Cheritz Offers Mystic Messenger Fans a New Way to Give Back

The plot of Cheritz's 2016 hit mobile game Mystic Messenger is a lot more complicated than it lets on, but at its most (most) basic level, it's a dating game about a grand party held in the name of charitable giving. One of the player's major responsibilities (outside of charming the cast) is to act as a coordinator for this party, exchanging e-mails with potential party guests who will attend and donate to the causes that the fundraising association provides for.

It gets a lot weirder than that, but this holiday season, the game studio is taking that concept and offering players the chance to nominate real-world charities that a portion of their in-game purchases will benefit.

The team took to their official blog this past week to announce their annual donations, which are pulled from a portion of the game's sales. This year's total came out to $92,000, and was split up between several foundations, including UNICEF, Save the Children, the Childhood Leukemia Foundation, as well as Korean charities focused on suicide and sexual assault survivors.

The new function, called the RFA Donation Preference Survey, is an extra screen that pops up every single time a player achieves a 'good' or 'normal' ending in Mystic Messenger. Players will then be given the option to vote for the next real-world charity to receive a donation from the game's proceeds. For the unacquainted, 'RFA' stands for 'Rika's Fundraising Association,' which the player joins after being locked into the deceased Rika's apartment.

It's not clear how often charities will be picked from here on out, but the developers have teased another route on the horizon for Mystic Messenger, so it's likely that they're expecting sales to remain just about the same this coming year.

Mystic Messenger is available now for iOS and Android.