Nothing else in the game is possibly worth having to deal with unwanted advances, invasions of privacy and even attempts at gaslighting every step of the way. It's all about him, and about the fantasy he has of who you are and what you will do for him. This is exactly what the game’s stalker doesn't get, and it's part of why that character is both so important and so deeply troubling: he stalks you, but it's not about you. Boyfriend Dungeon's love interests can turn into magic weapons and let you wield them, but they can't and won't turn into a flawless ideal partner, because that fantasy doesn't actually exist. You're there to support and encourage them, but it's not your job to fix their lives for them. If you take that understanding into the rest of the game, you'll be ready to support the game's love interests as complete people. That alone is enough to make Olivia one of my favourite characters: she's a normal person who doesn't have time for your shit, and you need to be okay with that. WIth this once scene, Boyfriend Dungeon tells the player "it's not all about you," and drives the point home as you occasionally run across Olivia thereafter and interact normally: you're not lovers, you're not friends, you're not enemies, it's no big deal. The scene isn't pre-scripted: you have multiple decisions to make on that date and they're profoundly meaningful because they all lead to failure. One of my favorite moments comes early in the game, when you go on a date with a secondary character, Olivia, and she inevitably rejects you. The tone of the game is set early on as a contrast between the excitement of meeting someone new (the bright, beautiful art captures this) and the much more complicated process of figuring out what a budding relationship is, navigating between what you want it to be and what it can be. People felt that they'd been promised a safe, fluffy, queer space, and that's not what Boyfriend Dungeon is about. In trying to avoid spoilers, they accidentally hid the fact that the game revolves around a kind of trauma that a lot of people experience and some are deeply scarred by. I agree that the stalker is an essential part of Boyfriend Dungeon, but I also think that Kitfox, despite having the best of intentions, messed up. Some went on the offensive, saying that players have been spoiled by content tagging in fan fiction or that they should "go play any other game in the world" instead of requesting changes. Journalists sprang to the game's defense, saying (correctly) that the stalker was essential to the game's plot and meaning, and that Boyfriend Dungeon was being held to a higher standard because it was an inclusive indie game. To the best of my knowledge, there were no direct threats of violence, and no-one got doxxed or swatted. Some previously-devoted fans called the game's presentation deceptive and hurtful, Kitfox was asked to remove the stalker from the game or make him optional, and the voice actor for the stalker received hate mail. Nothing in the game's promotional material, including dozens of love letters over more than three years, suggests that getting stalked is a major part of the plot. Years before the Boyfriend Dungeon was released, its characters had lives of their own, and it was clear that the game's emotional palette was broader than the silly, thirsty fun on it's brightly-coloured surface. I've been following Boyfriend Dungeon since it was first teased, and one of the most brilliant things about the publicity campaign for the game is the "love letters" that subscribers to the Kitfox Games mailing list have been treated to since the Kickstarter launched in 2018.Those letters revealed that the game's signature "bae blades" are much more complicated and well-developed than the typical range of stock characters in a dating sim.
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