TLC is very interesting take on the '90s meme of associating psychotherapy with the study of repressed sexuality. If you're looking for porn, I'm sorry but you'll mostly be disappointed - there's several scenes of full frontal toplessness, but in context they're actually more disturbing than erotic. But if you're looking for a cheesy "so bad it's good" movie with a premise that only would have worked 20 years ago, then it's definitely worth your time.

It's basically a movie with a number of completely point-and-click "explore the house for more information" sections. They give a bit more insight into the characters, but you wouldn't miss much from skipping them. Playtime is about 4 hours depending on how much of the optional content you read. There's also 8 endings, but you can just watch the movie files for the other endings in the game directory if you want.

If you ever fantasized about John Hurt asking you probing questions about your sexuality, I think I might have found the game for you.

I was skeptical that this game would hold up for a modern audience, since it appears to be adapted from an old interactive VHS/DVD (from the 90s?). My reservations aside, this game still stands the test of time.

The story is solid, and the endings vary enough to where your input clearly had a meaningful effect on what you experience.

The graphics are a bit dated, and not all of the actors are entirely believable. That being said, I found myself quickly captivated, and invested. My game had an error halfway through that forced me to restart- After that, I closed and saved after every chapter.

So, a bit old, a bit buggy, but all in all- an unexpectedly impressive experience.

FMV games have always fascinated me. Gameplay is very different but fun it's own way. I love the psychological aspect, Dr. Turner analyzing you while you analyze & try to solve the story. The acting is great. No two people will have the same experience in this game. I can't wait to see my psychological work up at the end, haha!

Crim's Humble Opinion Curator

Tender Loving Care is a crazy and fun slightly interactive fmv film that's based on a novel of the same name. You are a observer entity following an event that was somewhat under the wing as it were of Dr. Turner (acted by John Hurt). You watch what happens and have some exploring bits in between each segments of videos that add lore and insight to the subsequent scenes. The really interesting thing in this title is the Thematic Apperception Tests. They are a series of questions asked throughout the game that can effect some things in the story and the ending. Aside from the ending these aren't major changes. The changes in the story are things such as how sexual the characters act towards each other or if they act rational or irrational. There are multiple endings but a bit of a spoiler alert; There aren't really any "happy endings"

The acting is pretty well done. You might see it as a so bad it's good soap opera liking acting; but it's still pretty good. Really the only negative I have with this experience is the video quality drops in various places. The idea of the TAT mentioned above affecting the characters behavior throughout the story and the ending is interesting. The exploration is not required to go through the game so you can finish in roughly 3 hours. It would be nice to have a full gallery to be able to view the film segments or exploration findings without replay. You can watch past videos but it's not watch this one; it's watch this set of videos.

+Interesting and different experience
+John Hurt's acting (everyone else is fine as well)
+Multiple endings

~Full gallery would be nice
~TAT changes aside from ending are not major

-Video quality drops randomly at times

I recommend this game for the experience of a relic of the past. You can get it a little over a dollar during sales so keep an eye on it. It can have some rough to swallow content with the dark subjects it tackles but it does it rather well even if it's dated.

This was ludicrous, sexy, unplayable (in the fact that you are just watching a film) and downright ridiculous. Absolutely I will recommend this to you to play. It had me in stitches. If you can stream/screenshare this to a friend, it's even better. https://youtu.be/3wTZ3q_bi5k

As a film, TLC is a feeble low budget Basic Instinct/Hand That Rocks the Cradle mash up that might hold your attention if it was 3am and you were under the influence. But as a game, it's an insanely hilarious camp-fest featuring John Hurt asking you wildly invasive sexually probing questions, rippled with classic movie clips and deranged diary entries from the characters. A fabulous experience for those with the right sense of humor.

Tender Loving Care is a curious interactive experiment of the 90’s, at the time when FMV games were all the craze, that deals with intriguing psychological issues in a deeply flawed way. TLC played with ideas of the loss of the dear ones, depression, sexual identity and repression 4 months before the reverent Silent Hill series even showed up, but it did so in an extremely archaic and limiting way.

Created by the ex-members of the Trilobyte team who created the famous 7th Guest and 11th Hour games, Tender Loving Care was another full-motion video game that was designed to play more like a ‘choose your adventure’ type of interactive movie than a classic point and click adventure game. You have 10-minute cutscenes interspersed between short moments where you can walk around the house and listen/read the documents in order to obtain additional insight for the next chapter. In these sections you also take the TAT – Thematic Apperception Test, arguably the most interesting part of the game, and your answers will shape which movie will play next, thus changing the story. You play as the Observer, a player avatar, who is employed by Dr. Turner (played by acting legend John Hurt) to investigate what happened with his former patients, the Overton family. The entire game can be done in 4-5 hours.

TLC introduces conscious and subconscious analyzing test with ambiguous images called the TAT, a legitimate tool used by psychiatrists around the world, where story is changed in a manner to assimilate to player’s desires and wishes, as closely as possible. You can keep story and its characters civil and focused, or you can make characters act irrationally and irresponsibly. If you don’t like nudity or you don’t want to tackle with some of the themes of TLC, through TAT you can completely shut these sections out.

And this is the first major gripe I have with Tender Loving Care: you don’t have any real control in choosing how this game goes. The story will play out the same, only you will have a slightly different ending and characters will act slightly different. I’ve played most of FMV games and they are my guilty passion, but TLC is just doesn’t have any real choices and things to do. Besides the TAT thing as a “sort of” game mechanic, you could barely call this a game, and that is a shame since the themes dissected in this game are quite interesting. And this comes from someone who loved enjoying so called “walking simulators” as games. Acting is well done overall, but one of the actors who play a crucial character that is dealing with heavy psychological issues delivers rather flat and unconvincing performance, that serves to the detriment of player’s immersion.

As an interactive curiosity of the bygone age, Tender Loving Care is decent gaming experience, but it would be much better if it was done as psychological thriller feature movie it truly DESIRES to be. You’ll do fine with TLC, but you can do so infinitely better with Silent Hill games, as well as with an obscured gem called Blackstone Chronicles.

Back around 1995 I saw a review of this title and actually the verdict was inconclusive. I wondered then why the reviewer could not say why it was good or bad. When I could finally buy it after 20 years or so it was an instabuy for me.

Note that I will call it a 'title' since I don't have a better word for it since it is neither game or a movie.

I now understand it is hard to recommend it or not. You can't say it is a game, there are no puzzles or anything. At the time and somewhat before that Philips invented the CD-I (interactive CD) the promise of that was that you could now determine the outcome of a movie and I think that best describes this title.

Basically you see FMV (Full Motion Video (or in todays speak, just video)) sequences with some exploration and questions in between. Supposedly the questions change which movies will play next. I am not sure if the answers to the questions actually do that or the sequences are just random. There are different outcomes if I compare my ending to other reviewers (it ended badly in my playthrough).

The exploration is simple. There are a view items in a house and you can click on them and mostly read and view some pictures and make up your mind what happened. Also there are some psychological tests in between. Once you have taken a test you get look at a review of yourself which usually consists of some answers you gave and some silly advice (then again it advised me to drink ginger and that is actually what I always put in my tea so maybe there is something to it :-) ).

Being an old game there are borders and even the taskbar (on windows 10) showing at all times if you don't do anything special (which I didn't).

Oddly enough, while this doesn't sound like much fun and seems (and acutally is sometimes) a bit tedious, I found myself playing this title all the way to the end in pretty much one go. The power of it is that you are always keep asking yourself 'what's next'.

I now understand why the review I read so long ago was vague. If you are open to something new that is different from anything else and are ok with the not so stellar graphics/videos (but still recognizable) then this might be something you would like the play.

Note, there is some nudity so if you feel offended by that don't buy.

If they still have the original footage and it has a higher resolution it would benefit greatly from a remake (no borders, screen filling video and maybe a more detailed house (which should be not so difficult to do with todays powerful 3D software/workstations).

In the end I recommend it as a curiousity from a different age.

Note: I bought this at 80% off, and probably wouldn't get it at full price but I.....bizarrely really liked this???

I mean, it's a (perhaps unintentionally?) camp 90s FMV drama with a big focus on sex and psychiatry, so it's obviously super messy and the more sensitive subjects are not handled with any tact whatsoever. It also very much feels written through a heterosexual lense, and you could argue that the characters are fairly detestable. But I dunno, there's just something about the game overall that I found oddly compelling

The game is split into three sequences:
- FMV video that (generally) progresses the plot
- Interacting with the character's house; which can include reading the character's diaries, watching old movie clips on tv or reading articles
- Answering strange questions that are often but not always sexually invasive from famous british actor John Hurt

That second point, a lot of the stuff you can interact with isn't relevant but the diary entries were really neat with the extra context they provide - and I just straight up enjoyed reading them. After about an hour, you'll probably have a good feel for what stuff you wanna interact with and what objects you can ignore. A lot of the material is just fluff, and often related to sex - whether that's lovers guides, written accounts of past experiences or building frustrations, but I found it all pretty interesting nonetheless. Answering questions that range from benign "should children be allowed to bang on drums and make noise?" to wildly insensitive things like "have you ever fantasized about sex with animals?" is a rollercoaster, and apparently changes the plot/ending which is kind of neat. Honestly it's wild that multiple 90s FMV games were able to get established big name actors to go along with them (like how Christopher Walken was in Ripper lol)

I would like to strongly emphasize that this is a very weird niche video game, and I am very much someone who loves weird niche video games. I think TLC hits that sweetspot for me

Also, yes there are tits

Also also, it's very funny to play a game set/made in the 90s because you're telling me this mid 20s couple own a big house, a nice car, a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of land around their house AND had a child? damn that's crazy

Also also also, the game's video files are really bad quality and you can mod in higher quality ones from the DVD fairly easily with the help of a guide (although i didn't do this because i kinda felt like there was some charm in it looking like absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lol)

Tender Loving Care has an interesting story that is told in an unusual manner. You act as an observer that is basically watching events that happened to try to figure out what caused them. They’re not filmed events though, that is to say that they weren’t recorded, it’s almost as you’re watching them real time but after the fact which makes little sense. It would make more sense if you were watching events that were recorded on film like found footage or something like that. At the end of each scene you hear from Dr. Turner who gives his opinion and asks for yours. You answer a bunch of questions, some about the story and others that are random. Your responses help branch the story into one of seven endings. Looking at the endings after the fact I can say that there isn’t much variety. That being said I still enjoyed the story regardless. After you answer Dr. Turner’s questions you get to explore the house and click on various things like Allison’s diary; Katherine’s computer; and Michael’s computer to read what they have written in order to gain more context as well as add some back story. I do wish more of the back story between Turner and Katherine was explored. The ending was also a bit abrupt. The characters and plot are interesting and the acting is, for the most part, pretty good. John hurt is by far the best of the bunch, which is no surprise, but Beth Tegarden as Katherine also managed to make me question her characters motives in a way that put her beyond a cardboard cutout character.

I played Tender Loving Care on Linux using Wine. I tried both the GOG version as well as the Steam version. The Steam version had issues where the video would sometimes take a while to show up and the game would be basically unwatchable if you tried to change the screen size as the screen would just go fuzzy forcing one to quit and resize when you restarted the game rather than during the videos. The GOG version gave me none of these issues and worked just fine. I noticed no other bugs and the game never crashed. There are no graphics options at all. Given that this is a FMV game this is a little to be expected but the option to choose resolution would have been nice. The game saves on exit from the game. Alt-Tab wasn’t needed as the game has no true full-screen option. Performance was great which was no shock given the age of the footage.

Graphics Engine: Groovie
Disk Space Used: 743 MB (Steam version), 783 MB (GOG Version)
Game Version Played: 1.0

GPU Usage: 0-8 %
VRAM Usage: 226-273 MB
CPU Usage: 1-9 %
RAM Usage: 1.8-2.6 GB

Overall this is a solid FMV game and if you’re a fan of the genre I would recommend it. The plot was quite good up until the end and the in between bits where you’re answering questions for Dr. Turner were entertaining and thought provoking. I found the end kind of came out of nowhere with little buildup but then again sometimes violent situations do come out of nowhere so maybe I should see it as realistic. There are 7 endings to the game and which you receive is influenced by your answers so it’s not like they didn’t have an effect but maybe having a clue as to how you arrived at that ending would have been nice. I paid $6.47 CAD for TLC and it was easily worth that price, I would have even paid up to $15 CAD for it. I finished the game in 5 hours and 6 minutes.

I am giving it a thumbs up because the game is good and despite Proton having some issues Wine worked great with it so I don't want to punish the game for Proton's issues.

My score: 8/10

My System:

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.3.7 | Manjaro Mate | Kernel 5.16.14-1-MANJARO | Proton 7.0-1 and experimental tried