The Subversive Delights of ‘Take Me or Leaf Me’ – A Houseplant Dating Simulator
For as long as I have been writing about video games, I have adored the dating simulator genre: simple visual novels with cornily presented scenarios involving personality stereotypes that you, the player character, attempt to court via various dialogue options. The true fun of this genre, however, has been watching it evolve in recent years. Dating characters in games has taken a much more serious bent in AAA-scaled projects like the Mass Effect and Witcher series, to name a few favorites. Simultaneously, the genre has waddled towards absurdity in outright parodical entries like Hatoful Boyfriend, I Love You, Colonel Sanders!, and Hooked on You: A Dead By Daylight Dating Sim. In a genre steeped in weirdness, I was delighted to play a unique spin on the genre this past Valentine’s Day: Take Me or Leaf Me.
I must admit, I did not have “playing a dating sim on Valentine’s” on my Singles Awareness Day bingo card. But given my relative aromanticism, I also was not intending to engage in what my favorite philosophy professor sardonically termed “chocolate and child slavery day” years ago. It just so happened my February 14th was, this year, a day of great responsibility and endless adulting for me. Closing out an afternoon of pricing and booking flights, scheduling interviews and panels at an upcoming conference, and so forth, I needed a lighthearted way to shut my brain off for a few hours. Thus, I scrolled my way into a post from Kinder World, an app that dedicates itself towards introspection and awareness of emotional wellbeing. This post advertised a spin-off entry called Take Me or Leaf Me, which, as the name suggests, is a dating simulator where you decide to date – or adopt – a houseplant that best matches your interest and personality.
Take Me or Leaf Me begins outside of a plant shop called The Woodlands. Your narrator laments open-endedly that they have heard that houseplants are supposedly easier to care for than either pets or themself, so, timidly, they enter the shop to be greeted by a houseplant: Monstera. In Take Me or Leaf Me, each of the romanceable houseplants take anthropomorphized forms. Monstera, for instance, is a relatively buff guy with long, flowing hair, a closely cropped full beard, stylish glasses, and an ascot; think Jason Momoa but drawn in a sort of anime aesthetic alongside its true-to-botanical counterpart. Your narrator, clearly flustered, immediately questions why this houseplant is speaking with them, and, more importantly, why the houseplant is “hot.”
Immediately, your first dialogue option with Monstera is either to loudly question how this plant is able to speak with you in English or call it “daddy.” Of course, I called Monstera daddy straight away, leading to the narrator stuttering out a gender-appropriate variation on the well known “mommy? Sorry” meme.
Monstera introduces your character to Dragon Tail, an angstier houseplant with a bit of a bad boy attitude. You can scold Dragon Tail for their initial gruffness, which will lead it to blush and say that your rebuke is kind of hot. You also have the option to apologize to the plant, but the immediate reinforcement you get in engaging each of these plants on their own terms of personality becomes apparent from these initial two interactions alone. The “dating” hasn’t happened yet, so Take Me or Leaf Me is contextualizing these characters before you have to start making choices that will impact your ultimate outcome of which plant is coming home with you.
At this point, Pink Princess introduces themself to your player. Squealing with delight and bubbly energy, Pink Princess shows off their pink leaves, championing a pastel femboy aesthetic. Certainly the most openly flirtatious and confident of the plants thus far, Pink Princess clearly relishes in being pampered, complemented, and affirmed.
Pink Princess introduces Pilea, the final dateable houseplant in Take Me or Leaf Me. Pilea is the most overtly feminine coded of the houseplants, with long two-tone hair, a partially unbuttoned blouse, dangly jewelry, and so on. In a cute foot-in-the-mouth moment, the narrator accidentally says “I’m baby,” when introducing themself – clearly channeling a bit of flustered romantic energy. Charmingly, Pilea quips back, “Hey baby, I’m mommy. Or daddy. Take your pick.”
If it wasn’t obvious at this point, Take Me or Leaf Me is a bisexual fever dream. Or maybe more accurately, a pansexual fever dream. This spin-off game basically gives four uniquely gendered options, all represented through popular houseplants that I either already own or have been recommended on Pinterest, and tasks you with getting to know their distinct personalities more clearly. Each option feels fully fleshed out, and none of these characters feels like they overlap significantly with the others. The distinct visual and personal presentation of each houseplant made me want to truly exhaust each character before making my decision.
I must confess, I tend to judge books by their covers in dating sims. If a character is cute, I typically pursue them no matter what. Sometimes this completely backfires, like Yuri from Doki Doki Literature Club. Other times, my first impression is vindicated, and I find myself pursuing Triss Merigold throughout each of the Witcher games. With this superficial pseudo-philosophy in mind, I immediately investigated Pink Princess and Pilea further.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m hopelessly sapphic. I might not stake my self of belonging and self-worth on reciprocated romance, but to describe me as a ‘simp’ would be the understatement of the year. Thus, in a dating simulator that depicts multiple gender expressions, there was practically zero question in immediately going for Pilea, the non-binary femme who actively leaned into their gender fluidity.
Oddly, Pilea’s dialogue options are perhaps the least intuitive of the houseplants – at least for me. Some of the options you are given involve some small talk about leaves and water spots, extraterrestrials (i.e. the plant has UFO-shaped leaves), and so on. In replaying Take Me or Leaf Me, I was unable to successfully romance Pilea on either attempt, despite having positively received dialogue options along the way. Despite my inability to court the most overtly femme plant, I did enjoy the awkward fumbling of gender by the main character at the end of their exchange with Pilea, who tells them to pick one if they want but agreeing to leave Pilea’s gender “open-ended” for now.
Pink Princess is so enthusiastic that they shake the screen every time they make a “squeeing” face. Their first narcissistic question to your character is what their favorite color is, to which I responded “pink” unthinkingly. Of course, Pink Princess shouts with delight when you affirm their color. You can ask them how they like to be watered, to which you will receive the fussiest and bougiest reply possible: “Like, you could give me water, or you could give me a misting of hydrogen peroxide with like, a thyme and lavender oil.” The conversation continues along these prissy lines, and you can exchange equally superficial remarks with Pink Princess until moving along.
Dragon Tail calls your character heartless before pausing and adding, “That’s hot,” if you were wondering which direction this next, more masculinely coded plant was going to take things. You can attempt to compliment Dragon Tail on aesthetics like their pot, but the real throughline to Dragon Tail’s heart is by being a little bit aggressive – or dare I say, domineering. You can rebuke this character and toy with its feelings by rejecting it playfully, to which Dragon Tail asks if you’re truly leaving. The facial expressions on the pot mixed with its animations truly bring this character’s internal contradictions into proper focus.
Finally, we arrive back at the character who first introduced themself to your player character: Monstera. (It’s worth acknowledging that these options can be pursued in any order; this article reflects the order of characters I chose to pursue based on a mixture of preference and curiosity.) Monstera’s character feels like the intended romance option for Take Me or Leaf Me, considering everything from their hunky appearance to the considerate phrases they use. Monstera truly seems to want to get to know about you, learn about your character and their problems, and support them.
After romancing each character, the game tallies up the amount of positive responses you have provoked in each of the available houseplants, rewarding you with a plant-partner to take home, spending your lives together. Go figure, on my third playthrough to revisit these dialogue options, I was able to take Pilea home. The narrator cites their easy propagation as an opportunity to share Pilea with all their friends. I think the best romance ending I have received, however, despite preferences, is Monstera’s ending; your narrator cites something about having plenty of “holes” as the main appeal here.
Take Me or Leaf Me has five different endings, and, at the time of this writing, I have only successfully achieved three of them. In replaying this game, I have begun to discover how to properly ‘min-max’ each character, giving extra attention to certain plants and ending the discussion early with others. I assume the fifth ending involves failing each of these romances, going home alone without a plant-partner to call your own. On the other hand, perhaps I should think more optimistically and imagine that the fifth ending is a harem route where you get to date all the plants in a lovingly biodiverse polyamorous relationship.
In any case, Take Me or Leaf Me was a cute, quick excuse to zip through yet another lighthearted dating simulator. Better still, if you enjoy the aesthetic of this brief dating sim, you might enjoy the early access version of Kinder World, the vibe of which is perfectly captured here – from the boho houseplant vibe to LGBTQIA+ inclusion. Kinder World is not as oriented towards humor, but the sincere investigation with which it approaches emotional investigation and tenderness is worth experiencing, at the very least. We all deserve to be kinder to ourselves, whether that kindness manifests in the romantic dimension or otherwise.
Thank you for reading. Your Patreon support keeps our community entirely Ad free.
