Hardcore High School by CaptainDreamcast
Deep in the mountains lies a secret school, the fabled Hardcore High School, where all the most hardcore men and women from all over the country go to refine their hardcoreness. Now it's your turn. Except it isn't. After all, as you must already know... you are the principal! Of Hardcore! High! School! [faint echoes saying core... core... core and school... school... school..., but it's not really an echo, it's a guy backstage saying it]
Bear with me, grizzly with me, I feel I need to explain how this came about from summoning: I had two base root ideas: One, you are a principal summoning students to expel or not expel them. Two, "something where you summon stuff like in scribblenauts and some rock-paper-scissors stuff so it's, like, a game". So in the end, neither really worked out so I mashed them together, like potatoes and... more potatoes. And then the thing became a thinly veiled Otokojuku parody, because what comes to mind as super cool principal you want to play as is that series' Edajima Heihachi. This ludum dare did not go well for me, I couldn't really put the stuff I wanted to do in practice, but I hope you can still get a little something out it. Thanks if you try it out!
Update: Dreamcast version is up too now.
Ratings
| Overall | 175th | 3.483⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 153th | 3.483⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 196th | 3.241⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 272th | 3.086⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 191th | 3.397⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 43th | 3.862⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 5th | 4.5⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 73th | 3.776⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
The gameplay was a bit rough, though. It was a bit confusing having two separate people with the same portrait - at first I thought the flavour text & trouble level were just randomized, like your previous game - and I only got it in the second level. Fortunately, it was also pretty easy, so I never got stuck or anything, just confused. It was clearly not the focus here anyway.
Other than that, the graphics, story and VA were hilarious, and I really enjoyed them! Great entry!
As always, the more insane the plot, the better with your games! I'm glad to see the voices in the game, and the trailing monologue after the text box is finished writing is always a treat. Truly, the ohio-core school battling game of the ages.
Here's my full playthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I1-_9rSJRA
for the gameplay part (choosing to accept of expel students) I found it fun but too simple mechanically so at some point I just kept accepting everyone until the meter is almost at 100% and I guess if it works it work right? I'm totally a badass-non-ghosts-bullet-spong and I love it!
The audio is amazing!
I never expected explosion will happen on expel student lol
The only feedback I'd have was that because in the battle screen both sides had similar graphics, I wasn't 100% quite sure which side was mine until the results screen after the fight. Maybe some uniforms, or school banners behind would be helpful as a hint?
Great job, I had fun playing it.
As for some feedback, I would prefer if keys for actual choices (expel or summon) were different from keys for progressing through the game, I think I accidentally summoned someone once or twice. Also, I couldn't figure out on which side were my hardcore dudes during battle, I think it was left side, but not sure.
Great job! But... where did you get my hardcore picture?
A bunch of the voiceover audio clips had an ugly speaker pop sound at the end after you're done talking. Maybe a bugfix version can clean that up? It's narrsty.
I would have loved to see the result if things had gone better.
@frogman, apparently I now will be playing all of captaindreamcast's other games!