance aspect of the game"

For example, in games like story of seasons or rune factory, where romance is an optional aspect of the game you can interact with but are not forced to (excluding stuff like RF3 and A Wonderful Life, where you're forced to marry someone to progress), you Can chose to remain single, but in doing so you're missing on stuff like character related events, side stories related to dating people, a lot of character insight that comes from dating them, all of that stuff, and you don't really get anything else in return

So as a follow up to that, if you chose to remain single and not engage romantically with any characters, instead being friends, or in some more extreme cases, unable to get close to a character at all because them opening up to you is tied up to the option of dating them, you get to see new facets of these characters, like you becoming closer platonic friends, or an eventual falling off with a character who has a one sided crush on you because they can't handle being your friend without having said crush being reciprocated, getting to see what would happen to a character who gets character development during your relationship or relies on your love for them for emotional support now that they don't have that to help them

You know, have the choice to remain single one with consequences instead of a mere "option not to engage with our game's romance system"