My head hurts AKA Huniepop discussion

[AnthrSolidSnake]

I hated it at first, but then I grew to like it at least a little.

The puzzle aspect is certainly fun, and even challenging. There was a point after 2 hours of playing however that I FINALLY found out that you could upgrade your traits and...then the game became a cakewalk. I still fail here and there when I don't pay attention to the broken heart pieces, but overall upgrading traits makes the game a breeze.

The girls in the game certainly do have varied personalities, but they're a bit overplayed. An early twenties girl with a bitchy attitude and is all about partying, drugs, stealing, and general misconduct? That you can gift drugs to win over? Yeah, certainly not my real world type. But oddly enough she was the first girl I got to the end of the relationship with. I don't know...I think ever so slightly seeing her attitude towards me shift to be more pleasant kept my coming back.

Overall though, the writing is quite childish, with teenaged angst swearing thrown in there for comedic effect. It's rather jarring at first. And the whole food thing? I get why it's there (to keep you from grinding Hunie from a single girl in a short amount of time), but I found it annoying. "Sorry, can't talk. Buy me food. Place food in mouth please."

However with the whole gameplay bit, I do find myself much more invested than something like Nekopara. Nekopara was a cute (and slightly creepy) story, but I the interaction was no more than flipping a page in a book.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

who watches porn for the story?

 

[Sleepy Sol]

who watches porn for the story?

I watched Bible Black for the story, I swear. Yeah.

...On second thought, what's Bible Black? NEVER HEARD OF IT.

Kyu's dialogue in this game is too good. And I've barely spent any time playing.

 

[Ahri_Blaze]

So, while bored on the internet, I managed to find a Destructoid post [http://www.destructoid.com/poppin-with-hunies-my-virtual-dates-in-huniepop-286773.phtml] about a new "erotic visual novel puzzle hybrid" called Hunie Pop.

Now, the initial article itself is not problematic; Brittany Vincent, the writer, seems to have a passion for visual novels and eroge so she knows what she is talking about. The problem is that when looking up some clips and details on this game, i've come to the conclusion that it's completely juvenile.

To reiterate a point I made in the comments, the dialogue looks like it was made by a 13 year old who thinks he's hot stuff while having the charm and grace of a horny chimp on crack. It's overly profane and snarky for no real reason with the choices you can make often sounding like it came from a man who only has a brain down between his legs.

In addition, while I can't comment on how much the dates develop each of the girls, the fact that the questions you ask them are about fairly superficial points like cup size, favorite drink and hobbies does not paint a good picture on how well done these relations are.

Don't even get me started on the girls. They sound more like fetishes than actual people: a few young moms, an gamer girl loner, a hedonist, a porn star, and a horny professor among others. it's like someone took a harem anime's checklist for which girls to put in and just picked all of them.

There are positives though: art seems to be done well though the girls don't seem to have much change in pose, the puzzle element actually seems well fleshed out and there are a decent variety of girls even if they sound more like fetishes than actual people.

I do not dislike this game, this is only based on my research and I support the propagation of visual novels in the Americas but the writing is just seems base to me.

The writing is pretty dang base. As someone who funded the game and has actually played through it all already (not a long game in retrospect on normal) its clear where the effort went. When they said gameplay first they meant it. Yes its another match three system but I've never seen one where you can move a piece along a whole row or column. It actually makes you think as you could accidentally cause things to get much worse instead of better which I've done on numerous occasions.

The girls in all honesty are walking tropes and they don't really develop much. Initially they are either hostile or annoyed at you (except Audrey who is always hostile) but after a question or two each time you meet them its pretty much the same up until you "win" them. Still if Huniepop hadn't met one of its stretch goals this game would've fallen so flat for me. One of the goals was to have it all voice acted and save for Nikki every single one of them sells it with Kyu, Audrey, Aiko, and Jessie being the outstanding ones of the bunch. Heck Kyu's character is pretty dang juvenile. Though its a fun kind of juvenile.

The puzzle element is actually a kind of interesting metaphor when I started thinking about it. I haven't played other dating sims but I imagine the dating part consists of dialogue maneuvers to "win". When you think about it dating really is a puzzle. Simple at first but harder as time goes on so you got to figure out the best way to solve the harder puzzles. Better than trying to memorize and maneuver dialog.

 

[cleric of the order]

What puzzled me most, is how it made it onto Steam.

There's a saying in WHFB, everything flows down the Stir.
Well you could use this for steam.
Everything end's up on steam.

 

[Akjosch]

In case somebody needs a laugh, John "TotalBiscuit" and Genna Bain made a video playthrough [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVa0Crj1oD8] of it together. It's hilarious.

 

[SweetShark]

Sadly the most American/Other Countries except Japan Visual novels have Horrendous voice acting and the logic of an alien want to see boobs.
But for that reason these games are popular after all: They have a specific target market, that all.
Btw, I want to buy it to see ***** and ***** and start playing my **** until I *** hard.