Matchmaking

All NPCs in the game have a Friendship Score with both the protagonist and the other NPCs, dictating how much they like and trust that person.

Their friendship score with other NPCs will not decay. Their friendship score will the protagonist might if they are neglected too long.

The friendship score increases with giving liked gifts, remembering birthdays, talking every day, spending time in the same party, and doing liked activities in the same party. They can decrease with giving mean gifts, antisocial player actions (such as waking them up when they've gone to bed, taking all that character's favorite items from the storehouse, etc), going long times without speaking, or certain story choices.

Each character has their own degree to which they value certain things over others. Some characters have faster friendship decay than others, some get more offended at bad presents, some prefer skill building, some prefer style.

As you get to know this about these characters, their profiles will fill in for you to always look up that information later.

Marriage candidates can also have a Romance Score on top of the Friendship score.

Romance points can be earned at the same time as friendship points, but only after you have unlocked the romance bar.

To unlock the romance bar for any character, you need to meet these three requirements:

##### 1. "I can't even think about marriage until..."

These are personal or environmental requirements for that character to be open to marriage. For instance "I can't even think about marriage while Dad still needs me at the shop" means you need to help the shop bring in more money or help them hire someone. "I can't even think about marriage until I can cook" means you need to help the character up their cooking skill.

If these minimum requirements aren't met, the character will never start building a Romance Score with anyone.

After these minimum requirements are met, the character will hang their bell in the center of town, indicating they are open to meeting people. Other characters (or the player character) may ring this bell to try to trigger a romantic confession, which can be accepted or rejected.

##### 2. "I could never marry someone who didn't..."

These are requirements the other party must meet for this character to start to notice them. These might be things like needed at least a certain level in a certain number of skills, having certain amenities at home, being close to someone else. "I could never date anyone who didn't get along with my sister.", "I could never date anyone who couldn't cook because I hate cooking", "I could never date anyone with no ambition", "I could never date anyone who didn't have at least three outfits"

The first character to stumble into another character's qualifying thing will trigger a cutscene with that character being complimentary toward it.

If a player character doesn't meet these requirements and tries to confess, they will be automatically rejected, and can't try again for at least one in-game week (or until next season? or just a day or two? whatever makes sense).

##### 3. Chemistry

Along with the unique minimum requirement for each character, there is also a Chemistry system. Each character has a collection of turn ons and turn offs, weighted by importance to the character.

For a character to start getting love points with another character, one character must confess to the other, and they must be accepted. Then both can earn love points. The chance of a confession being accepted (assuming all requirements are met) is an RNG run based on the turn ons/turn offs score.

It only needs to be maintained once for the Romance Score to be unlocked, at which point it remains unlocked and able to gather points until and unless the player character gives them a Forget Me Knot that lets them untie their romantic feelings and let them go, until either of them marries someone else, or if the chemistry score falls VERY low.

If a Forget Me Knot is untied, and then romantic compatibility returns and characters re-confess, the romance bar will re-emerge with a small loss, but will not have to be restarted from scratch.

It should be noted - this creates the possibility for Unrequited Love, where one character ticks off enough boxes for another character, but not the other way around. These also play out as unique stories.

Once the Romance Score in unlocked between two characters, they start to play out a unique love story as they gain affection for each other. As with the player romances, they get story beats at certain point levels. If they choose (and the player does nothing to prevent it), they can get married.

The player character also has a bell they must ring, and confessions they can make. They also have their own bell, and NPCs can confess to them.

There is a love fortune at the shrine that gives out advice on whether it's a good day to confess or ask someone on a date - what it's actually doing is checking ongoing events and festivals to see if there's availability in the game calendar for a romance event to happen.