Girls Hobby in Love

Girls Hobby in Love is a puzzle game where players join a hobby group with six distinct girls, each with their own unique interests like music, drawing, and reading. As the newcomer, you must choose which club to join, sparking jealousy and rivalry among the girls who each want your exclusive attention. The gameplay involves solving tile-matching puzzles to restore pictures while enjoying Live2D animated characters, a CG gallery, well-drawn artwork, and relaxing music in an anime/manga style presentation.

Girls Hobby in Love: A Fleeting Spark in the Vast Indie Ocean

In the sprawling, ever-expanding universe of indie games on digital storefronts, thousands of titles vie for a sliver of attention. Some become cultural landmarks, others are forgotten curiosities. Released quietly in December 2023 by the enigmatic Hunny Bunny Studio, Girls Hobby in Love is a fascinating artifact of this modern ecosystem—a game that boldly presents a premise of romantic rivalry and club-based drama, yet delivers an experience so mechanically simplistic and thematically shallow that it becomes a compelling case study in dissonance between concept and execution. This is not a review of a hidden gem, but rather a forensic examination of a title that embodies the challenges and tropes of a specific, crowded niche within the indie scene.

Development History & Context

The Enigma of Hunny Bunny Studio

To understand Girls Hobby in Love, one must first grapple with the shadowy entity behind it: Hunny Bunny Studio. A glance at their Steam franchise page reveals a prolific output, with titles like My Maid Girls, Foxy Tales, Profi Girls, and Bunny Girl Story. This portfolio points to a developer highly specialized in a very particular formula: low-cost, anime-styled visual novels or light puzzle games with strong romantic or titillating elements, often featuring female protagonists. There is no public manifesto, no developer interviews, no post-mortems—only the games themselves, released in rapid succession. This suggests a development model focused on volume and market trends rather than artistic innovation, a studio operating with the efficiency of a content mill within the visual novel and “waifu” economy.

The Technological and Market Landscape

Released on December 17th, 2023, for Windows PC, Girls Hobby in Love entered a market saturated with similar titles. Its minuscule system requirements—capable of running on an Intel Core i3 and Windows XP—are telling. This is not a game pushing technical boundaries; it is a product designed for maximum accessibility and low barrier to entry, both in terms of hardware and price point (a mere $0.59 on sale). The technology employed, notably the Live2D dynamic character system, is a well-established tool in the anime game development kit, allowing for subtle, fluid 2D animations without the cost of full 3D modeling. Its use here is a checkmark on a feature list, a expected standard for the genre rather than an innovative application.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

A Paper-Thin Premise

The game’s official description sets the stage: “Six girls have a hobby group. One likes to listen to music, another likes to draw, and the third likes to read. Each girl is special in her interests. When you come to the clubs and want to choose which one to join, each girl wants you to choose her club! A ruthless scene of jealousy, frowns and distrust between the girls unfolds, because each one wants you to choose her!”

This premise promises a dramatic, character-driven narrative fraught with interpersonal conflict. The potential for exploring themes of jealousy, validation, social dynamics within clubs, and the pressure of choice is immense. However, the delivered experience, as pieced together from available data, appears to fall drastically short. There is no evidence of deep character backstories, complex dialogue trees, or meaningful narrative branches. The girls are seemingly defined solely by their singular hobby—the music lover, the artist, the bookworm—archetypes so broad they become meaningless.

Thematic Dissonance and The NSFW Element

The promise of a “ruthless scene of jealousy” is further complicated by the simultaneous release of a separate DLC add-on: Girls Hobby in Love: NSFW Content. This immediately re-contextualizes the entire project. The rivalry between the girls is not merely about club membership; it is framed as a competition for the player’s romantic and sexual attention. The game’s mature content description—”Sexual content,” “Not suitable for all ages”—lays bare its core intent. The purported themes of hobbyism and camaraderie are merely a veneer for a much more straightforward, and common, anime-inspired fantasy. This creates a profound dissonance; the game’s title and initial pitch suggest innocent club simulators, while its mechanics and DLC firmly place it within the realm of adult-oriented dating sims. The hobbies are not the point; the “Love” in the title is the entire point.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Puzzle Core: A Mechanic Disconnected

At its heart, Girls Hobby in Love is classified as a tile-matching puzzle game from a first-person perspective. The player’s stated goal is to “collect the puzzle in order to restore the pictures.” This is a classic and often relaxing gameplay loop. However, its connection to the narrative premise is tenuous at best. Why does solving puzzles end the jealousy and make a girl choose you? The mechanic feels completely divorced from the story it is supposed to serve. It exists as a simple, low-effort gate preventing immediate access to the game’s rewards: the CGs (computer graphics) and the implied affections of the characters.

The “Easy Win” and Progression

Most revealing is the developer’s inclusion of an “Easy win: Keyboard Ctrl+D – Complete Level.” This is a remarkable feature. It openly acknowledges that the puzzle gameplay is an obstacle to be bypassed, not a core enjoyment pillar. It suggests that the developers themselves understand that the value players seek is not in the challenge of puzzle-solving, but in the rapid acquisition of the visual rewards—the well-drawn CGs and the Live2D animations mentioned in the features list. The gameplay is a formality, a vestigial system required to label the product a “game” rather than a pure digital comic.

UI and Achievements

The interface is described as “point and select,” the bare minimum for a puzzle/visual novel hybrid. The game features 12 Steam Achievements, which likely reward players for completing puzzles, viewing all CGs, or perhaps for choosing each girl’s club. These are standard carrots-on-a-stick, designed to provide a false sense of progression in an experience that is likely very brief.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The Aesthetic Template

The art style is pure “Anime / Manga,” a broad term that in this context translates to a very specific, modern visual novel aesthetic. The characters are likely designed with large eyes, vibrant hair colors, and outfits that differentiate their hobby archetypes. The “Well-drawn CGs” are the main attraction, the payoff for the minimal gameplay investment. The Live2D animations aim to provide a semblance of life, but within the constraints of a ultra-low-budget project, their impact was likely limited to simple mouth and eye movements.

The setting is a generic high school club environment, a well-trodden locale in anime games that requires no original world-building. There are no hints of a unique or fleshed-out world; the environment exists solely as a backdrop for the characters.

Sound: Setting the Mood

The game boasts “Relaxing music,” a necessity for a puzzle game but also a tool to cultivate a specific, soothing atmosphere that aligns with the romantic fantasy it’s selling. The lack of mention of voice acting—a major feature in high-end visual novels—suggests the game is silent aside from its soundtrack and sound effects, further emphasizing its budget nature.

Reception & Legacy

A Silent Critical Reception

The most telling aspect of Girls Hobby in Love is its reception, or lack thereof. As of this writing, there are zero critic reviews on MobyGames and Metacritic. It has not been deemed worthy of professional critical attention. This silence is a review in itself.

The Player’s Voice: A Mixed Bag

On Steam, the game holds a “Mixed” rating based on 28 user reviews, with 67% positive. This is the most fascinating data point. The positive reviews likely come from players who knew exactly what they were purchasing—a cheap, quick, anime-themed experience with a promised NSFW payoff. They got what they paid for ($0.59). The negative reviews undoubtedly cite the shallow gameplay, the disconnect between puzzle and narrative, the lack of depth, and the potentially underwhelming NSFW content. It is a game that perfectly met the low expectations of its target audience and failed spectacularly for anyone outside of it.

Lasting Legacy: An Footnote

Girls Hobby in Love will not be remembered as an influential title. Its legacy is that of a statistic—one of thousands of nearly identical games that flood digital marketplaces. It represents the ultimate commodification of a genre, a product designed for a specific, transactional purpose within a niche community. It influences nothing but the spreadsheet of Hunny Bunny Studio, likely serving as a small, successful financial venture that funds their next, nearly identical project. Its historical significance is zero, but as a snapshot of a particular mode of game production and consumption in the 2020s, it is utterly perfect.

Conclusion

Girls Hobby in Love is a game of stark contradictions. It promises drama but delivers a mechanic devoid of narrative weight. It presents a theme of hobbies and interests but is fundamentally about romantic conquest. It is structured as a puzzle game but includes a command to skip the puzzles. It is a product that is ruthlessly honest in its commercial purpose yet deeply dishonest in its marketing presentation.

This is not a game to be played for a compelling story, engaging gameplay, or artistic merit. It is a curiosity, a case study in the aesthetics of anime games stripped down to their most basic, marketable components. Its place in video game history is not on a pedestal but in the vast archives of also-ran digital content—a fleeting spark of concept extinguished by minimalist execution. For the right audience at the right price, it may provide a few minutes of diversion. For anyone else, it stands as a definitive example of how a compelling premise can be utterly wasted, leaving behind nothing but a download receipt and a handful of achievement notifications.