Spoilers below!
I have never once in my whole life successfully pursued and landed a boyfriend. I had crushes on boys, sure, but the ones I liked were never the ones who liked me. Ain’t that just the way it goes? Anyway, I am only telling you this because it feels pertinent and is maybe an explanation as to why I am so very terrible at playing a bird-wooing bisexual in Hatoful Boyfriend.
If you’ve never heard of Hatoful Boyfriend, allow me to attempt an explanation. You play as a human girl just about to start your second year at St. PigeoNation’s Institute, a school for gifted birds. You can talk to all the birds, they can talk to you, and, despite being the only human (or “hunter-gather,” as you prefer to call yourself), you seem to use the same desks, supplies, and study the same curriculum as the avian students. Don’t try to challenge these truths, any attempts will be futile.
To be fair, that’s a pretty good question.
The point of the whole game is to romance the birds, obviously, so before I started playing I tried to prepare myself for any and everything that might come my way. I had no idea how explicit the game would get, so I Googled “How do pigeons do it?” and let me tell you, this was a mistake and I saw some things I will never be able to unsee.
As I started playing, I couldn’t help but wonder (multiple times), “What have I gotten myself into?” Everything, from the background screens to St. PigeoNation’s itself, seems to be tinted with shades of pink, and there are hearts everywhere. There is no spoken dialogue, but the upbeat music chimes and sparkles merrily. The game is not exactly my style, to say the least, but I soldiered onward. I was totally ready to seduce some birds.
The gameplay is the same as We Know The Devil: you simply click through to advance the story and dialogue, occasionally having to make choices which determine what kind of outcome you’ll end up with. At the beginning, the game informs you that it includes a visualization module that allows “even the birdiest of birds to appear as normal humans.” This means that the first time you meet each of the main characters, you can see what they would look like as a Manga-style human.
IMHO, Sakuya is the dreamiest.
And then there’s Okosan.
Don’t ask me, I don’t know.
We’ll come back to him later.
Anyway, for my first playthrough I set my sights on Nageki, the depressed mourning dove who never leaves the library. Because of course I did. I spent two semesters painstakingly trying my best to get Nageki to open up to me. I joined the library staff in order to spend time with him, I skipped out on school activities knowing he wouldn’t want to go, I tried to increase my wisdom level because I thought maybe it would impress him. Nothing worked!
Was I changing myself too much to please Nageki? I will never know, because in the middle of the night I got fucking murdered by some mysterious birds from the Hawk Party. As it turned out, they had planted me at St. PigeoNation’s as part of an experiment, but I failed to “display sufficient intimacy with the birds.” First of all, that’s hurtful. Secondly, I didn’t even know it was possible to die in this game! You would think that I learned a valuable lesson from this — like don’t put all your amorous eggs in one basket — but somehow I still could not successfully romance a bird.
Savage af
“Do you think your fear of birds is affecting your ability to play?” My wife asked me one night after I brought up the game as we cooked dinner.
First of all, let me be clear: I am not really scared of birds, exactly. I do have a healthy respect and admiration for birds, which makes me wary of them sometimes. I mean, would I want to actually be stuck in the same room/school as a bunch of birds? Fuck no, absolutely not. Aviaries are basically a waking nightmare for me.
“Do you think that?” I countered. She made a noncommittal noise and shrugged. Was I letting my IRL bird feelings influence my ability to virtually seduce them? An interesting insight. Later that night, I went back to Hatoful Boyfriend with a renewed sense of purpose, a better gameplan, and my wife coaching me with inspirational gems like, “Just try to bang them all; don’t be picky.”
It worked! So far, I’ve gotten just over half the possible endings, though I have still died in a bunch of my playthroughs. The story is actually a lot more intricate and weird than I expected at the beginning. There are conspiracy plots and ascensions and some of the endings are pretty upsetting. Who knew a game about avian/human romance would make me think about my own mortality?
Hatoful Boyfriend is also absurd in the best way; the dialogue made me laugh out loud pretty consistently. Okosan’s storyline, in particular, was so bizarre that I couldn’t help but love it. The dude just coos incoherently and rants about pudding for most of the game, but if you stick with him you get to accompany him on a quest in the end. It turns out Okosan was just an “avatar on this mortal plane,” and he’s really a Lord! Of pudding! And, also, pudding is actually a fundamental element in a new, better universe.
Didn’t see that one coming.
My absolute favorite outcome was the one where you end up with a sparrow called Azami, the only female bird available in the whole game. (I’m all about wlw, even when it’s interspecies.) She rides a scooter and says things like, “Carve it into your soul!” and she’s just really cool. She saved me from some “punkgeons” (yes, that’s punk pigeons). I saved her from a dead end past relationship. And the rest was history.
And we lived happily ever after.
P.S. You never actually fuck any of the birds. It’s all very classy and I regret my Google searches even more now.
I..think I have to play this? Thank you.
I played Azami’s and Okosan’s routes first and then left it a long while before doing the other routes, so what with the whole “pigeon dating sim” thing, I enjoyed this as strictly a silly game.
Aaand then I went down the “fulfil the promise” route that becomes an option after I think your first full romance, and holy shit tone change. Like I’m not gonna spoil it, but there is a full back story as to why, yknow, pigeon school, and it’s an adventure for sure.
Oh I think I know what you’re talking about! Yeah, I haven’t gotten there yet… I thought I read that you had to get *all* the endings first? Anyway, I’m pumped about it.
I don’t 100% remember? Like, I definitely *recommend* doing all the endings first (and I think it does change some of the experience you have?), but I think you get the option to fulfil the promise from fairly early on, when you start a new game? Many question marks?
But yeah, enjoy it when you get there!
I think you do have to get all the endings first before you can fulfill the promise. And it is amazing.
Okay but you are 100% afraid of birds.
You don’t know my life.
This game is my jam. I got a little teary eyed at the special playthrough, which was not something I expected of a bird game.
If anyone is interested in the game, but not enough to play, Allegra Clark (who voiced Josephine Montilyet on Dragon Age Inquisition) has an awesome playthrough on YouTube. She does voices for all the birds!
This is the absolute weirdest timing, which I’ve said before that Autostraddle is renowned for in my life, because I literally just got back from playing this with someone, and we were gutted that we couldn’t end up with Azumi! Although an all-girl delinquent biker gang still sounds pretty sweet.
But yeah, super weird because tonight was the first time I played it, and I come home to this article!
Almost as wild as a dating Sim for birds hahaha
WHAT
I don’t…I don’t even know. This is brilliant? You made a game about dating pigeons(?) sound like the best way to spend time. I love this review so much.
Thanks Tammy :) You should 100% play it!
This is honestly one of my favorite games, and my current desktop background is Oko-San at the end of his storyline, with a halo. It’s so ridiculous, but the storyline is actually really intricate and interesting and I just love it so much.
Also people’s reactions to a god-pigeon on your desktop are just really funny. It’s about 50/50 strange looks and excited squealing because Hatoful Boyfriend.
I woke up from a nightmare about poltergeists where nothing made any sense and I picked up my phone to check AS and this article’s title was the first thing I saw, and I thought, “maybe I should just go back to sleep.”
Ok, but did you try singing the title to tune of Queen’s “Somebody To Love?” 10/10 would recommend.
Hatoful Boyfriend is amazing. I’m slowly working through Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star. Christmas hijinks with all your birdie boyfriends!
I… Want to… Seduce pidgeons too…
WHAT ARE THESE WORDS IM TYPING
i’m so confused and SO INTRIGUED
I know, I never thought I’d say this, but my fiancee and I are going to romance some birds tonight.
Great review! There’s also a sequel to this one if you’re interested (Disclaimer: I haven’t played it and can’t say if it’s better/worse/just as good as the first one).
Very funny game!!!!
Maybe I missed it, but it’d be really cool if y’all could include what platforms it’s on, especially if you get money if I click through here to buy it on the app store. (for the record, google says Steam and the App store at least have it, for 9.99 and 4.99, respectively.) I like to buy things through you guys! Although that might not work the same for games the same way as Amazon items, etc.
Sorry about that! I got this on Steam :)
This is insane, what a gift
This game is, as far as I’m concerned: an instant classic that everyone should play, even if they aren’t into visual novels. It’s so delightfully absurd and mysterious that that alone should make you want to complete it. And if that’s not enough, it has a sequel, set in space!
I never knew I needed an Autostraddle review of this game until now, it’s so great. Aaaand, if you manage to romance every birdie, there IS a secret route of the game that will take at LEAST a couple of hours, as well as explain a lot of the backstory that is littered between each date route.
Are you interested in romancing gators? My college has a anime convention every year and this year’s was on Valentines Day so they released a dating Sim just like Hatoful Boyfriend except you get to romance gators (our school mascot)!
Here’s the link if anyone is interested!
http://swampcon.org/%e2%99%a1-love-bites-%e2%99%a1/
In the Scientific Tradition (linear) we fix the broken machine;
in the Heroic Tradition (circular) we cleanse the
filthy temple. Perhaps it was because the recipe was a translation — not sure from which language.
How many cups is 100 grams of butter
If the white area appears in the background of surrounding fatty tissue, the possibility that it is more likely to be cancer.
There is also a handful of network hardware that is found
in every household connecting to the internet. What is the
meaning of tbh in fb
We don’t need a partner who is not going to help when we need it.
health care, medications, education or whatever, they do
not really mean “access,” they mean “transfer.
I need more Autostraddle Hatoful coverage.
Also, don’t play Shuu’s route. It will make you even more afraid of birds.