Hatoful Boyfriend’s visuals couldn’t be much simpler. Most of it piggybacks off that ubiquitous anime aesthetic that identifies it as a product of Japan. It’s a pleasant game to look at, but it isn’t impressive by any stretch of the imagination. The world your character inhabits feels like a parallel universe where everything seems normal, except for that one thing. Hatoful Boyfriend attempts to connect you with its supporting cast through two methods. When you’re introduced to a new character, you see them as they are: they are birds. The juxtaposition of the very real bird images against the static anime backgrounds lends the game an extremely surreal vibe to it – almost nightmarish. But then your character explains their personalities and mannerisms a bit, and you’re then treated to a stylized image of what the character would look like if it was human. I frequently forgot these images and quickly associated the blank, seemingly idiotic avian mugs with the personalities developed through the dialogue.
Sound-wise, there isn’t much to speak of in Hatoful Boyfriend, but what’s here is mostly great. Special mention goes to the beautiful renditions of ancient public domain music; though the context for the game’s use of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" could not be more far removed from Christmas, it still fit the mood and atmosphere of what was going on in the story. The rest of the soundtrack is stereotypical happy-go-lucky fare that you’d find in one of those countless stakes-free harem animes. But in the end, it goes a really long way towards masking the shocking history of this otherwise cheery world.
