Limerence explores AI companionship and emotional dependency in intimate narrative game

Narrative-led studio Salix Games announced that Limerence, developed with Gameinaframe, will launch for PC on October 29. The game is set entirely within a fictional smartphone interface and explores the intersection between authentic human connection and AI-driven companionship.

Players step into the life of Claire, a woman processing a deep personal loss who turns to an AI relationship app called LiAIson. Through the app, she creates Kai, a partner tailored to her needs, desires, and emotional vulnerabilities. What begins as reassurance gradually becomes destabilizing as Claire's digital relationship deepens and bleeds into her real life.

The game presents its story through messages, voice notes, social feeds, and fragments of everyday digital life. Players uncover hidden tensions, revisit past interactions, and make quietly consequential decisions that shape Claire's understanding of herself, her relationships, and the reality she is prepared to accept.

Limerence asks a central question: what happens when love no longer asks anything of us? When connection can be moulded around every preference, and the vulnerability that gives real relationships meaning is replaced by compliance, convenience, and quiet control?

Dialogue is fully scripted with well-known actors including Samantha Béart, known for voicing Karlach in Baldur's Gate 3. All recordings were captured on phones to preserve realism and emotional immediacy.

Jessica Saunders, founder of Salix Games, said: "I wasn't inspired to make Limerence because I'd experienced limerence myself, but because I'd seen the effect that kind of intense attachment can have on people close to me. Watching friends become consumed by relationships that were unhealthy, obsessive, and difficult to let go of made me want to explore those emotions through an interactive story." She added that AI felt like a natural lens because it opens questions about intimacy, dependency, and companionship shaped entirely around personal needs.

In Limerence, players explore a fully simulated smartphone interface, build a relationship with Kai whose personality responds to Claire's choices, re-evaluate past conversations as new information reshapes their meaning, and uncover hidden details within digital life while deciding which truths are worth confronting.