Hatoful Boyfriend Download PC

Hatoful Boyfriend received generally positive reception; reviewers praised the game's replay value as well as its writing and characterization, while repetitive gameplay and the accessibility of the game's Bad Boys Love mode received a more mixed response. A sequel, Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star, was released on 29 December 2011, with an English version being released on Christmas Day the following year. In addition to the main games in the series, Hatoful Boyfriend has made transitions into other media: a monthly webcomic was serialized in the anthology Manga Life WIN+, several supplementary materials and official dōjin works have been released, and four drama CDs based on the series have been made. An episodic web series began in 2014. Hatoful Boyfriend Download free Full Version.

Gameplay

Hatoful Boyfriend is an interactive text-based visual novel that follows a branching plot line, with the player's decisions determining which of the game's multiple endings they receive. The title is a pun on the wasei-eigo word hātofuru (ハートフル?, «heartful», also «hurtful»), and the Japanese word hato (鳩?, «pigeon», «dove»), as the game features pigeons and other birds as major characters. The game is set in a version of Earth populated by sapient, anthropomorphic birds, and its main story follows the player character and protagonist—the only human attending St. PigeoNation's Institute, an elite school for birds—as she finds love among her avian acquaintances.

Bad Boys Love, a hidden alternate story mode, opens with the discovery of the protagonist's corpse, after which the player follows her best friend Ryouta Kawara as he investigates the circumstances of her death and unravels darker conspiracies surrounding the school.

Gameplay in Hatoful Boyfriend is similar to most other visual novels for the PC, with the controls limited to the mouse and the only interactions being clicking to forward the game's narrative or to choose between multiple plot choices. The keyboard can also be used instead of the mouse, with the 'enter' key serving the same purpose as clicking. The save button can be employed at any point during the game, which also features several pages of save slots, allowing gameplay to be easily picked up from prior to a choice the player made. An arrow button in the upper right corner also allows the player to skip dialogue and interactions they have already experienced.

The player assumes control of the protagonist, a teenage human girl. As the game follows a branching plot line with multiple endings, at various points during gameplay the player is allowed to make choices that determine which character's romance route the player will encounter. On weekdays, the player can also choose which classes to attend, which changes one of the protagonist's three stats depending on the activity chosen. Having certain stat values are required to obtain the good endings for each love interest and to otherwise advance along certain routes. There are thirteen (fourteen in the 2014 remake) endings in total: one ending for each of the main love interests, three extended endings for three of the love interests based on stat values, one ending for the gaiden-esque Torimi Café storyline, and one ending attained if the player fails to romance any character. Hatoful Boyfriend Game free Download Full Version.

When routes are completed, documents are unlocked that provide insights into the game's overarching storyline. These documents can be viewed at any time in the game's archive feature, which is accessed from the title screen. After obtaining the four specific endings required to trigger it, the player is given a new prompt to either «fulfill the promise» or live «a normal life» upon starting a new game. Choosing to live a normal life will result in a normal playthrough, while choosing to fulfill the promise locks the player into the true route or scenario Bad Boys Love, or BBL (also known as Hurtful Boyfriend), which explores the full extent of the underlying plot alluded to by the documents and various points of foreshadowing in the dating simulation portion of the game. If the player chooses to fulfill the promise, aside from several dream sequences, gameplay at first appears to continue normally until the in-game date is 2 September. The player's perspective then switches from the protagonist to the protagonist's best friend, and the events of the scenario begin regardless of any other choices made by the player up to that point. If the player obtains all other possible endings prior to starting Bad Boys Love, an extended epilogue plays after the game's credits upon completion of the scenario. In a departure from the generally lighthearted romantic routes, Bad Boys Love is presented as a murder mystery psychological thriller, and is significantly longer than any other route in Hatoful Boyfriend, making up most of the game's actual length.

There are several changes to gameplay and the way text is displayed during Bad Boys Love in the original version of the game: saving is disabled except at certain points in the story, the function to skip dialogue and interactions is removed, and plot-important dialogue and narrative are highlighted with colored text; usually yellow, though text of particularly critical importance is highlighted in red. In the 2014 remake however, the option to save is available at all times, the skip function is retained, and text is no longer highlighted. In both versions, the game's interface and controls change from that of a standard visual novel to similar to that of a '90s-era turn-based role-playing game during certain segments of the narrative.

Development

Hatoful Boyfriend is the first game developed by manga artist and writer Hato Moa—author of the series Vairocana and a former Dengeki Comic Grand Prix honoree—under her dōjin circle PigeoNation Inc. As she had no experience with game development prior to Hatoful, Hato initially wanted to start with a visual novel, as she believed it was an easier game type for amateur developers to make; the format also allowed visuals to easily accompany her stories, something that she, as a manga artist, was accustomed to and viewed as being necessary in her work. She first came up with the concept for Hatoful as a 2011 April Fools' Day joke: despite her lack of familiarity with the genre, she initially intended to create a parody of otome game stereotypes. Birds in particular were used as a theme due to Hato's fondness for pigeons; however, this was also partially due to Hato's prioritization of writing over illustrating, as the use of bird photographs instead of hand-drawn sprites allowed her more freedom to focus on the script. The first incarnation of the game was created over the course of half a day and posted as a browser game made with Adobe Flash; but due to strong word of mouth from social media it was taken down after immense traffic caused the web server it was hosted on to crash on two separate occasions. Following the unexpected popularity of the Flash game, development began on a longer visual novel using the FamousWriter game engine. Hatoful Boyfriend game free Download for PC Full Version.

Most of the background images and photography used for the characters' sprites in the original games and associated media are taken from royalty-free sources or fan submissions, though in some cases pictures of birds and backgrounds used are Hato's own artwork or photography—the character San Oko is depicted by and based on her real life pet bird Okosan, and several of the sprites featured in Hatoful Boyfriend were derived from pictures she had taken of birds kept at the Kobe Animal Kingdom or the Torimi Café, also located in Kobe. All of the music tracks and sound effects used in Hatoful are also similarly taken from royalty-free sources.

Reception

As a dōjin soft title, Hatoful Boyfriend was created on a limited budget and had even more limited promotion; however, due to strong word of mouth on Twitter and other social media Hatoful has enjoyed a degree of commercial success, especially when compared against its minimal production costs—with Mado no Mori reporting that the game was a «popular title» whose physical CD-ROM copies «consistently sold out at dōjin markets and wherever it became available for purchase»,[122] and 4Gamer.net noting that the game disk was difficult to purchase due to overwhelming demand.[123] Outside Japan, where it is only available by download, the English release of the game is dōjin soft distributor DLsite English's best-selling title with 7,000 separate purchases as of 2014.[124]

Hatoful Boyfriend has received generally favorable reception, with reviewers focusing on the surprising depth of the game's writing and storyline. In a weekly game spotlight, Kouichi Kirishima from Mado no Mori recommends the game to «not just pigeon-lovers, but anyone who enjoys visual novels», remarking that the game is «at times surprisingly serious and emotionally involved».[122] On the other side of the Pacific, Julian Murdoch comments in a Gamers With Jobs analysis of the game that the scenarios featured in Hatoful are «elaborate and multifaceted», and that Hato Moa herself «isn’t just a storyteller, she’s actually a good storyteller». Hatoful Boyfriend was also named the best PC game of 2012 by GameCola; Paul Franzen explains the game's inclusion among higher budget and more technically sophisticated titles as being due to the strength of its storytelling and pathos, stating that «Hatoful Boyfriend isn't just a weird game about heathen human-animal relationships [...] there’s an actual, serious, emotional game here, too».[125] In an article discussing the E3 announcement of the 2014 remake, Carly Smith for The Escapist remarks that Hatoful Boyfriend is «absolutely hilarious», but recommends that players «start the game for a laugh, but stick with it for a ride you wouldn't have expected by looking at the cover».[74]

Reviewers also praised the game's varied scenarios and replayability. Dora from Jay Is Games praised the game, saying that «with a huge amount of replay value, creativity to burn, and some of the most shocking plot lines you could ever hope to encounter, Hatoful Boyfriend is a fascinating and surprising text adventure well worth checking out», though she also observes that «the delayed payoff and the abruptness of some of the endings combined with the oddball concept may not appeal to every fan of the visual novel genre». Alexa Ray Corriea's Polygon review of the remake gave it an 8 out of 10, concluding that the «witty dialogue and absolutely bonkers scenarios are genuinely fun to discover, and the handful of different storylines make repeated playthroughs worthwhile».[121] Some critics however expressed concerns over the presence of some repetitive aspects of gameplay—noted as being especially apparent when attempting multiple playthroughs—as well as the accessibility of the game's Bad Boys Love scenario to casual players: in his review of the remake game free Download for PC Full Version Gamer, Julian Murdoch states that «I suspect few will have the patience to ride the fast forward button and suss out the romantic proclivities of each cast member to get to the extended ending—really a second half—of the game». Hatoful Boyfriend Free Download Torrent.