Best Friend Forever is a wholesome dog-themed dating simulator where looking after your adopted doggie is just as important as your dating life. It’s a fairly short game, but if you’re looking for a cutesy slice-of-life adventure, you’ll be delighted by everything Best Friend Forever has to offer.
In the game, you play as one of three newcomers to Rainbow Bay, a dream-like town where nearly everyone owns a dog and friendship reigns supreme. It’s a wonderful setting filled with vibrant colours, excitable companions and plenty of activities to keep you and your new pet entertained. If you’ve ever played Monster Prom, you’ll be very familiar with the dating mechanics here.
Best Friend Forever starts with a personality quiz — but not the exactly the kind you might be used to:
From your blood type to how you feel about the end of the world, Best Friend Forever‘s dating quiz doesn’t hold back. At the end of it all, you’ll be presented with a handful of potential matches and be sent off to choose your new doggie best friend. There’s several options to choose from and each has their own loveable personality. (I went with Blocker, a very flatulent, hyperactive mutt who turned out to be an absolute delight.)
With a new best friend in tow, players are sent out into the world of Rainbow Bay to meet their woofr matches and get to know their neighbours.
There’s poised figure skater Astrid Brooks, the hot blind lawyer Anders and Maribel, who has a chihuahua named Gravedigger and fantastic, bodybuilder arms. Then you’ve got your lovely neighbour, Sacha, frosty pet shop owner Fox and the strange librarian, Felix. Each denizen of Rainbow Bay has their own personality and charms to fall in love with — and you’ll need this growing affection with looking after your new pooch.
Gameplay in Best Friend Forever has two components — a doggy training and daycare simulator, and a social map to explore.
You’ll start each round of the game with a week planner where you assign activities for your pet. There’s 15 weeks in the whole game, and for each week you’ll need to plan the best activities to build your dog’s personality traits. The dogs with the best training at the end of those 15 weeks will be rewarded with a training trophy. You’ll also need to feed and clean your dog each week to ensure its energy levels and happiness remain high.
After this, you’ll enter the game’s ‘social map’ where you can spend energy to chat up your neighbours.
Most interactions cost one energy bar, but proper dates (unlocked after you chat to the same person a few times) cost more. You’ll also get opportunities to ignore these interactions and train your dog instead. You’ll want to hit these activities if you’re looking at claiming the training trophy at the end of the game, but they aren’t necessary if you want to focus on romance instead.
There’s a careful balance to be struck between maintaining your social life and looking after your new best friend, but both mechanics are very fun and wholesome. The cast of Best Friend Forever (both human and canine) are delightful and there’s plenty of reasons to explore every corner of the map and meet everyone you see.
I chose to romance Anders, the blind lawyer in my first playthrough — mostly because he had bougie taste in restaurants and impressive, windblown hair. This culminated in a date at the most expensive location in town, him walking my character to her apartment like a gentleman and disappearing into the night.
It was a truly romantic evening, and one I’d recommend to anyone.
Completing all fifteen weeks and building a strong bond with your partners (human and canine) will last you around two hours. At the conclusion of the game, you’ll go on a final date with your chosen partner and finish with a lovely celebration.
It’s not a particularly long game, but it does encourage multiple playthroughs in the same way Monster Prom does. Every romanceable characters has their own unique storyline and dates to go on, so you can replay the game as long as you’d like and romance whoever takes your fancy each time.
Like any dating sim, Best Friend Forever presents a variety of dialogue options to entertain your romantic interest. Some lines will anger them and others will make them fall in love, but it’s usually fairly obvious which choice you should make to nab your favourite character. (Lying about being banned from every gym around the world for being too swole is a big red flag, for example.)
Each date is unique, revealing more about the world of Rainbow Bay, making every playthrough of Best Friend Forever interesting enough to warrant multiple adventures — although the game does feel a bit too short if you become invested in the characters.
You only go on a handful of dates with your chosen partner before the game ends and most of this action takes place through dialogue, so you can speed through the game fairly quickly. You’ll also bounce hard off some characters (I didn’t particularly care for Fox, Felix or Astrid) so you may run out of romantic prospects fast. But there is a heap of potential for replayability so if you’re concerned about the game’s short length you can simply jump in with a new character, pet and partner.
For as long as it lasts, Best Friend Forever is an absolute joy. You can speed through the adventure, but you’ll make plenty of happy memories along the way. For those looking for the latest dating sim to steal their heart it’s the perfect, bite-sized adventure and a very nice way to spend an afternoon.
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