Too Long; Didn't Play: Hatoful Boyfriend

Sponsored By: Danopian

Time Studied: 45 minutes

White-Breasted Nuthatch Review

Have you ever considered the names that birds get? Ornithologists have strange minds, so a dating sim starring pigeons should surprise nobody. A group of people that would call a half-ounce of black and brown feathers a "great tit" is capable of anything.

And the less said about roosters, well, the happier we'll all be.

Blue-Footed Boobie review

This may come as a shock, but I'm not a complete newcomer to the Japanese dating sim. I'm not saying I was ever a connoisseur of them, but I've played a couple. Mainly they were free Flash games that had agreeably tame content, considering some of the ads they were surrounded by. There was one in particular that my wife and I played in parallel and which represents what I understand to be the basic structure of such a game. You pick areas on a map and do everything you can with the number of actions you're allowed in a day of game-time. Eventually, you earn enough EXP and/or money to start courting NPCs. The courting process mainly involves memorizing your date's stats and parroting them back at her when she quizzes you on it.

Again, I'm not claiming to be an expert on the genre. I didn't know until seeing Rabbit's interview with the creator of Hatoful Boyfriend that you're supposed to play them multiple times to get the "real" endings. I certainly didn't know they could have actual stories buried in them. I just thought they were lite-RPGs where you spent stamina for stats and occasionally went on pop-quiz "dates." ("Without looking it up, what's my shoe size?" "Uhh, five?" "Oh dear. I don't think I like you anymore. Don't ask me out again until you've paid me seventeen compliments or given me $300 in gifts that match my interests.") Hatoful Boyfriend seems to skew somewhat toward the "visual novel" genre in that respect, but I haven't progressed very far in yet.

A game like this, one without anything I'd really feel comfortable calling "gameplay," can really only be judged on its presentation and its writing. I'll start with the presentation, as that's the weakest part.

The aural presentation is decent. Lots of public domain music provides atmosphere at key plot points. It's all unobtrusive, and I honestly didn't even mind that one of them was a Christmas carol for no apparent reason.

The character portraits all appear to be photographs of real birds. You can choose to see non-bird versions of all the characters during play, but I don't see why you would do that. There are lots of other romantic Japanese visual novels out there that aren't specifically built around ornithophilia. If you want to watch humans dating humans, you've got no lack of options.

Beyond the character portraits, there's really not much remarkable about the visual presentation. The backgrounds look very much like stock backgrounds that I've seen in other games like, say, Science Girls.

It's not so much that it's bland as that it's beside the point. Just as a tugboat is just the smallest possible hull around the largest possible engine, so is the graphical and sound design just a vessel to deliver the story.

A whole lot of words have been spilled by more notorious writers than me on this site, praising the writing in Hatoful Boyfriend. I won't deny feeling a little intimidated trying to tackle this review under that shadow. Should I break format and play longer? Should I review some other games in the genre for reference? Do I have to learn how to drink coffee and use "ludonarrative" in a sentence?

Ultimately, I can only share my impressions and continue to be the affable galumph that you've come to know and love. What I've seen so far is well done. I'm a sucker for boldly drawn characters, and Hatoful Boyfriend has that going for it from the word "go." From the narcoleptic math teacher to the twig-short-of-a-nest track star, there's no shortage of big personalities to interact with and woo. I can see where the appeal of multiple play-throughs comes from. There are at least three characters that I want my Hunter-Gatherer to feather her nest with.

(Was there an innuendo in that last sentence? Is there an innuendo in "innuendo?")

The first half hour is dedicated to introducing all of the different birds you can interact with. You're given some dialogue choices with some of them, but it's all about world-building at this point. After that they start giving you more choices that seem to point pretty clearly to specific romances. For example, on multiple occasions you're given a choice as to where you want to go spend time, each of which is associated with a specific bird. I've been spending a lot of time in the infirmary because I'm morbidly curious about the doctor. It will probably end with my character flayed and dissected on a sheet of butcher paper, stretched across a pleather bench.

There are a lot of questions left unanswered after an hour. Why can all the birds talk? What happened to the city? How much deeper into the Friend Zone can Ryouta possibly get? The prospect of finding the answers seems mildly daunting, but it's one of those journeys I'm interested in taking.

Pardon?

Oh. I see. You're disappointed? I suppose you expected a nonstop barrage of bird puns.

Well, if it's Dad jokes you want, folks, I'm your huckleberry. Here we go:

I know this opinion will ruffle some feathers around here, since the overall reception here at GWJ has really been something for the developer to crow about, but Hatoful Boyfriend is a fowl game. Its bird-brained story is just one of the things I want to squawk about; truly it can only be appreciated by a real dodo. The artwork is really cheep, and the music took hardly any talon at all, seeing as how it was all selected from a public domain. Overall, playing this game just left me feeling down.

< /Mic drop>

Will the swallows return to Capistrano?

I'm not sure what that means. If I meant "Will I keep playing?" then the answer is "Yes, provided nothing else distracts me." If we've learned anything in the past ten months of my reviews, it's that I'm a consummate magpie. I'll play things that are interesting and OOH! SHINY!

Is it the Bloodborne of bird-themed Japanese choose-your-own-adventure romance novels?

There really isn't a way to judge this. There's not really any gameplay to speak of. You read things, you click things, you wonder what you're doing with your life. It's not difficult in any way unless you count resisting the urge to uninstall it before somebody sees what you're playing.

Impulse Link; Coo Coo KaJoob

Comments

Guess this game continues to render people speechless.

I'm fascinated by it, but I can't imagine trying to explain to my wife why I'm playing a game as a girl who dates pigeons.

Just tell her you want to hang with the coo kids.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Just tell her you want to hang with the coo kids.

IMAGE(https://d.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1380424032ra/845172.gif)

IMAGE(http://commitnesstofitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/truman-show-bow.gif)

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

There are a lot of questions left unanswered after an hour. Why can all the birds talk? What happened to the city? How much deeper into the Friend Zone can Ryouta possibly get? The prospect of finding the answers seems mildly daunting, but it's one of those journeys I'm interested in taking.

Like any decent game of the Otome genre, you're supposed to replay romancing every pigeon to get the whole story. I found this particularly evident in the one I played recently, Seduce Me (which is free, I might add *hint*wink*nudge*. To truly understand the world, and the characters, I played through every thread, romanced every incubi, and it was fascinating to see how that's used a storytelling device. Pigeons didn't capture my attention as much as incubi though, so I never went back to do the same in Hatoful Boyfriend.

romanced every incubi

I don't think it's just the "every [plural]" that's throwing me about this.

Kids: Don't "romance" incubi. It would be bad.

wordsmythe wrote:
romanced every incubi

I don't think it's just the "every [plural]" that's throwing me about this.

Kids: Don't "romance" incubi. It would be bad.

To paraphrase StrongBad, "An incubus that requires romancing is barely an incubus at all."

*pats you two* There, there, guys. Don't you worry, you're not the target demographic.

Eleima wrote:

Don't you worry, you're not the target demographic. :D

Oh, I get that. I'm just saying:

An incubus is a demon in male form who, according to mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon sleepers, especially women, in order to engage in sexual activity with them.

Oh, I lnow. And that's very much explored and explained in the game, with a "more than meets the eye" theme.

I came for the pigeons, but I'm staying for the incubi. Downloads Seduce Me...

Before I got distracted I was going to say that, as you have probably been informed, Hatoful falls into the more extreme category of needing to play more than an hour and romance several pigeons. I love the heart she put into the game but it really didn't keep me hooked enough to unravel the story behind the setting. Instead, I ended up watching the true game on YouTube fast forwarding through parts.

Oooooh, a convert!!! Let me know how you liked it.

Absolutely! Got it installed but someone has to make dinner...