some more dating sims

so, it's pretty exciting to have found that since i started working on my thesis last year, all sorts of new kinds of dating sims have come out - old stuff in a new, strange way.

i think a lot of people heard about "Hatoful Boyfriend" - it's definitely making its rounds on the internet. it's a typical sort of dating sim targeted at girls, but instead of bishounen the high school is full of pigeons. literally, photographically represented pigeons with anime personalities and little anime bishie boy extra background imagery, but basically they are actually pigeons. and the player is a random human attending this pigeon school for some reason, and lives in a cave?

i played a little bit of the game and it has a really quirky sense of humor to it uncommon to these kinds of games. it doesn't take itself too seriously, even though there are these very basic kind of romantic relationship elements with various persona stereotypes (perverted male nurse, shy domestic nerd, haughty council boy, etc)



as you can see, though, the graphics of this game are extremely limited, especially in terms of animation or emotional representation except through sound effects...

there's another game that game out recently that's also available as freeware (did i mention that hatoful boyfriend is free? because it is, and available to english-speaking players through the dedicated efforts of fans alone!) called "Katawa Shoujo" (literally 'disabled girl(s)'). in this game, you play as a male character with arrhythmia. all of the girls at this school have different sorts of disabilities or disfigurements, including a girl with prosthetic legs, one with stumps for arms, a burn victim, and a deaf mute. the characters in this game are really phenomenal and lack the one-dimensionality that keeps most dating sims from being anything more than a notch below webcomics on the boredom relief scale. there's even an anti-feminist male with aspergers and a bipolar teacher! I'M IN HEAVEN!!!



(here's a review of the first act of the game, talks about some of the same stuff)







these are some of the animation sequences from the game. clearly the developers for this game put a great deal more effort into the animated sequences than the average dating sim. so not only are the characters really relateable, human, and interesting, but the animation is good? crazyyyyyyy

people who have played this game rate it especially highly - a friend of mine started playing it recently, the kind of person who doesn't play these sorts of games, at all, ever. he really likes it and wishes "there were more games like that." me too man.