What is Hatoful Boyfriend? Hatoful Boyfriend is a bird dating sim.

I purchased this because I thought it would be funny to say that I was playing a bird dating sim. There wasn’t suppose to be any real feelings behind this purchase, it was all in jest.

I launched the game and quickly got to the bad ending. I figured I should at least complete one or two “good” endings before I uninstalled the game and abandoned it to be just another game in my library. To accomplish my goal of being able to complete a good ending, I quickly made a “birds.txt” where I would list everybody in the story with a couple words to allow me to remember who was who.

Ryouta : Childhood friend, sick
Sakuya : ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Yuuya : Works in infirmiry, upperclassmen, half brother of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, flirt
Nageki : Library silent dude
San : RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN
Kazuaki : Homeroom / math teacher, falls asleep
Shuu : Doctor


Referencing this “cheat sheet”, I was able to get a good ending fairly easily. I repeated myself, this time going for a different ending...sometime in this third playthrough, something changed.

By the end of that ending, I was actually enjoying what I was doing. This “Joke of a game” was actually drawing me in, not because of “bird dating sim”, but because of the actual plot and the compelling characters. My cheat sheet was pointless, I knew all the names. Everybirdie had their own personality, and their stories had wildly different outcomes, yet were all tied together to help reveal a plot that actually mattered.

As you play through the game more, and achieve different endings you find little bits and pieces about the world. You read how birds became the dominant lifeform on the planet, how the human race almost fell to extinction, and how bird politics work.

Each story feel completely different. They all showcase a huge variety of emotions and social conditions. One story / ending exists entirely for humor, and no deep thought is put into anything. You are able to laugh your way through a 20 minute story and have a great time. You re-roll your game, and suddenly your story is filled with great sorrow between all the funny bird puns. Sadness then turns into happiness as your story becomes complete. Re-roll again, now you are exploring yet more bird puns, but this time also the impossible expectations sometimes forced onto oneself from their family. Re-roll, now genocide is brought into the fold. Re-roll, we are happy and excited again.

What the hell just happened? This game somehow managed to put an actual fantastic plot full of emotion and lessons of how the world works into...a bird dating simulator. Somehow this completely over the top game idea is completely overlooked the more you play it and fall in love with it.



Everybirdie should download this game and try it out because “lol bird dating sim”. You’ll be amazed as the joke suddenly starts being enjoyable and the fact that everyone is a bird spouting bird puns is able to be completely overlooked.

What is Hatoful Boyfriend? Hatoful Boyfriend is a fantastic game filled with more emotion and story than it should possibly contain.