Making Love in Huniepop

     I am not exactly a connoisseur of first dates, but I feel like "Watch someone else play Huniepop" is probably among the lower echelons of what one would consider a romantic experience. However, either I have very low standards, my girlfriend is very cute, or both, because not only are we together, but we've actually kept playing the damn thing a few more times, and we seem to be committed to finishing it. It even seems to have supplanted "Watch a Pirates of the Caribbean movie" as our standard date night fare (side note, holy shit those movies are so good). 

God I wish it was this easy

Disclaimer: Huniepop is an adult game, this post will discuss its approach to sexuality, including Tittilating Images of Anime Women. It's also a bit racist, so...be forewarned about that as well.

    Before we begin, a broad overview: Huniepop is a combination dating sim/match-3 puzzle game (your Bejeweled or Candy Crush type experience) divided into two phases. The first, the Not-Dating, is when you talk to girls, upgrade your character, and generally make strategic decisions. The second, Dates, are the Match-3 section, where you try to meet a point threshold within a limited number of moves to make sure the mean girl doesn't hate your date for the third time in a row. To give an actual review, both halves of the game are a lot of fun to engage with, and I'm not typically a fan of either genre, even if the writing...leaves something to be desired. But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about the fucking.

What a date looks like. There's a lot of info on this screen.

    Huniepop's normal gameplay is slow and strategic. You're better off setting up one match-4 than two match-3s, so you want to always be thinking a few moves ahead if you can. Aside from the tokens which just score points, you have Passion, Sentiment, and Broken Hearts, each of which change how you see the board depending on what part of the date you're in.

    However, after four successful regular dates and one done at night, your waifu of choice will want to come back to your filthy gamer bedroom and have sex with you. This is also accomplished via a match-3 game, but instead of a turn limit, your points are constantly decreasing. Gone is the resource economy of the base game, where Passion and Sentiment are valuable early-date resources that clog up the board later on; both are reduced to just another way to gain points. It has a feeling of frenetic action, a go go go to it: the only way to fail is to lose your rhythm-you can't even really focus on the now topless anime babe in front of you, enjoy the voice actress moaning in your ear, you have to score those damn points. 

    Now obviously games have had funny input dissonance before Huniepop (see Press F to Pay Respects, or the openings of Portal 2 and Project Zomboid). Maybe I'm just a weirdo on the ace spectrum here, maybe transness has something to do with it, but this single-minded pursuit of climax doesn't sound like any sex I've ever had. It sounds, instead, like...masturbation. 

The other main interface. I like Audrey because she's mean to me. 

Bring on the Hetslop

    Here, of course, is where we come to the crux of Huniepop's issue among the dating sim contemporaries I've played: It feels very heterosexual. Now I don't know the private life of developer Ryan Koons, and frankly I don't want to. Heck, there's nothing even wrong with straight romances-some of my best friends are straight! But something I can't help but notice is that despite the main character being able to change gender on a dime, the game is written for an audience of heterosexual men. Taking a totally scientific poll of my gaggle of freaks, I took a few screengrabs to see if the character designs felt like that one Shortpacked! comic to anyone else.

Serket of Fluorite Guillotine was kind enough to lend me her expertise for this one

Tail stuff afficionado Vexx Vixen also weighed in

Famous Twitch streamer igitt42 kinda just said what I wanted to say

    To be clear, I am not averse to pornography. I've just been exposed once again to a level of "This isn't for me." that has opened my eyes a bit to like...society and shit. From being sent an image of Audrey (the redhead up above) deepthroating a dildo with the swapped dialogue to the effect of "It's a shame I'm into girls because I'm great at this" to the weird way clearly drawn portraits of characters are intended to be selfies (who's holding your phone???), I am reminded of nothing so much as Talia Bhatt's essay on penetration, talking about how penetration tends to be seen by mainstream patriarchal society as the only valid form of sexual intercourse, a form of dominance where only one person need seek their pleasure. And like, yeah, it's a video game, Huniepop only exists for its audience to be engaged by it, but like...its clearly found its audience. 

    Kyu the Love Fairy doesn't open by promising meaningful or fulfilling partnerships, or even necessarily any actual self-improvement, merely the promise of becoming a babe magnet. It is shallow, it is juvenile, it is horny, and I think in doing that it perhaps unintentionally became a perfect snapshot of like...the patriarch's mindset, you know? 

Also it's racist as shit.

Flying to Vancouver and giving my girlfriend a hockey stick because the has the Unique Gift Type: Canada

Don't even get me started on the catgirl.

Some Cool Dating Sims

    Anyway, I thought I'd close out, like in the old Ninja Blues (god I miss Ninja Blues) tradition where December was Visual Novel and Dating Sim month by recommending some games that don't have an achievement named Bestiality. 

• Mission: It's Complicated! is a fun twist on the dating sim formula, because you're trying to get other people to fall in love (or at least be really good friends). It also has the same base mechanics as Dispatch, albeit with much lower production value, so if you liked the management side of that game you might like this one!
• Killer Chat! is a free (with an expanded edition upcoming) game where you, a struggling true-crime writer, end up in a discord server filled with actual murderers. Will they help inspire you to write your book, or kill you first? Will you smooch one of them? The format of the discord server rings true as someone who is both currently in a long-distance relationship, and came of age online due to both severe agoraphobia (I got better don't worry) and Covid. My one wish for the enhanced edition is to be able to react to messages with my own emojis. That would be cool. 
  
• Arcade Spirits is the most traditional VN on the list, but its also definitely the one with the most money put into it. Set in an alternate history where the arcade industry never died in America, we follow Y/N, a hapless young person guided via a supersmartphone. It's hilarious, its heartfelt, and its horny in a fun way, where the characters feel more like actual people and not the 2d equivalent of a blowup doll.

I'm never beating the allegations, huh.

    As for Match-3 stuff...I have no clue. Sorry, it's not a genre I know much about. Anyway, I'm gonna go play Total War: Shogun 2 or something. Ciao!