What if you could date your weapon? And what if it was incredibly queer? That’s exactly what you can expect in Canadian development studio Kitfox Games’ upcoming video game Boyfriend Dungeon.
Part dungeon-crawler action role-playing game, and part visual novel dating sim, Boyfriend Dungeon lets players travel through monster-infested dungeons while using nine different dateable weapons. Love interests include men, women, and nonbinary characters.
Outside of combat, players “take [their] weapon-babes on romantic outings, such as to the club or the beach,” where they can level up their Love rank, the game’s Kickstarter says. The characters include a hunky club owner who doubles as a curved sword, a gorgeous painter-turned-dagger, a K-Pop idol named Seven who is also a LaserSaber, and a shy nonbinary goth who can turn into a scythe.
No characters are locked by sexual preference, and Boyfriend Dungeon will let players choose their character’s pronouns and skin color.
Boyfriend Dungeon initially centered around women meeting and dating men, but development shifted to a wide range of character options, Kitfox Communications Director Victoria Tran told the Daily Dot.
Kitfox Games co-founder and Boyfriend Dungeon creative director Tanya X. Short said via email that she likes having “options.”
“In real life I only have experience dating men, but… maybe because dating women in games has been my experience for so long, just seemed like it’d be too restrictive to only have one gender to date,” Short siad. “And once we added women, we figured why not add folks that are neither, as well? Love has so many possible flavors.”
That includes platonic love, too. Boyfriend Dungeon lets players opt out of romancing other characters altogether. The game also has an adorable cat named Brass Knuckles players can bond with. Asexual and aromantic players, for example, could refrain from romantic and sexual experiences in the game and instead focus on intimacy among friends.
“You can be friends with each of the characters if you want, and still achieve maximum Love rank with them,” Short said. “And even if you do opt for romance, sex is never required. Some characters accept your choices more gracefully than others, but… that’s how life is.”
It remains unclear if there will be any dateable trans women or men in Boyfriend Dungeon. However, players can expect the game’s society to be welcoming to polyamorous and queer folks, with “no shaming of queerness or mistaken pronouns.”
“Everyone is just accepted for who they are,” Short said. “Of course there’s still jerks, but… then the question is how to overcome your own personal bitterness or selfishness, which I think is a timeless problem. So, I took this as a chance to allow each character to shine as an individual.”
Boyfriend Dungeon was originally funded on Kickstarter in September 2018 for approximately $200,000 with 6,991 backers. The game is set to arrive on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2020.
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