This Japanese Video Game Teaches Women To Get Boyfriends by Seducing Pigeons

Japan is a country of ancient culture, serene landscapes, cherry blossom falls and some of the weirdest shit you’ll ever experience. Seriously, you try and be nice and look past the stereotypes but then they come out with tentacle porn, malicious game shows and now, the strangest evening we’ve ever spent with a computer—let’s be honest guys, that’s saying something.

Hatoful Boyfriend (out today) is a game with a name that looks a lot like Hateful Boyfriend, which might be why a young video games reviewer would look at it quickly and decide it would be a funny game to play. Hatoful Boyfriend is not a funny game to play. Hatoful Boyfriend is a very strange game.

Picture the scene: you’re a human girl who (for some reason) lives in a cave; and you’ve been accepted to the prestigious St. PigeoNation’s Institute, which is a school for birds.

For birds.

Not just that…talented birds, these are the top of the pecking order, the feather in the haystack, the big-bird, if you will. And this year, you’re going to get one of those birds to be your boyfriend.

You spend the game talking to different birds, making a few decisions about whether to engage them, contradict them, get in-between their fights and admit your love for them, then, at the end, you give them beans on a special bean giving day to show you like them.

Playing a lonely girl, coupled with the pink branding, we get the feeling Hatoful Boyfriend might be aimed at the female demographic. Getting such an, er, insight into the Japanese female pigeon-seducing pick-up artist is a rare thing, so we thought we’d share with you everything we learned about love from Hatoful Boyfriend.

During our second run-through, this teacher offered to walk our little bird-loving lady we were playing home. We accepted this kind offer. We also did well in his class (pro) but pressured him into telling us about his dead wife (con). When it came to the end of the year, we bought our beans (the ones you give to your favoured bird, keep up)—but when you buy the beans you don’t know who you’re buying them for. Gameplay has decided this, not you. So it came as quite a surprised when our girl professed her love to the maths teacher WHO SHOULD HAVE FLAT OUT SAID NO, YOU’RE A STUDENT but who instead says no, for now, come back later when you’re older and ‘I’ll be waiting’ WHICH ISN’T OK, JAPAN.

The school doctor says stuff like “I’ll feed you all sorts of things, if you want. Hmmm?” and generally smells of yewtree. The bird described as a ‘ladies man’ (bird) says stuff that’s more than likely quoted straight out of ‘The Game’—“Mystery is the most powerful of aphrodisiacs”—while also being condescending and as cringeworthy as PUAs usually are.

Pretty much exactly what it sounds like, we failed to “display sufficient intimacy with the birds” and the government killed us. This, it seems, is the one way you finish the game without a boyfriend. It’s find a birdfriend or die in dystopian, future Japan.

Our character seemed to do a lot of lonely cleaning. There was one time when she got a bird described as an aristocrat (nice) to help her. Otherwise she spent a lot of her after school activities cleaning rooms.

This is one of those movie tropes that has been used to extinction. We had Susan Boyle, we get it—lots of different kinds of people can sing, it no longer makes us emotional. We can only hope that by the time the bird government has taken over and are picking off humans unwilling to mate we won’t be watching the same tired clichés.

Didn’t know that. Did not know that.

Hatoful Boyfriend is available in a standard edition and the “Summer of Dove Collector’s Edition” that includes the official digital soundtrack, an exclusive digital comic from series creator Hato Moa, exclusive wallpapers of Oko-san, and a digital St. Pigeonation's 2014 Yearbook. The digital download that can be purchased for £11.99 from here.