• Price: $13.99 USD (currently on sale for $11.19 until January 4th)
• Developers: Rocket Adrift, Ratalaika Games
• Publisher: eastasiasoft
• Release Date: December 14, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by eastasiasoft on behalf of Rocket Adrift and Ratalaika Games. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning for hormonal teenagers/implied sexual relationships between consenting teenage adults, main character having panic attacks, high school gatherings with alcohol/pot present, one character taking unnecessary risks with their own safety, swearing

I always enjoy checking out the latest games with interesting concepts, and Raptor Boyfriend: A High School Romance certainly looks like a creative game. The story, set in 1997, opens with your character, Stella, explaining the recent events in her life to her stuffed animal confidant. She says that her life didn’t really start until last year, when she and her father moved to a magical small town called Ladle in the middle of Ontario. Stella had grown up going to camp there, and always hated returning to the city afterwards. She was excited to move to Ladle, but the reason they moved there was because her grandmother passed away and left everything to Stella’s dad.

The story then flashes back to the beginning of that year. Stella not only has to deal with her grief over her grandmother’s death, but also her anxiety over starting her senior year of high school at a new school. She is a bit awkward, and tries to think of a way to reinvent herself for the people she’ll meet. The students at Ladle High School all have their own quirks, though, and seem to think she’s okay the way she is.

Your first encounter at the school will be with Robert Raptorson, the skateboarding dinosaur. He invites you to a popular hangout spot known as “The Lake” after school. You’ll also meet Day the fairy, Ingrid the ghost, and Taylor, Stella’s Bigfoot childhood friend. Needless to say, Ladle is full of mythical teens for you to get to know.

They all meet up at The Lake, which is apparently the local underage drinking/pot-smoking hangout. Stella is worried about getting arrested, but is assured that the lone cop in town will not be an issue. She’s a self-described awkward weirdo who struggles with social situations, and she has trouble with anxiety – including panic attacks. I thought Stella’s mental health struggles made her a pretty relatable character.

Robert, Taylor, and Day are the three love interests of the game. Stella seems to get instant crushes on all three of them at once, but it’s up to you to choose who you want to hang out with the most. There are seven chapters that cover major events over the course of the school year, such as a sleepover, Friday the 13th, and the holiday season.

The plot is basically the same each time regardless of who you choose to date, but there are different events and conversations that you’ll get to see for each character’s “route.” I appreciated that they did not include “filler” events in the game. But I am also used to games like this having an initial main route and then going into individual character routes at a branching point. So I think more plot differences across each love interest’s route would have been nice.

In each of those seven chapters, you tend to spend time at school for a bit, and after making some dialogue choices there you return home. Once you’re at home, you start out in the kitchen, where you can check out what’s on TV, read a note from Stella’s constantly working father, and listen to messages on the answering machine.

When you’re done in the kitchen, you can go up to Stella’s room, which is where the main action occurs in the middle of each chapter. Stella’s desk stores any collectibles that you get by choosing the correct answer in conversations with your love interests. (It’s important to pay attention to what they say – especially if it’s in bolded text.) Then there’s a nice window seat, where Stella can reflect on the current situation with your chosen love interest for that playthrough.

And finally, Stella’s bed is where she gets comfortable for when you choose which character you want to call. There’s only one opportunity to make a call, so you can’t call more than one person in the same chapter. The phone calls allow you to kill some time after school until it’s time for a party or study group, but they’re also a major way of gaining insight into a love interest. After the call, the second major group event of the chapter tends to start.

Although those events only have minor dialogue changes in each love interest’s playthrough, when the group takes a break and you are alone with them, you will learn that they all have their own dreams and problems to deal with. For example, Robert tried to prank Stella the first time they met, and he often tells some outlandish stories and tries to seem cool. (I was amused by what he did for the event on Friday the 13th.) But like all teenagers, he has insecurities, and there’s more to him than what you see on the surface. Personally, my favorite character was Day, but I liked Robert well enough.

As this game involves you dating cryptids such as the titular raptor, I was expecting a bit more fantasy-related events in the story. They do talk about how Ladle is an isolated haven for cryptids, but for the most part the plot has more “normal” teenage drama than cryptid situations. It may have been interesting to have some kind of plot line involving visitors to Ladle, which could require any cryptids to hide to prevent exposure. They do mention that there are plans to build a highway through Ladle, and that could affect the cryptids’ open lifestyles in the town. But they don’t take that idea any further.

I will say that in some ways it may have been better that they chose not to emphasize so much of the cryptid aspects of the game because that would have been more expected. Treating Stella’s relationships “normally” was good in that it allows the characters and the reader to focus more on their shared experiences as high school students than on their differences. Raptor Boyfriend’s concept is intriguing, I liked the art, and the soundtrack was soothing. It was great to see this group of teenagers accepting each other’s quirks and awkwardness, and I enjoyed the occasional humor in the dialogue (“I will be the utmost chauvinist tonight.” “Don’t you mean chivalrous?”). It’s a nice exploration of what it’s like to be a teenager with complicated emotions and relationships – I just felt like I needed a little more excitement in the story.