As a queer gamer, I’m generally excited to see games centred on queer relationships. Representation is incredibly important in a medium still dominated by cishet couples, damsels in distress, and outdated stereotypes. As such, I love checking out games that explore those dynamics and am always happy to see good games that aim not only to tell good stories, but to tell them from the perspective of queer people, even if some are a bit rough around the edges.
And well, today, we’re checking out BOSSGAME: The Final Boss Is My Heart (from now on just “BOSSGAME”), an engaging boss-rush game centred on a lesbian couple, that is rough around its edges and that I was looking forward to a bunch, actually.
Developer: Lilycore Games
Publisher: Lilycore Games
Genre: Indie, Queer, 2D Boss Rush, VN-kinda?
Release Date: July 20th, 2023
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC, Mobile
Copy was provided by the developer.
BOSSGAME tells the story of Anna, a hot-blooded, danger-prone mercenary and fire witch, and her girlfriend, Sophie, who is a swordswoman and priestess of Mammon. Together, they fight against demons, flirt, and try to somehow get enough money to scrape by, while dealing with pesky politics and greedy majors, as well as their own internal demons.
Gameplay is split into two portions: its story segments and the boss-rushing itself.
Cutscenes, on the one hand, are presented like chat logs you’d find on any ol’ messenger app, where you get to see the characters message each other. At times, I wasn’t sure whether or not this is supposed to be actual messenger logs or just a stylistic device, but overall, I think it added a lot of charm as it also inadvertently characterized the characters a bit by the way they type.
These narrative segments can be found framing the boss encounters and take up a good portion of the game.
You essentially get rewarded for slaying bosses by unlocking lore and more dialogue before you get to the next fight, which I believe complements the challenging combat nicely.
The battles, on the other hand, contrast the chill story beats and banter with their very rhythmic action!
To defeat the encounters, you’ll have to block attacks and dish out your own. Blocking, attacking and using magic depletes Anna’s or Sophie’s stamina bar, respectively – and if you get hit and run out of stamina, you get knocked out, which you’ll recover from automatically.
If you get hit again during this time, you’ll be put in a near-death state. During both of these states, the other person can use the power of love to get the other person up and running again… but if both of the girls get put into the near-death state, it’s game over for you!
The win condition is, obviously, to defeat the boss. Getting there, however, can be rather difficult with huge timed AoE attacks, multiple projectiles and feints, as well as enemies parrying at times, too.
BOSSGAME is essentially a huge balance act of attacking and defending. As you try your luck at defeating the enemies, you learn their patterns and get to make adjustments to your own playstyle with each attempt. It feels intense but not impossible, which I found fun.
The difficulty does, however, spike between bosses a fair bit, and if it becomes too difficult, there’s always the option to turn on accessibility options like automatic blocking or even invincibility to push through a fight and try later. I think this is a nice touch since you can always return to boss encounters later this way and try again but move on with the game and the story if you ever get stuck.
Defeating boss encounters in special ways, like without getting hit at all, will also award you some extra lore about each enemy, which I’m actually pretty happy about!
With all of that said, while the combat and story framing complement each other mechanically, the cutscenes made me increasingly uncomfortable over time as I was unwillingly made to take part in the overt affection.
My discomfort doesn’t really come from the relationship itself, but rather from how insistently BOSSGAME places me inside it, without offering any way to get out. Anna and Sophie explicitly reiterating their relationship and attraction to one another feels less like realistic character development and more like a self-insert that the player is expected to passively observe. I can’t skip ahead and am supposed to either sit through these very intimate conversations or quit.
I believe the writing actually does manage to find the right balance later on into the story with flirting and banter taking place in smaller dosages, and that ends up coming across as rather charming and wholesome, actually. Early on, however, BOSSGAME lacks restraint, turning otherwise solid writing into an exhausting and intrusive experience.
If a boss is too challenging, I can turn on accessibility options to continue with the story, which is great! I just wish that the narrative segments were written better, paced quicker or perhaps allowed me to scroll at my own pace. Making story parts skippable or optional would have gone a long way toward resolving this.
As a queer player, I usually welcome games that centre queer relationships, and I appreciate BOSSGAME’s intent. However, I found the execution often gauche, not because of the relationship itself, but because of how inescapably it’s presented. The writing leans heavily into the repeated flirty back-and-forth, with little opportunity for the player to disengage. It feels inauthentic.
It’s a shame, too, because the writing improves significantly over time!
The soundtrack is a banger, the cast is funny a lot of the times, and the gameplay is really enjoyable and quite demanding. It’s just that the game will probably alienate more players (queer or not) by foregrounding the central relationship in a way that feels loud, overbearing, and repetitive rather than grounded.
Verdict: I don't think BOSSGAME: The Final Boss Is My Heart is a bad game, but it's very hard for me to recommend it in its current state. The gameplay is fun, the soundtrack is great and the characters, while quirky, have a lot to offer if you can get to the later parts of the story... but until then, it's a slog to push through that feels invasive, repetitive, and discomforting.
As much as I love representation, if it comes at the cost of player agency, I’d rather see it handled with greater restraint and more player choice.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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