Best Friend Forever is a dating sim focused on dog owners

Starcolt and Alliance Games have announced Best Friend Forever, a hybrid game that blends dating sim gameplay with dog care simulation.

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Independent video game developers have a lot of freedom when it comes to introducing new twists on old formulas. Today's Nintendo Indie World livestream showed off many such titles, but it's pretty hard to top the quirk and charm offered in Best Friend Forever, the upcoming PC and Nintendo Switch release from Starcolt and Alliance Games.

Billed as "the world's first dating and dog management sim hybrid," Best Friend Forever might just scratch the itch that Nintendogs left behind so many years ago. To pitch it differently, it's a mashup of dating sims and dog care sims: Players take care of their dogs, and can meet with other NPC humans with their own dogs.

If you need a closer look at how that shakes out — we certainly did — Starcolt has released an announcement trailer for Best Friend Forever which you can find featured below.

The official Best Friend Forever webpage featured at BFFGame.dog gives a few more hints on what kind of gameplay that players should expect. Namely, they'll be able to adopt and care for a number of different dog breeds, and will be able to grow the dog's skills enough to help it graduate from the Paws Academy. The player's dog reportedly plays a strong part in the narrative, especially and particularly when it comes to meeting other singles around Rainbow Bay.

"You'll start your journey by creating your dating profile and adopting one of four special puppers," a press release for the game's announcement reads, "then you’re free to go on to live your best life. You might even meet somebody who is as equally into binging true crime podcasts until 5 a.m. as you, or has one of those really cool custom-made poop bag holders from Instagram."

As many players would hope and rightfully expect, they indeed will be able to pet their own dogs in the Best Friend Forever. Even better, the developers have thrown in a patting combo streak option, meaning fans can pet dogs and reach high scores simultaneously. And if that proves to be too much fun, players can also relax by diving into the game's endless sandbox mode.

Best Friend Forever will release for PC via Steam as well as the Nintendo Switch on Valentine's Day, 2020. To stay on top of hot video game release dates this year, be sure to bookmark our 2019 video game release date schedule.

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Kevin Tucker is a core component of Shacknews' powerful guide development team. For questions, concerns, tips, or to share constructive criticism, he can be reached on Twitter @dukeofgnar or through e-mail at kevin.tucker@shacknews.com.

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