YMMV / HuniePop

• Adorkable: Being a shy Gamer Chick certainly makes Nikki Ann-Marie beloved by fans.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Audrey. Irredeemable mega-bitch, or Jerk with a Heart of Gold? On the one hand, she's unbelievably abrasive and has one of the foulest mouths ever seen in a video game, constantly throwing shade at the player and anyone else she can think of. But at the same time, she seems to genuinely care about (some) people, in her own way - Tiffany and Nikki still consider her a friend, even when she's abhorrent to them. She also strongly values honesty, hates posers, and once you start dating her she has dialogue that suggests she's a Clingy Jealous Girl… which makes sense when you later learn that she was a virgin before you slept with her.
    • This calls into question exactly why she's such a mega-bitch. In addition to that virgin thing, she has the smallest breast size of any of the main girls and is the second shortest. So it could be that she actually envies the other girls and built her aggressive volatile personality as a wall and is fabricating her escapades… OR she really is just a mega-bitch trying to gain a reputation despite her bad genetic luck.
    • Are the player and Audrey Vitriolic Best Buds with Friends with Benefits or does Audrey care about them in a very harsh way? Her reasoning for being HunieCam whilst hypocitical does supports the latter (though HunieCam is somewhat non-canon, so who really knows).
  • One interpretation of Tiffany that's come up from time to time is that she is not as much of a kind and loving Nice Girl as she's supposed to be presented as and can be a covertly judgmental Bitch in Sheep's Clothing towards some groups of people due to her being seemingly dismissive and contemptful of her mother Jessie, despite Jessie's apparently-earnest desire to connect more with her daughter, and the disgusted tone with which Tiffany talks about smokers and spending time with extended family when responding to the player answering her questions about those topics with the answers that get the most positive response from her, compared to the joyful tone she responds to most of the player's other questions and answers about pretty much anything else, or at least a more sad and sympathetic tone when discussing topics that lean more towards the negative.
    • For that matter, what about Jessie herself? Granted, she never is exactly dismissive of Tiffany and she does seem to still view her as someone special in her life, but the question of WHEN Jessie began to care more about wanting to reconnect with her daughter is a possible key to the whole thing. Did Jessie earnestly want to reconnect with Tiffany as of HuniePop 1 and Tiffany refused, which would contribute to the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing appearance? Or did Jessie's desire to reconnect happen as a result of both losing her job as a porn star AND Tiffany blocking her on social media, which would therefore paint Tiffany in a much less harsh light and make this a case of a parental Belated Love Epiphany? While it's likely that Tiffany, based on what little context we get from her and her mother and Audrey's claims of her being "fake", is a judgmental person being unfair to her mother, it's also just as possible that Jessie's depression stems more from losing her job and daughter and then realizing how much she had lost after the fact.
  • Is the player a manipulator who is only using the girls for sex or do they really care about them?
    • Another interpretation is that they grew to love the girls over time. 2 seems to support this as the players seems to have good relations with Jessie and Lola.
    • It could be both and they could be Hooker with a Heart of Gold and/or a Harem Seeker meaning while they love having sex with them they also love and care about the girls.
  • Is Nikki really not going to University Campus or was that just a cynical lie? The latter has proof as Nikki's Preppie outfit looks a lot like Aiko's work outfit and can appear at the University Campus. Alternatively, it's her old high school uniform or it's a combination of all three and she does go to college but it's not the college in-game and she's simply there to visit Audrey and Tiffany?
    • Speaking of Nikki, her attitude is a common fan complaint about her character, but what exactly IS the issue? Does she truly subscribe to the "All Men Are Perverts" mentality and it's up to the player to "prove her wrong" (or that it's not necessarily a bad thing in certain cases given they do manage to woo her)? Or is the attitude reflective of her own severely lacking confidence, and thus her attitude towards men is a mask to hide her fear that she isn't "good enough" for a man to actually genuinely love her?
    • About Nikki's abrasiveness in general, is her abrasiveness genuine or does she just have No Social Skills?
  • Is Aiko being mad about her birthday a Gameplay and Story Segregation or since she was more jokingly about it than Nikki or Audrey, is it warranted because she was just joking but otherwise wasn't serious about being okay with the player forgetting?
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Secret Character Momo. Many hate her for breaking with the tone of the game by being a semi-stereotypical Moe Cat Girl with lots of cutesy dialogue that makes her sound almost like a five-year-old, making the expectation of a sexual relationship with her pretty uncomfortable for a lot of players ^note  Not helping matters is that she knows nothing about alcohol or sex until you teach her so you’re essentially taking advantage of her and sleeping with her meets the legal definition of rape. . Plenty like her for the same reasons and argue that, in a game with plenty of already-outlandish material, she's really not all that different.
  • Audrey. Players either love her or hate her, with pretty much no middle ground. Depending on who you ask, her abrasive personality is either entertaining or just obnoxious.
  • Nikki seems to be in the same boat as Audrey. Some people relate to her, while others just find her mopey and annoying.
  • Lola is either seen as one of the more legiminate love interests in the game or a boring Creator's Pet. 2 either made her better or did nothing to help her.
  • How Tiffany is percieved depends on how the player thinks of how she treats her mother and her possible Bitch in Sheep's Clothing tendencies.
  • Kyu is either hilarious or very rude and not funny. This was made worse in the future games.
  • Jessie in the first game was either seen as a hot mom with Hidden Depths or a crude pervert. The latter opinion has mellowed out with the introduction of 2, where her issues are more fleshed out.
• Common Knowledge: One misconception that crops up fairly frequently is that Kyanna had to drop out of high school due to getting pregnant. This is not the case: her son is one year old and she's 21, meaning she got pregnant at 20. Why she dropped out is unknown, but it had nothing to do with her having a baby. This may be the result of mixing her up with the game's other single mother character, Jessie, who did drop out of high school when she got pregnant with her daughter Tiffany at 16.
• Creator's Pet: Lola tends to be seen as one. In the game, she's a successful girl who has no issues in her life and is a generally happy person which also explains why she's so unpopular. Jessie's introduction has Jessie flirting with her in a friendly manner while her own introduction has Kyu describing her as a very flattering (albeit slightly offensive) way. She's also one of the few girls to wear an outfit that's not one of her costumes in one of her date photos. She reappears in the sequel and the creator even said that he has a soft spot for Lola. She got dead last in the HuniePop straw poll and is a borderline Memetic Loser.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Aiko's presents all being Japanese paraphernalia, with one of Aiko's reactions being "You're so racist!" in a fit of laughter.
  • Kyu is rather vocal about her Race Fetish during the first meeting with Lola and Aiko. Given how tactless Kyu is, it's fairly in-character for her to say that.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of the four Secret Characters, Kyu and Celeste seem to garner the most popularity.
• Estrogen Brigade: The game has a huge lesbian/bi/pansexual fanbase, the fact this game actually gives you an option to be female probably has something to do with it.
• Fanon: The female protagonist is often portrayed more innocently (or more friendlier) than their male counterpart.
• Fanon Discontinuity: While there is evidence that the protagonist is a male in HunieCam Studio, due to the abundance of female fans (some of which played HunieCam as a madame), this is often Handwaved for room for a female protagonist perspective. Gender-neutral or genderless is also common.
• Game-Breaker: The combination of the Blue Suede Boots, Leopard Print Pumps, Stuffed Penguin, Sunflower, Heart Necklace, and Pearl Necklace can make even Alpha Mode Date #100 straightforward. ^How?The Leopard Print Pumps and Blue Suede Boots augment 4-matches by rewarding you with extra moves and bonus Sentimient. The Stuffed Penguin converts Broken Hearts into Joy tokens; the Sunflower consumes all Joy tokens for a large surge of bonus moves. All this is to build up a move economy to farm Sentiment and Passion levels, which are then exchanged with the Necklaces for a percentage point reward to Affection, letting you keep up with even Alpha Mode's goal scaling.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Beli is 132 pounds (at 5'11"), and barely looks any bigger than any of the other girls, but she thinks of herself as overweight and often worries about her Junk Food craving.
• Love to Hate: While she's not really a villain, Audrey falls into this category with many who find her antics entertaining but also hope that she eventually gets a punch to the face for all her bitchiness.
• Low-Level Run: Choosing not to trade your Hunie for trait upgrades for as long as possible while still successfully completing dates is the equivalent of a Low Level Run. A Steam achievement, "Lucky Loser", is rewarded if you can seduce three women without upgrading any of your traits, i.e. for a minimum of 12 dates.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "What's wrong? Did I hurt your whore feelings?" ^ExplanationSaid by Audrey as her parting shot to Kyanna, after the two's argument over how Kyanna styled Audrey's hair. It's both an Establishing Character Moment for Audrey and hilariously insulting.
  • "Thanks for the sex, homie." ^ExplanationOne of Kyu's responses to the player scoring with her, and like the rest of her dialogue it is remarkably blunt.
  • "Fuck these birds, am I right?" ^ExplanationOne of the options you can say to Aiko when first meeting her, after being prompted by Kyu to just say something stupid to cheer up Aiko. Compared to the other two options, it's totally out of left field but still works.
  • "This is what's known as a mega-bitch." ^ExplanationKyu's initial assessment of Audrey, which is both totally accurate and like saying fire can be hot.
  • "What's shakin', bacon?" ^ExplanationOne of Tiffany's greetings to the player, noted for its cute rhyming and causing some players to use the greeting in their daily lives.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Nikki isn't the most flattering depiction of a typical gamer (hot bod and pretty face aside) — she's antisocial, dislikes children, and has little ambition in life, mostly content to play video games and eat junk food day-to-day. There are also a number of typical gamers (like TotalBiscuit) that find her one of the more loveable heroines.
• Moe: Momo, Tiffany, Nikki, Beli, and Kyu all qualify (though the latter is probably the most foul-mouthed example of the trope to date.) Audrey, kind of.
• Narm: A good portion of the dialogue, especially from Kyu and Audrey. Kyu's introductory lines early on really set the tone for the game.
• Narm Charm: Then again, the dialogue is also commonly cited as a reason for the game's popularity. It helps that only some of the characters exhibit a large amount of cheesy dialogue, while characters like Nikki and Beli are more downplayed.
• Never Live It Down: While a lot of players understand why Tiffany is hostile towards her mom, she gets a lot of this. 2 has made this worse with her cutting off social media ties which Jessie is clearly saddened by.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity:
  • False claims about HuniePop's creators – including one article declaring that an uncensored patch violated Steam's terms of service, even though Valve explicitly said it was okay — only served to spread the word about the game, to the point that it became the #7 most bought game soon after the aforementioned article.
  • The sequel was mostly under the radar until news struck that there will be a girl with a dick in the game. While the developer had to deal with controversy over whether she's transgender and how the option to make her "dickless" could be seen as transphobic, it got people talking about the game and raised awareness for the sequel.
• Periphery Demographic: Because of the game's puzzle elements, it has developed a surprising number of straight female fans, though it is not uncommon for Dating Sims to have a female Periphery Demographic.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Lilac Perfume, which increases the chances of getting Broken Heart tokens by 50%. Used in combination with other Date Gifts that take advantage of these tokens, the perfume is useful enough, but the risk of running out of gifts to remove them or change them into other tokens and/or accidentally matching them and losing affection has left the Lilac Perfume mostly unused. It also doesn't help that similar to Passion & Sentiment tokens, matching 4 or more Broken Heart Tokens doesn't activate any date gift bonuses for getting a 4 or 5 match.
  • When you activate Alpha Mode, you can't turn it back off. If you want to go through easier difficulties, you have to start a brand new game.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Kyu/Kyanna is shipped despite Kyanna not knowing she exists. It probably has something to do with the fact Kyu hypes her up as being out of the player's league despite her having as much Generic Cuteness as the other girls.
• Strawman Has a Point: Audrey is right about Nikki needing to get out more. Bringing an introvert to a loud and busy nightclub was a horrible idea, but Audrey's concerns about Nikki being stuck in her room all the time are pretty sound. Considering Nikki's lack of social skills become less apparent after opening up to you, it looks like getting out there did Nikki some good.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In one question response, Tiffany says she would be happy if she never saw her mother again. That can hit hard, especially those with a strained relationship with a relative, even moreso if it's with a child.
  • When you ask Momo where she comes from, it's takes a depressing note with Momo somberly answering she doesn't know and frowning.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The game really has no plot to speak of, just a premise and some characters. The player is introduced to each of the girls in a series of vignettes, and that's the last time any of them interact with anyone other than the player character. Dialogue after that is just the same lines randomly repeated as necessary, with no room for character growth. Seeming Chekhovs Guns, such as Jessie and Tiffany turning out to be an estranged mother and daughter, are left hung on the wall unfired; most likely a vestige of earlier plans to have the game more focused on character plots and drama, before it was streamlined. Even worse, many of these issues overlap with What Could Have Been if you watch the Kickstarter preview video.

---