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GAMEPLAY
BFD is a dating simulator with a unique twist that takes you on a summer journey of love, laughter, and self-discovery. Instead of dating humans, you'll find yourself swept off your feet by a cast of charming swords, each with their own distinct personalities, backstories, and emotional baggage. As you progress through the game, you'll embark on romantic dates, engage in witty banter, and uncover the hidden depths of each sword's soul. The game's branching dialogue system allows for multiple playthroughs, ensuring that each interaction feels fresh and meaningful.
ART STYLE:
BFD's art style brings the world of swords to life. Each sword is meticulously designed with intricate details and vibrant colors, showcasing their unique characteristics and personalities. From the elegant curves of the talwar to the rugged edges of the katana, every blade is a work of art. The backgrounds are equally stunning, immersing you in lush landscapes, cozy cafes, and visually pleasing dungeons. The game's overall aesthetic is a testament to the developers' passion and creativity, creating a truly immersive experience.
CHARACTERS:
The characters in BFD are the HEART of the game - pun intended. Each sword is fully fleshed out with a rich backstory, motivations, and desires. You'll meet the charismatic, shy, mischievous, and even downright sultry blades testing your resolve and your will to not "catch them all". As you get to know each sword, you'll discover their vulnerabilities, dreams, and personal struggles. The writing is refreshing, delivering witty dialogue, heartfelt confessions, and moments of genuine emotional depth. You'll find yourself genuinely caring about each sword's well-being, even the side characters push to warrant your attention in the midst of your decision-making.
REPLAYABILITY:
BFD has a mild replayability factor as it depends on how you progress through the story. I am a goal-oriented person so I tasked myself with reaching each goal and gaining every achievement before realizing I needed to complete the MAIN STORY. So if you want to choose one character, go through the story, and complete the game; you can! I proceeded to "catch them all" before returning to the MAIN focus... Slight spoiler as yes, you can, very well indeed, catch them all... I will leave that up to interpretation~ :3
TLDR - Worth the Buy?!:
Yes! BUY IT!!! BFD is a heartfelt and unique dating simulator that stands out from the crowd. From the BOPPIN' music to the DELICIOUS characters and then the GORGEOUS art - It's a no brainer~ Whether you're basking in the warm glow of summer or seeking a romantic escape, BFD will transport you to a world where love knows no bounds and swords are the key to your destiny.
Game has potential so I'll keep an eye on this one~

I left this game feeling very mixed. I really enjoyed most of it, but it feels like the beta version or play test of a game rather than a completed game. Starting with the areas without issue, the music is very solid, the zines are all fun to use, the crafting is excellent, and the enemies are all really fun to fight for the most part.
Next, the problems. The combat, while fun at times, has so many interesting ideas that feel almost finished. Out of all the weapons, the only one that feels finished in combat is the dagger. Every other weapon lacks combos or synergy with it's abilities. The axe for example has only two combos which get boring really quickly. Leveling up also feels lackluster when all you gain is health and monster damage scaling causes that extra health to be unremarkable. A stamina system or character abilities would make each level feel more impactful. Finally, there is no wave mechanic to stagger monsters spawning in and add extra strategy to combat. Monsters spawn in all at once and are mainly difficult because they swarm you.
Then there's the dating sim side. Though the story is mostly fleshed out, it doesn't feel like you have much of an impact on it. Rather than having a major impact on how the story plays out, the story happens to you with you only getting to choose which parts play out around you. Each character is fairly flat, with a few exceptions, and any of the dialog choices you make don't seem to make an impact on the story. You can give people gifts, but there is no in game system to track their likes. Though such a system is not needed as each character's likes are extremely basic and easy to guess. The cat gets the cat toys, the surfer the surfboard, the business man the cuff links, and so on. Those things wouldn't be big problems if any of the character's were fun to date. The minimal voice acting and lack of diverse character sprites results in you seeing and hearing everything pertaining to a character after an hour or so. On top of that, the dates are all boring, predictable, or cheesy in a bad way as it feels like minimal effort was put into the writing. A final thing to add is the lack of character customization. While the clothing options are all fun and there are plenty of them, there's a disappointing lack of hair styles and no way to customize your body type outside of gender.
All in all, I enjoyed my first play through, but won't be playing Boyfriend Dungeon again and can't recommend it. If you can get it half off like I did then it might be worth it for a lot of people, but there are also finished games you can get for the same price. Go spend that money on something like Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood or a better dating sim.

Boyfriend Dungeon was, believe it or not, my most anticipated game of 2021. Moon Hunters, this studio's previous game, is one of my favorite games of all time, and it does so many unique things that I have still not seen recreated elsewhere, I was sure with such a juicy premise this game would surely turn into something worth playing.
It didn't.
Flatly put, this game is unfinished. It barely has enough content to qualify as a proof of concept, and corners are so cut in almost every area that it makes me feel like the studio did not appropriate their budget properly and suffered the backlash of having a successful kickstarter in terms of heightened expectations. The premise 'date your weapons' is great, but this game barely manages to deliver on that premise in the most basic way, and in some ways it's even offensively regressive from a mechanical standpoint.
Firstly, the weapon movesets are not complex; there is a light attack, a heavy attack, and sometimes a combination between the two, and that's it. There is a roll, but no stamina system, meaning everything is based on invisible micro-cooldowns. This is fine in practice for, say, maybe, a mini-game, or an action RPG made 20 years ago, but it's not fine for a modern *anything* to be this basic and monotonous in its combat in my opinion. This is exacerbated by the fact that the enemy designs in this game are non-existent; literal, real life objects like phones, staplers, and pencils form the entirety of the enemy cast. That was awful enemy design on the NES when Action 52 made us fight paperclips, and it is awful design here, no matter how you spin it. Instead of having interesting animations, designs, and movesets, I have a pencil firing dollar signs at me.
The dating aspect of the game is the most barebones expectation of a dating interface you could possibly expect; go on a date to level up your relationship, go to the dungeon to unlock your next date, give gifts to increase affection... what's offensive is that these systems aren't even implemented *well*. Unlike, say, Dreamscaper, another game in this genre that does the gift-giving thing, you can track and learn about people's preferences based on conversations with them. You can do that in Boyfriend Dungeon too, but you have to do it manually, and the choices are so obvious it's not even fun to intuit them. Hmm, I made a surfboard, I wonder if I should give that to the guy who's main thing is being a SURFER...
I could honestly rag on this game forever, and I don't want to. I wanted to love this game. I even had fun playing it, in parts, because for some reason when the game dumps 20+ enemies on screen the combat actually gets genuinely challenging, and because cute weapons are cute. But when I got to the wet fart of an excuse for an ending I just had to put the game down and write this review. It's depressing how, despite how easy it would be to 100% this game, I can't see myself doing so simply because of how boring it is.
Probably the most disappointing part of the game for me is the writing; Moon Hunters' writing went from okay to pretty good to cringey, but it was dealing with enormous and esoteric concepts. Boyfriend Dungeon is mostly dealing with the awkwardness of personal intimacy, and at no point during any interaction with a date did I feel like I'd made a genuine emotional connection with them. Everyone gets reduced to cliches, and there's barely any voice acting. The voice acting that is there feels stilted and out of place given how much bare text there is, and frequently voice or description lines will allude to or mention things having happened that didn't, or will fail to acknowledge important things the first time they occur. I didn't kiss one of my weapons the entire game, but when the ending came up, of course, they decided to kiss me, because of course that's what people want in an ending, except I didn't and wouldn't have consented to that and had never kissed them previously and yuck. And this whole game is just like that.
Compare this to something like Griftlands, which functions at a far greater level as a proof of concept merging between narrative and roguelike elements, and is a billion times more playable mechanically to boot. At the end of the day I don't know the real reasons why this game is such a disappointment, but I have a hard time not feeling personally aggrieved. I guess if this game has taught me anything, is that our love won't always be reciprocated, and that people we initially think are perfect may turn out to be just human.
Don't buy this game.