Review: Best Friend Forever

Best Friend Forever has been one of my most anticipated games of 2020, and what does that have to say about me? Dating people while training cute dogs, aka things I’d rather be doing right now, sign me up! I’ve dabbled in dating sims in the past, like Dream Daddy from Game Grumps and Monster Prom from Those Awesome Guys, but I knew I had to get my hands on Best Friend Forever because, in a world full of dating simulators, we truly needed one that included dogs.

Best Friend Forever, developed by Starcolt and published by Alliance, is a flirtatious ride where you explore a town called Rainbow Bay as a new resident and decide to adopt a dog because, surprise, every single person nearby has one. Rainbow Bay seems like a West Coast town with a lively neighborhood filled with singles and their four-legged friends who bring the town to life. Not only do you train your dog throughout the game, but you also bring them along on dates and meet-ups with 6 dateable characters. 

I enjoyed most of my time with Best Friend Forever mainly because it was a style I hadn’t gotten to try out yet. Training a dog while dating NPC’s through a fancy dating app called “Woofr” was a cool feature to play around with, but my biggest gripe was how short the game was; considering how you only have 15 in-game weeks to not only figure out who you want to date (if you do want to date someone), and on top of that train up your pup to be the best they can be, it felt almost rushed. The weeks are made up of one training session, where you map out what you’ll be doing with your dog, followed by a 3 option session of taking care of the physical needs of the pet. After this, there is the public area of in-game events where you have 5 slots to spend energy on. A run-in with an NPC is one slot, a training session with your dog is one slot, but going on a date takes up two slots. I enjoyed the mapping out of the time you spend in Rainbow Bay, but I wish it was a bit longer.

Let’s talk about my favorite part of the Best Friend Forever: training your dog. When the player first arrives in town, you’re tasked with adopting one of four dogs available: Titan the Maltese, Blocker the mutt, Cheeseball the Shiba Inu, and Cardigan the Staffordshire Terrier. I chose Cardigan because he was super cute, and reminded me a lot of my big dogs at home. Players have the option to change the name of your new pet, but I kept the name Cardigan because it was too adorable to pass up. There are real-time events that happen throughout the game where you react quickly to help improve your dog’s mood and skills. Best Friend Forever made it feel just like when I bring my dog around the neighborhood. When you bring your dog with you around town on dates, your dog will sometimes cower around new people and you need to pat their head to reassure them it was okay. Cardigan was rowdy so he would constantly tug on me around other people, so I had to tug him back to help him learn manners better. Your date’s dogs didn’t interact with you, but they were really cute and added to the personalities of the people you were running into.

As much as I loved the dogs in Best Friend Forever, there were some hiccups. The experience differed for me in how I chose to play. When playing with my Switch docked, I would accidentally leave Cardigan’s poop lying around because I wasn’t fast enough to grab and trash it in time. Compared to playing on PC or in handheld mode on the Switch, it wasn’t a problem, however, I noticed the timer was way too fast for my cursor to drag across the screen while using the Switch’s joy-cons. This could be an irritating feature for people with disabilities, so having an option to turn off real-time events would not only be helpful but a more enjoyable experience. 

While I did enjoy the time training up my dog every week to make them a well-rounded pup, I was frequently let down by the grading scale at the Paws Academy. I was only getting bronze ratings while the NPC’s dogs were getting silver and gold. WHAT WAS I DOING WRONG? There was no guide to let players know how to be better while at Paws Academy. This also felt like a punishment for going on more dates and getting to know more of the characters, instead of using that time bank to spend more time with Cardigan and level him up. However, if this was the case and players were spending more time with humans and not their pet, why did the dating options feel so slim?

Dating characters is something I’m always into because I love to get my flirt on in any game. The characters were well fleshed out and felt super interesting, and I honestly wanted to get to know them all. While I loved all the characters, I was mainly interested in 3: Maribel, the busy bee who is trying to build affordable housing in the city,  Sacha, a trans man who has too many roommates for me to remember, and Felix, the bland white guy who works in the library and who’s into mystery podcasts. Somehow, when I finally got to the part in-game to pick a character to go steady with, Maribel was my only option and I was kind of bummed by that. The problem with wanting to know everyone was that there were only 15 weeks in Best Friend Forever, and a short amount of time during those in-game weeks to participate in events. 

Since the timeframe was so short, I had gone on one extra date with Maribel than the other two, so the game registered her as my main squeeze. This was a let down because I was more into Sacha and his story towards the end, so I ended the game not dating anyone because I was thinking I would have another option to pick later on (I did not). However, ending the game without having a love interest wasn’t terrible, since I still had all of the friends that I made and was more focused on my new partnership with my best friend, Cardigan. 

As far as inclusivity goes, I felt all the characters were interesting and diverse, except for Felix, the white cis male who I did end up having a bit of a crush on (maybe it was the fact that he worked in a library). The most noticeable feature I had an issue with from the get-go was not being able to create your character, you are instead only given 3 options of the main character to pick from. One is very feminine, with shoulder-length pink hair, blushed face, the next is still very feminine but this option is plus size and has a half-shaved head, and the third is the more masculine option with short cut pink hair and a really cool letterman jacket. Building a system that is LGBTQ+ friendly in the dating space is stellar, but not being able to make it more you is the issue I have. A small feat to celebrate here is that you are given the option to pick your pronouns when you make your Woofr (the in-game dating app) profile. With the number of differences of people in the world, making someone pick between a few generalized options is not progressive.

Overall, I liked the story and the theme of the game. Being able to date characters and get to know people in a new town you moved into, while taking care of a doggo is top-notch in my book. However, the routes are way too short for me to feel attached to anyone. The shortness of the game stands out to me for replayability, being easy for you to go in and see each character’s full story. I see that appeal, but it’s not for me. I would’ve preferred a game where I had more time to seek out my options, while also chilling with my cute new pup pal. The perfect Kayla-ass dating simulator has not been made yet, but the genre is evolving closer to my tastes. Best Friend Forever is playable on Nintendo Switch, Steam, and Itch.io on Mac and PC.