Hatoful Boyfriend is an odd game. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise if you know the premise of it. It is a dating simulator where you’re a student starting their first day of school. That sounds quite normal so far right? Oh you’re also the only human at St. PigeoNation’s academy. Everyone else that goes there is a bird. By that I am not just using out-dated terminology to describe women either. (In fact you’re one of the few women in the game). What I mean is that everyone that goes to St PigeoNation’s is a bird of the winged variety. Pretty weird right? Don’t worry though; you can have human avatars displayed when you first meet a bird, although that doesn’t really help make things any less bizarre. If anything it makes it even more odd.
It’s in its oddness though that Hatoful Boyfriend shines. Dating sims are dime a dozen and, for the most part, cringe worthy. Adding such a weird element makes the game stand out. There’s even an intriguing side-story to the whole game that explains how the birds took over and how the human population dropped so rapidly. It’s up to you to piece together the clues to find that out, whilst trying to successfully court one of the suitable lovebirds.
The story arcs play out in various ways, with certain actions triggering certain paths. The game always starts the same though, and there’s no way to really skip it other than setting up a save to reload when you’ve finished one arc. Luckily the game allows you to skip through dialogue fairly quickly. Oddly though I could not find an auto-play option, meaning you can’t just sit back and enjoy the dialogue.
The reason this is an issue, is that the game is all about reading dialogue, with a few choices here and there. Having to constantly hit a button to go to the next part of dialogue is a small nuisance, but one that could be easily amended. The fact so many interactive novel type games have this makes it a glaring omission.
Luckily the writing in the game delivers some genuine laugh out loud moments making the button presses worth it. The moments wouldn’t be out of place in an [adult swim] series; from one pigeon’s journey for pudding to melodramatic aristocratic drama. Some story moments may only take an hour to get to whereas others will take a bit longer. Once you’ve completed the game a few times though you’ll know what parts you can skip through and you’ll be able to see new content much quicker.
Due to there not being any voice-overs it comes down to how quickly you can read content that will define how quickly you get through a story arc. Although it’s a shame that there is no form of voice-over, so it is highly likely your imagination will make the voices funnier than any voice actor could.
The lack of voice-over is accompanied by very basic animations and illustrations. This is part of the charm of the game though, and it probably would not work if it had fully rendered 3D pigeons and Troy Baker/Nolan North doing every voice (although that would be interesting to see). The PlayStation 4 is never really tested but that’s fine. It’s a cross-play title with the PS Vita, which allows you to find the moments you want to share with others and load them up on the PS4.
Hatoful Boyfriend is light hearted and definitely something designed to make you smile. It’s not going to set the world on fire but it can be picked up for a small amount of money and is something that anyone can play due to its simplistic controls. Its style of humour may not be for everyone, but for those that do find the absurd hilarious it is definitely worth considering picking it up. There are lots of possible story arcs, which means a great amount of amusing dialogue and moments. Hatoful Boyfriend might just be the little ‘COO’ that you’ve been looking for.