I love "Love, Sam", don't get me wrong, but the more I love something, the more I try to get stuff accurate about it. So I've done a decent bit of research about stuff around the time (not to say that I'm an expert of that time period; I wasn't even conscious back then, let me tell you).
Now, getting to the point, this is a
LOVE, SAM TIME SETTING RANT POST!!!
There's very little that I think could improve the game. Model redesigns, changes to the writing font, different art in the pages, yeah yeah maybe, but I don't really care too much. The modern smartphones you see in game, though? That is what bothers me. They don't even exist until mid-2007, and that's not accounting for the fact that it'd take a while for it to be widespread in a mountain town like Rosen Peek. And a little reminder, the events of "Love, Sam" are set in late-2006, even if the game itself starts with us in 2010 or so.
Sigh. I know, I know, crazy thing to be bothered about (just goes to show how good the rest of the game is, ay?), but the thing is, the story itself wouldn't have changed at all, whether they used a modern smartphone or flip phone or whatever. The text posts about Sam look like they're taken from a monitor anyways. Maybe the text would be harder to display, but I just think it's sooo worth it just to have a little bit more of that charm. Plus, "Love, Sam" has a button to pull up the writing in the books in a screen/more readable interface, so why couldn't they do the same for the texts?
But even without thinking about the phone thing, "Love, Sam" just doesn't ever give off 2006 vibes. None of the slang/texting abbreviations or fashion or music or CULTURE. And yes, that is to be expected considering the fact that it's a visual novel-ish horror game (and also made in the late 2010s... and also made by a non-American developer... Sorry KLL you're amazing I swear), but I feel like it kills some of the character of the game.
I wish we got to see more of that character in Stacy especially, since we get so little of her anyways. But nah, her texting style is bland and grammatically correct and lacks emojis/emoticons (which I get is also done for readability but again, just make a more readable interface).
Oh, and you know why I even know all of this? It's because I was trying to make fanarts of the characters and a fanfic. Then, I learnt all this stuff and just sort of... died. Because I wanted that 2006 charm but doing that would change so, so, so much in terms of how the characters are portrayed. And I'll already be doing a lot in padding out the characters' personalities in the first place, since we just don't get much of them. We barely get to understand Stacy-Brian's relationship dynamic, and even Stacy-Kyle's is somewhat mystified or overexaggerated (courtesy of Sam Holt herself); so we have barely an idea of how Stacy acts amongst friends. And that's just ONE problem of many I came across while trying to write a fanfic.
I just wish "Love, Sam" had that flavor from the start, so I wasn't stuck debating whether I wanted to sprinkle that on or just ditch it entirely and follow canon. Alternatively, you could just take the events of the game as purely a fever dream with jumbled memories (considering the endings), and assume that in actuality, those characters were 2006-coded.
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Okay, I've kinda run out of properly relevant topics now, so I guess I'm done. Maybe you'll next hear about my fanart/fanfic problems, or how I see Kyle-Stacy's relationship, or Kyle's (and Stacy's) complete lack of parental mention, or—
You get the point. You'll see me when you see me!!!