Game 25: Boyfriend Dungeon

This may be a strange entry.

Boyfriend Dungeon begins with a warning. It is not one of the usual warnings that games provide, which are that the game contains scenes that may trigger epilepsy, or that online interactions may change the experience, which is a particularly unhelpful way of saying people on the internet can be jerks.

I surmise that there are also characters in this game that are jerks, or worse.

This game appears to be a blend of the dating genre, which I have no experience with, and real-time combat, which I have a lot of experience with. In the spirit of playing all the things, we are here to expand our horizons.

Basic character creation done, off we go!

Ok, so I've arrived into Verona Beach and met up with my cousin Jesse. Jesse thinks that being here for the summer is good for my chances of improving my romantic life, which has been non-existent for Stan. The conversation feel relatively normal until he mentions that the hot new couples activity in Verona Beach is adventuring in dungeons.

And also this. To which the answer is 'no', so I'm apparently a 'wielder'.

We're off to meet a fencing instructor named Isaac who is also an Estoc for the tutorial 'dunj', as the locals call it located in the mall. Apparently these monsters are created from my own insecurities and they take the form of phones and televisions.

We run into another sword that, despite having been kidnapped and not knowing how he got here, immediately asks me out on a date.

We also find a dagger named Valeria, but she reacts to the fact that she was also kidnapped more reasonably and stays in dagger form before exiting the dungeon. Still got her number though. I don't know how a dating game is 'intended' to be played, but OneKnightStan is pretty easy to understand - he's not picky, he's not doing 'closed' relationships, and if he's got any standards at all, they're as low as they come.

After I got the crap beaten out of me in the dungeon and I was carried away by paramedics (THIS is the new great social activity?) I was able to socialize via texting people.

If I were able to transform into a weapon my profile would be a picture of it for sure.

You can also wander around the town to dating locations, dungeons and shops.

I tried a shop but I'm dirt poor at the moment.

Dates are (I assume) standard fare dialogue choices with your date reacting well (or not) to how you respond to them. The benefits of dating increases your 'love rank' which translates into abilities for the weapon, so the more they like you the better they'll be in combat.

Our lady dagger friend confuses monsters if we roll out of sight.

I'd just like to say that among the people you interact with is your mother who is very worried about you and I love that.

I'm fine Mom stop bugging me

Most of the people you can date so far are weapons in various forms, but there's also Eric, who can't do that. Instead Eric makes normal weapons, he's a blacksmith.

I get the subtle impression Eric hates human weapons.

Ah, progression comes from both dating and dungeoning. Dating a weapon unlocks the next upgrade for a weapon, and then your responses during the date give you a bit of 'love progress', but it's using the weapon in the dungeons that gives you the rest of that progress - when you reach the next level, the weapon / person invites you out on another date.

Also weapon people are chatty and like to talk during runs

I'm finding combat to be fun and well balanced, I've gotten by a lot of these early battles by the skin of my teeth. There's more to find in the dungeons as well, I discovered a secret monster shop.

The monsters in the shop bitched about a human being allowed in

I made my way down to the fifth floor of the mall and defeated a delightful phone / crab boss. Right now the dungeon lists my 'fear' as 'unidentified', which I guess means I'm supposed to obtain some insight as to what internal insecurity these monsters represent.

Pretty sure it's the fear of your phone growing legs and hurting you

Sunder, a Talwar (He was mildly offended when I called him a Scimitar), also appears to be a Vampire.

He snuck out to bite some other lady but hey, I'm seeing other blades too. One Knight Stan is no hypocrite.

Current sneaky links are Sunder, Valeria the Dagger, and Isaac the Estoc (a sort of fencing-style blade, I get the sense we've gone into sword connoisseur territory on these weapons.) With one text conversation Isaac has won me over.

Preach it brother!

In terms of the dating / dungeoning balance thus far we're doing a lot more dating than dungeon runs - I think I've been in the dungeon three times (including the tutorial) and done well enough each time that multiple weapons want to go on a date afterwards. The blades, they can't get enough of Stan. Eric the non-weapon seems to be the character the game's warning was about, he's starting to exhibit stalkerish behavior, shows up uninvited and creeps around while you date other people. There's not really the option to pursue him romantically if your own personal inclination was also to be racist against weapon people or if stalkers are your thing so I try to let him down as gently as the dialogue options will allow - maybe I can fix him.

Also you can't buy his weapons. This game won't let you buy weapons from the weapon shop.

The dating scene has broadened beyond swords / daggers and I've met a couple more - the unemployed surfer / Axe Jonah.

Jonah has an aversion to violence, which is unfortunate for him because I do not.

And Rowan the scythe - Rowan's introduction is really interesting because he accuses me of being the cause of weapons around here being kidnapped and possibly the existence of dungeons (which doesn't make sense since Jesse said that was a thing before I came here), I'd like to see it elaborated on.

Rowan barely cleared minimal dating standards by deciding to not kill me

You might be wondering who my favorite person is thus far. It's Mom. By a country mile.

There's a game option to not have Mom text you and if you chose that you're missing out.

The dungeon is getting more difficult as I go deeper and although you can dip out every couple of floors I just go until I fall since there seems to be no penalty for doing so (other than the crushing medical debt I'm racking up from being brought home by paramedics every day). You can continue from the deepest floor you reach so it's not too hard to make progress even if you're not great at combat.

This happens so often that I should have made a love connection with a cute EMT by now.

Regardless of how I'm singlehandedly ruining the medical insurance industry, I've made it down to the bottom of the Mall dungeon (The technological terrors within represented the fear of Change) and beaten the boss there, which exemplifies change by being a cybernetic caterpillar that turns into a moth.

I have conquered my fear of Change thanks to Isaac's parrying ability.

The boss fights are fun and the weapon design is solid, each weapon has their own unique feel and set of capabilities that are thematic to their characters. Isaac the estoc is a fencing instructor in their spare time and is the only weapon that lets you parry attacks. Jonah the wandering surfer / axe has wide (mood) swings and sends you wobbling across the screen. I think my favorite weapon so far is the moody Rowan / scythe which creates black holes (of despair, perhaps?) that suck enemies in.

Two more weapons have joined my dating pool / arsenal, we have Seven, a professional dancer from Korea that can become a fancy lightsaber:

YOU came to the dance club Seven

And there's Sawyer, a glaive who's on the younger side.

Are you at least 18 Sawyer? Is it even legal for me to wield you?

So the combat's great, the dating sections are fun to read, the characters are interesting - I think the only thing they phoned in is the crafting system.

Mix 2 sugar, 4 pieces of string until Rose appears

With the completion of the Mall, two more dungeons have become available. The first is under Sunder's dance club.

I was beaten to death by angry martinis

Also one has appeared at the local university.

The pens launch little 'F's at you so I suspect this is fear of failure

An achievement informed me that I'm now dating all the weapons, so here's the final pair:

Leah, an ice hammer

And one I'm sure everyone loves, Pocket.

This is very awkward because I'm texting with Pocket's owner to arrange meetups even though I've never met the owner.

I have conquered the Dance Club dungeon. I overcame my fear of intimacy by slashing things with a lightsaber.

Pretty sure that's called aversion therapy.

My social life suddenly gets a lot more dangerous when Isaac and I are attacked outside my apartment by this.. thing...

Isaac freaked out and we ran for our lives. Way to go fencer, we should have just stabbed it.

That's followed up by some concerning texts from Eric.

I think Eric has some explaining to do.

My cousin Jesse has some bad vibes about Eric and we end up staking out his place.

Yeah, Eric's a bit worse than a stalker

Eric has been taking pieces of weapons and assembled them into this Frankenstein weapon person, which if you think about it is probably the most impressive thing anyone's done in this game so far.

But evil, also pretty evil.

I suppose this means that Masamune is sort of the child of Stan's various paramours which is going to make the final confrontration with Masamune awkward. That may take a bit of time because I can't fight Masamune until I've fully ranked up at least one weapon (up to rank 6, the highest so far is 4 because Stan really tries to make time for everyone.)

So to get there we're grinding in the dungeons and dating like there's no tomorrow (Summer is almost over, after all). I butted heads with Valeria's creepy ex. Isaac's jerk of a father executed a hostile takeover of Isaac's law firm. Sunder managed to not screw up a grilled cheese sandwich. There IS a relationship that's making me personally uncomfortable. No, it's not Eric. I understand Eric and my character's reactions to how Eric behaves are reasonable (except at this point he should be hauled off to jail but maybe we'll get there). I actually think Eric is a pretty solid addition to the cast of the game - I don't know if clingy stalker types are a normal inclusion in a dating game but since they're out in there in the world I think it's good to feature one here.

No, the relationship I'm weirded out by is the cat, where my character's disinclination to ever actually meet Pocket's owner leads to this sort of thing.

I am in fact placing your cat in danger and using it to kill monsters.

On the dungeon front, I reached the bottom of the university dungeon to find that the boss there is actually a weapon person that's been 'missing'. She utterly crushed me, so this may take several attempts.

You may think she's a mad scientist, as I did, but when she's not murdering me in her college she's walking around town hanging out with my paramours like a perfectly normal person. Guess she's got tenure.

I was surprised to find that fighting her and not sucking as much as I did the first time raises your love rank with Holmes (who is also a fancy Cat o' Nine Tails), and we ended up going on a date.

She whipped me on the first date

After beating the professor, all three dungeons in the game have been cleared, so I just did some additional runs of the first dungeon to play out the rest of the relationships, which didn't take long since the first one awards you an item which doubles the progress of all the others. Plus at this point I'm one-shotting all the mall enemies so it goes by quickly. Some of the characters, like Sunder, find they're ready to move on from the relationship or just be friends.

Definitely old, as it turns out.

Others are interested in something more serious. Sometimes very serious. This is not the way of One Knight Stan.

Sorry Isaac, it's not called Husband Dungeon

With everyone's stories all wrapped up, it was time to end the summer by ending the monster in Verona.

I even dressed up as a real Knight for the occasion

And Eric went to therapy, which I suppose would have been the appropriate course of action before he started kidnapping people.

As for the cat....

It didn't get any less strange