Love and Deepspace Cocktail Recipes Feature Toxic Plants

Love and Deepspace's official social media shared animated cocktail recipes on September 29, sparking immediate safety concerns. The five 'Shimmering Blend' drinks, part of the Moonlit Reserve event running until October 10, were themed around the game's romanceable characters. In the accompanying mini-game, A Sip of Splendour, players gather ingredients and brew blends. Two of the fictional recipes listed poisonous plants as garnishes.

One recipe combines Crimson Pomegranate Juice with Datura and Cinnamon. Another mixes Sweet Peach Juice with Flame Lily and Gelatin Sheets. Both Datura and Flame Lily are highly toxic real-world plants. The game's developer later added a follow-up notice stating all drinks were fictional and for in-game purposes only, warning players not to recreate or consume them.

Real-world toxicity of featured ingredients

Flame Lily, or Gloriosa superba, is extremely poisonous. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew notes all parts of the plant, particularly the tubers, are dangerous and ingestion can be fatal. It contains toxic alkaloids like colchicine, which can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and hypovolemic shock.

Datura is a group of flowering plants known for large, trumpet-shaped blooms. A 2021 toxicology review notes it contains toxic tropane alkaloids including atropine and scopolamine. All parts of the plant can cause anticholinergic poisoning, with symptoms ranging from hallucinations and delirium to tachycardia and fever. Medical literature has documented cases of accidental food poisoning from Datura.

Fan reaction and safety warnings

Fans quickly called for the promotional post to be deleted, fearing players might attempt to recreate the dangerous drinks. Commenters flooded the post with warnings about the fatal risks. One writing said: "Delete this. This is literal poison. Nobody make this." Another said: "Hey, so some of these flowers are literally poisonous. Be careful. This is so reckless to post this."

An X Community Note was attached to the post, explicitly warning users that Flame Lily and Datura are poisonous and should not be used in real drinks. On Reddit, discussions in the game's community and the broader gacha gaming subreddit passed over a thousand upvotes as players debated the danger. Some argued that recognizing poisonous plants is not common sense, while others stressed the recipes were clearly part of a fictional mini-game.

Context within the game's broader story

The cocktail controversy follows a period of significant community tension. Earlier this year, Love and Deepspace scrapped a new love interest character named Valko after fans protested. Those protests included mailing cow manure to the developers' physical offices, where players also created shrines for the canceled character. The game's social media accounts continue to be flooded with photos of Valko.

References to the controversial plants also appear within the game's own lore. Rafayel's Home System Love Timeline includes an entry titled A World Filled by Him that references the flame lily. Similarly, a timeline entry for Sylus references dark datura seeds. These story connections did little to calm safety concerns over the promotional recipes. The discussion closed with the Community Note attached to the post, a crowd-sourced warning about the poisonous ingredients.