Interview: Discussing Boyfriend Dungeon Characters and Updates

Boyfriend Dungeon is a game that’s gotten people talking about its characters, particularly Eric, its story, and even what kind of post-launch content updates we could see. To help get a better idea of things to come and decisions regarding certain characters’ storylines, Siliconera asked Kitfox Games Co-Founder and Creative Director Tanya X. Short about its development and things to come.

Editor’s Note: There are some references to Boyfriend Dungeon characters, situations, and teases that are mild spoilers.

Jenni Lada, Siliconera: Everything in Boyfriend Dungeon seems to be hinting at a major patch or expansion updates. How will that work? Will it be free?

Tanya X. Short, Kitfox Games: We definitely have more characters and content coming in the future, but it’ll likely take us some time. We haven’t decided yet how the pricing will work, except of course it will definitely be free for at least our Kickstarter backers.

What does the release timeline look like for Boyfriend Dungeon characters like Jonah and Leah?

Short: As soon as possible, after we’re able to fix the major bugs and take a small rest. We love them to bits, and we’ve already started on some of the writing and art.

When the Boyfriend Dungeon update arrives, will it behave like Japanese otome games and add fandisc-like epilogues and additional skill tree additional for existing characters and relationships?

Short: We’ll see! Of course that’d be exciting, but, it’d also add a lot of time to the development, so we’ll have to choose whether to make it a bigger slower update or a smaller quicker update.

Sunder’s story, while realistic, doesn’t offer the ending people might expect. Will there be any patch to offer a “happy ending” with him?

Short: There’s already sort of a happy-ever-after ending, if you look. Beyond that, I would love to see what people do with modding, when it’s available…

Will we ever get to “meet” Tank? Having that default picture instead of a “face” gets to me, haha. 

Short: If it helps, Tank is definitely in the game, even though you only see him now and then… if you look closely I think you’ll find him.

What made the team decide not to include an option to call out/warn Jesse after things escalate with Eric? As someone who’s encountered such situations in real life, it seemed unrealistic to not have some sort of “follow up.”

Short: One of the challenges we faced with the design and narrative was that the player has no tools for initiating contact or conversations. Unlike, say, Fit For a King, which has a text parser, the player freedom of expression is extremely limited. We tried a few things and they fell flat or felt forced, so in the end I felt we struck a good balance for the player participating in the plot, but, I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder.

Why didn’t you include an option to block Eric’s texts or report him for his behavior?

Short: Throughout the development we made interacting with him more and more optional, so you can ghost him immediately after meeting him… though there’s currently an outstanding bug we’re investigating in which if you ghost him in the middle of some conversations, it seems to hiccup. Maybe a Block button would have been easier, in retrospect. Something to consider for sure, if we ever make another game with text messaging, even if none of them are … uh … Eric-like.

Are there any features you wanted to add, but didn’t have the chance?

Short: Of course! But they’re all my precious secrets, since we might add them in the future… or not, and I don’t want to disappoint anyone, if we don’t manage. Fingers crossed we can announce at least one of the little ones soon as a free update we’re working on, to chew on before the bigger content updates.

Would we ever get the opportunity for an “endless mode” perhaps with procedurally generated dungeons? 

Short: That would be so cool! It’s certainly imaginable. But I’d also want some extra-cool challenges along the way… we added an endless mode to Moon Hunters, and I liked the boss fight we put in there.

Boyfriend Dungeon is available for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PC. It is also on Xbox Game Pass.