Valentine’s Day is a great time to play some games with your significant other and share some online competition or cooperative fun. While there are lots of games that offer opportunities for players to create duos to delve into virtual worlds, few video games actually offer you opportunities to express your love for another person while you play. Most of the time, you’re killing zombies, blasting other players, or solving elaborate quests as part of your video game getaway.
Some games have ways you can make a little romance while you play, though, especially if you’re willing to get creative. Here are five ways to make a romantic gesture in video games this Valentine’s Day, whether it’s just crafting a quick virtual date or pledging your in-game love for the rest of your virtual life.
Go dancing in Destiny 2
You might not be great at dancing in real life, but that doesn’t stop you from busting a move in quite a few video games — Destiny 2 included. Grabbing a few good dance emotes in Destiny is a great way to show that special fireteam member how you feel, especially if your feelings are easily expressed by things like “Thriller,” “Hotline Bling,” or Lindsay Bluth Funke’s chicken dance from Arrested Development . Even better than throwing down an interpretive dance in the middle of a strike to catch your valentine’s attention, you might consider inviting your significant other out on the town — er, tower — to dance together. It’s a good way to have a little close fun if your IRL (in real life) body isn’t great at rhythmic motions. You can take the whole thing up a notch and make your way to somewhere exotic, like the Eater of Worlds, then make use of a more exclusive dance floor.
If you want to go a step further (and you’ve got the original Destiny), you could take advantage of a custom emote Bungie made for a Guardian to propose to her significant other back in 2016 (Vlambeer developer Rami Ismail, who received the proposal, even documented the whole thing on Twitter). Bungie made the “Proposal” emote available for free to all Destiny players; you can find it in the Tower in the Emote Collection kiosk. Unfortunately, the emote hasn’t made its way into Destiny 2 yet, but maybe there’s something more romantic about going through the elaborate setup of convincing your special someone to join you in an old game just to use one very specific emote to show your affection.
Send a romantic message
Sending a message on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or Steam is a quick way to make contact with a friend or play a game, but if you apply the lost art of letter writing, it can be a whole lot more. Craft a romantic message to send either through your platform of choice or through various games — including Destiny 2, World of Warcraft, League of Legends or StarCraft II — to give your crush something fun to open. It’s a romantic option that doesn’t necessarily require in-game skills or dedication to a particular game, which is handy if you and your date love games but are not enamored of (or maybe especially good at) playing together. Lots of games offer the ability to send messages, and spending the time to craft a truly romantic missive isn’t too far removed from writing a love letter and sending it through the mail.
Go on a VR date in the ‘Rec Room’
Virtual reality takes playing online a step further than other games. The technology’s biggest asset is the sense of presence it creates by bringing both your head and your hands into its virtual worlds, and allowing you to feel like you’re actually occupying a physical space. That’s great for spending a little time with someone special, especially if you can’t actually be with that person in the real world. There are quite a few online multiplayer VR games that let you feel close to someone even when you’re miles apart, but Rec Room is an especially great game for a VR “date.” The title includes a bunch of multiplayer games, like paintball, disc golf, and 3D charades. It offers cooperative experiences you can share with a special someone, so if you can’t be together in person on Valentine’s Day, consider meeting up in the digital world. Rec Room is a cross-platform game, so it works whether you and your date are PlayStation VR fans, HTC Vive users, or among those dedicated to the Oculus Rift.
Build a romantic monument in Minecraft
Minecraft has become a hugely social game over the years, with whole teams of people working together to create amazing structures, like the entire map of Game of Thrones and the starship Enterprise, as well as real-life landmarks like Penn Station. You might not have ambitions as grand as that, but creating something for your valentine in Minecraft can be a powerful gesture. Spending some time making something unique to your relationship or interesting to your significant other in a game world can be as cool as crafting a card or working hard on a personal gift in the real world, with the added benefit that your partner can actually walk around or through whatever you create. You don’t even have to have any real carpentry or engineering skills to make it happen. Try something like DarkMagic252’s Romantic Garden, shown above, or check out some of the great ideas people have had for making Minecraft surprises and date locations on Reddit.
Get married in an MMO
You’ve probably heard about marriage ceremonies players have organized in games like World of Warcraft in order to declare their love. WoW doesn’t have a “marriage system,” per se — though that hasn’t stopped players from holding ceremonies. (There are even guides!) Still, if you’d like make it official, other massively multiplayer games have added mechanics that allow players to actually marry each other in the game. The Elder Scrolls Online allows players to enshrine their love with the Ritual of Mara, one of the Nine Divines, and make their marriages official — and they get a 10 percent experience point boost when they play with their spouses. Players can also form an Eternal Bond in Final Fantasy XIV, and can even pay for a full ceremony. Regardless of the game you decide to get married in — whether the mechanics are part of the game or not — be sure to bring a few friends along as witnesses and to share in your in-game joy.
