Each in-game day, you have the opportunity to travel to various locations, purchase items and interact with the girls. HuniePop’s gameplay is split into two main components. (You can optionally then pursue two secret characters, too, if you haven’t had quite enough action by this point.) Shallow? Yes. From there, your task is simple: bone your way through the core cast, bang Kyu, then as a grand finale screw Kyu’s boss, the goddess of love herself. She reckons she can help you out with your dry spell, and pushes you in the direction of a wide selection of pretty girls who inhabit the town where you live. You’re visited by a fairy named Kyu, whose adorable appearance is immediately subverted the moment she opens her mouth and reveals herself to be both street-smart and foul-mouthed. HuniePop casts you in the role of “yourself”, a hopeless (male or female) loser who has had absolutely no luck with relationships. The final product still featured strong characterisation for its incredibly diverse and memorable cast, but at no point did it get bogged down in excessive exposition, instead allowing the game to showcase its incredibly strong mechanics and use its concept, setting and characters to add a distinctive atmosphere to the experience. It was a controversial decision at the time, since it was a fairly radical change of direction from what was originally proposed, but it ultimately turned out for the best. Over time, the focus gradually changed to de-emphasise the narrative aspects in favour of shorter, snappier interactions with the characters and a stronger focus on the core gameplay. The original plan for HuniePop was to create a visual novel-style dating sim that incorporated puzzle game elements rather than being purely stat- or story-based. Not only that, it also demonstrated that independent Western developers were more than capable of putting interesting new twists on Japanese-style aesthetics by combining anime-style artwork with a hilariously abrasive and distinctively modern, American script. The remarkable thing about HuniePop was that it ended up being a damn good game as well as a resounding middle finger to the “everything is problematic” crowd. There was clearly demand for such a game, even back in late 2013 a successful Kickstarter campaign allowed those who were similarly frustrated with the situation to put their money where their mouth was and show their support for the kind of thing they wanted to see more of: something lewd, crude and rude - and unashamed of being any of those things. HuniePop from Ryan Koons’ studio HuniePot was partly developed as a sort of “protest” game: an attempt to fight back against the growing trend of political correctness that was starting to take root in the games industry.
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