HuniePop
Introduction
While browsing anime and anime-inspired games on Steam during the Summer Sale (which ends on July 5th), I came across HuniePop. HuniePop is a combination of dating simulation and match-3 puzzle games, and is also rated 18+ because why not?
Although the game is 18+, there is both a “censored” and uncensored version of the game. The “censored” version is the one available through Steam, but I’m using quotations because even that version is only somewhat censored.
However, I didn’t want to let any of my readers down, so I took one for the team and patched my version of the game to be uncensored, which only took about one minute to do. If I’m going to play a lewd puzzle game, I might as well play the lewdest version.
Really all this patch seemed to change were a few of the pictures you receive from the girls after completing in-game milestones. You still get the censored versions of these pictures, but the uncensored ones are extremely explicit, and that’s all I’ll say about those.
The basic plot of the game is that a love fairy appears in your room and teaches you how to get dates with all the cute girls in town. You can buy the girls gifts, food, or alcoholic beverages, talk to them to learn about their personal lives, or ask them on dates which is the main focus of the game.
I’ll go into a bit more detail about the different things this game has to offer later on, so for now we’ll move on to the girls themselves.
Characters
The first girl we meet is Kyu, the love fairy. She’s originally not one of the datable girls, but is unlocked after you’ve successfully “conquered” a certain number of the other girls. I think it’s between one and three.
Kyu is one of the best two girls in the game, the other being Audrey who I’ll get to in a bit. With pink hair, it’s no wonder she’s one of my favorite characters in the game, however, I also find her dialogue to be some of the best in the game as well (pictured below).
The next eight girls we’ll just run through in the order they appear in your HunieBee contacts.
Tiffany is a blonde college student and cheerleader. She’s a party girl, but only in that she likes to have fun and is somewhat shallow; she doesn’t do any drugs like the real party girl of the game does. Of all the girls, I found Tiffany to be the hardest to read. She’s a party girl, but also a good girl so I was often conflicted when choosing answers to her questions.
Aiko is a psychics professor at the university. She has a cynical sense of humor which makes her easier to read than Tiffany. Basically, when she asks a question you should pick the answer that’s the mid-ground, but also somewhat funny.
Kyanna is a hairdresser at the mall who’s really into fitness and working out; good thing I was able to lie and say I like doing those things too. She’s one of the girls I spent the least time with because her dialogue wasn’t funny, and I wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. However, she’s far from the worst girl.
The other best girl, Audrey, is up next. Audrey is the true party girl of the game and has some of the best dialogue along with Kyu. Whenever she asks a question, it’s pretty hard to pick the wrong answer if you understand anything about her personality.
Lola is the girl who annoyed me the most from a collector’s standpoint. In order to unlock everything in the game, you need to frequently talk to and go on dates with the girls, however, Lola was frequently unavailable due to her job as a flight attendant. This means I often had to wait multiple day cycles before I was able to interact with her.
Nikki is the shy, nerdy girl of the game. She doesn’t really have much going on personality-wise. This is the only girl for which Kyu’s advice is to “just be yourself,” and I’m still not sure who she was insulting more, me or Nikki.
Our next girl, Jessie, is actually Tiffany’s mom. It took me way too long to realize that the only two blonde girls in the game had the same last name and that some of their dialogue referenced each other. Jessie is a professional cam girl and likes to hang out at the bar.
Beli is my least favorite girl of the game. She’s the spiritual girl who’s too nice for her own good, and so her dialogue annoyed me. I know I said I spent the least time with Kyanna, but Beli was probably pretty close.
The next three girls are all bonus characters, kind of like Kyu, although she counts more as one of the main girls. To unlock each of these girls, a special task must be completed within the game.
The first one I unlocked was Venus, Kyu’s boss. To unlock Venus you must successfully “conquer” all nine of the girls I previously mentioned. As the goddess of love, she’s considered to be the final boss of the game.
Next, I unlocked Momo, a cat girl. To unlock Momo you need to buy a goldfish from the store, then throw it in the trash while in the park. I’m not really sure how anyone is supposed to figure this out, but I had to look it up.
The final girl I unlocked was Celeste, an alien bounty hunter. To unlock Celeste you need to give Kyu the adult magazine which has been in your inventory since the beginning of the game. She’ll then give you an odd item in return which you need to try to give to a girl on the beach at night.
Gameplay
While half of the gameplay involves talking to the various girls, the more important part is the puzzle gameplay (pictured below). These match-3 puzzles are how the success or failure of dates is decided. If you reach the required score within the required number of moves, the date is a success.
Each piece can be moved anywhere within its column or row to make matches of three or more. The larger the match, the more points that are awarded.
The green, red, orange, and dark blue are the main pieces for scoring. Green is flirtation, red is sexuality, orange is romance, and dark blue is talent. Each girl likes one of these colored pieces and dislikes another; this means matches with these colors will be worth more or fewer points.
There are also four special pieces: yellow, pink, purple, and light blue. Matching the yellow pieces awards an extra move, pink increases your “Passion level,” purple makes you lose points, and blue increases your “Sentiment.”
As far as I could tell, increasing your Passion level increases the amount of points awarded by other matches. If you match 3 red pieces with a Passion level of 10, you’ll be awarded more points than making the same match with a passion level of 0.
Sentiment points are spent on in-date items. Items can have a wide variety of effects such as clearing all of the pieces of a certain kind, or granting bonuses for matches of four or more for the rest of the date.
For an adult dating sim/puzzle game, I found the puzzle gameplay to be surprisingly good.
Conclusion
In about three days I sunk 20 hours into HuniePop and ended up 100%-ing the game. This means I “conquered” all 12 girls, unlocked all six outfits and hairstyles for each girl, gave them each all 24 gifts they wanted, and learned everything there is to know about them all, thus completing their bios.
Like I said at the beginning, if I’m going to play a lewd puzzle game, I’m going to go all in.
One of the smaller features I also liked about this game was the ability to choose the gender of your character. There’s no way to change the girls into boys, but you can choose to play as either a male or female. All this really does is change some of the dialogue for the characters, but as someone who always plays games as a female character, this was a nice touch.
HuniePop is normally $10, but since I got it during the Summer Sale it was only $2.50. If I had to pay full price, I don’t think I would have gotten this game, and it definitely wouldn’t have been as worth it, but for $2.50 it was a great deal. 20 hours in a $2.50 game is like 480 hours in a $60 game, so that’s not bad.
If I had to rate this game, I’d give it an 8/10, but that’s also taking the reduced price I paid for it into consideration. For $10 I would probably lower it to a 7. It’s true that it has more replay value than something like Doki Doki Literature Club, but it still wasn’t as good.
Adding to the replay value of this game are all the collectibles, the four separate save files, and the unlockable “Alpha Mode” (yes, I completed it) which is a higher difficulty mode unlocked by turning in all 12 pairs of panties from the girls to Kyu.
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