http://www.technologytell.com/gaming/141235/huniepop-review-not-safe-work-anything-else-really/
There comes a point in every person’s life when they look at the situation they’re in and think to themselves, “what the hell am I doing?” This revelation can strike any time: during a class for a useless degree, a waning relationship, a drug deal with a co-worker. My moment of clarity, if you will, hit me when I needed it most, in the midst of a frantic dash for three-jewel matches as I worked to build a lazily-drawn, not-anime girl’s o-meter.
It brought me back to reality, back from that dark place in the back of my head where I go when I need to retreat from the world’s ugliness. This happened just as the screen faded and the poor voice actress’ bored moans grew in volume and doused in effects. I was rewarded with yet another CG image of a naked woman in an inhuman pose, covered in fluids.
Yes, I’m reviewing an adult game. A match-three, adult game. A Kickstarted, match-three, adult game. A Kickstarted, match-three, adult game that received over $50 grand.
I play it for the puzzles, mom, I swear!
Here’s the deal: your character is a perpetually virginal loser. You’re so sexually hopeless you incur the wrath of the love goddess, and she sends an almost-naked, fairy lady to turn dates with women into a video game, because that’s your only skill. You’re actually so terrible at life, the fairy girl sees your case as a special challenge and goes the extra mile to make sure you get laid, and often. The projection in
HuniePop’s (really bad, but who’s surprised?) writing is so thick you can cut it with a disapproving grimace.
With your new gamified romance powers, you get to stalk a group of women with your magic radar phone, and ask them invasive questions out of the blue, because that’s totally how approaching women works. You can also go out on date, which takes you to
HuniePop’s pretend gimmick (I mean, seriously, there’s porn): the “puzzle stuff,” as
HuniePop’s
Kickstarter pitch so eloquently puts it.
P****le Quest
Here’s the part that almost sounds like a real game review, because there are at least $50,000 of people actually interested in
HuniePop. It’s probably a safe bet not all of the cash came from the creative team’s families. So… puzzle stuff.
Behind all the cheese, sleaze, and blatant racism of
HuniePop (seriously, it’s bad: like, there’s a Hispanic girl and you buy her cliche Mexican paraphernalia like maracas as gifts) is a match-three puzzle game. It’s literally the same as any other you can find on a mobile marketplace. Each color corresponds to a romance-y stat to appeal to the woman you’re dating, and each one of course has a favored and not-so-favored color. You have a limited move budget to clear each puzzle, and some broken heart pieces try to litter the board and screw you up.
Another piece type gives you points you can use to cash-in on gifts, which you unlock over the course of doing creepazoid things elsewhere in
HuniePop. Most of them counteract the broken hearts is some way, but they can also clear a bunch of the same color piece or what have you. Generally, the frustrating part (and I can’t believe I’m writing about being frustrated by a low-rent porn puzzle game, but this is where I am in my relationship with video games right now) is that as you go on more dates, you have to get more and more points to win. You’re going to be focusing far more on making your moves count (and matching rare pieces to gain more moves) via combos than trying to waste moves on building points for fancy maneuvers.
Okay, phew. Anyway, even if you lose the puzzle, nothing bad actually happens to you.
HuniePop is thoroughly dedicated to going all-out in weird wish-fulfillment land, so it’s more of a “dating sim as deranged pervert playground” type of experience than what you’d typically expect from the genre. Time passes, but there’s no end to it. You can royally bungle a date, but other than some brief disappointment your target’s (because let’s be real, that’s what the women in this game are: targets) opinion of you doesn’t change. It doesn’t matter what you say or how many times you screw up, you can eventually click your way into each and every girl’s pants, with sheer force of will.
Even better, simply choosing to speak with a character gives you points you can spend on your stats, because that’s how “deep RPG systems” work. These upgrades significantly boost your returns on matches, and all but entirely remove penalties from the broken heart pieces. Because there’s no actual time limit or any stakes at all, you can simply grind your stats up to maximum and have very little fear of a loss until much later in the game, if at all.
When Irony Attacks
So, here we are.
HuniePop. A bland puzzle game that pretends to have depth, a dating sim you can’t lose that glorifies loserdom to an uncomfortable level and lame porn. Why bother? If you want anime porn, there’s plenty of visual novels or eroge or whatever out there featuring much less secondhand embarrassment. If you want a puzzle game, with gimmicks and depth, there’s like fifty better options out there. HuniePop is a lose-lose situation. It isn’t even worth much of a laugh, frankly. It’s just boring. Also, if you get it on Steam, it isn’t even porn anymore.
HuniePop.