From potato salad to Hamlet enacted entirely by pugs, Kickstarter has proved time and time again that if an idea is ridiculous enough, people will throw money at it. So why do these gimmicky dating sims continue to do so well? Because they’re funny, basically.Ī silly concept or a weird but shareable image is attention-grabbing, and anything that has the WTF-factor is guaranteed to generate hubbub. As it blew up, much of the publicity that spread could be summed up as “it’s a dating sim, but it’s scary”. Even Doki Doki Literature Club, a meta psychological horror masquerading as a dating sim, uses this concept to its benefit. At other times the gimmick can seriously shake up the way a game works. Jurassic Heart gets by on the charm of novelty alone, which is all you’re really playing it for. The gimmick is the crux of these newer games and while all the gimmick may amount to is a novelty, sometimes that’s enough. A twist, joke or publicity-grabbing appeal is fun if the audience is in on it too. It’s important to say here that a gimmick isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Since Hatoful Boyfriend there have been a slew of other dating sims putting their own unique take on the genre, each pushing their own version of what could be described as a gimmick. After the initial bafflement subsided, players fell in love with the game’s surreal concept and surprisingly good storyline, and for a small game with little to no promotion, word of it spread like wildfire. It released way back in 2011 and centres on a human girl looking for love in a high school full of pigeons. Hatoful Boyfriend was one of the first to get really weird with it. These parameters, though they’ve widened with time, have become so established and so recognisable that inevitably people were going try to twist the rigid format into new and exciting shapes. Love interests had set, stereotypical personalities you doggedly mimicked if you wanted to get anywhere with them. Until a few years ago, the original Japanese dating sims as a genre were fairly straight-laced, with most games falling in line with the same set of rules: they often had a high school setting and the relationships were pretty heteronormative, with the earliest ones specifically being of the one guy/harem of girls variety. With an increasing number of games like these getting such a positive reaction, it’s time to ask why we’re so attracted to something as simple as a goofy spin on this established genre. You’ve likely played or heard of games like Jurassic Heart, where you court a ukulele-playing tyrannosaurus, or Dream Daddy, where you, a gay father, exclusively date other gay fathers who all happen to live in the same neighbourhood. These aren’t the only examples of developers taking a conventional dating sim framework and throwing in some crazy to shake it up a bit. With only a few more days to go, Boyfriend Dungeon has also already way surpassed its goal and pulled a meaty $233,052. Hotly on its heels is another campaign for Boyfriend Dungeon, a dating sim come dungeon crawler where you can romance your weapons. The campaign far outstripped its goal of $8,000 and raised a whopping $38,405. Recently, Max Gentleman Sexy Business!, a raunchy Victorian mash-up of dating and business, finished its campaign on Kickstarter.
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