HTML5 Prep School Horrors: a bullet hell RPG with math jokes!

Play it here on itch: https://adriendittrick.itch.io/prepschoolhorrors

Or on gamejolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/prepbr28/470261

What is this?

Prep-school horrors is a minimalist bullet hell RPG set in a prep-school before the end of times. You play as a class of students who are being prepared to face the approaching outer gods who wish to end the world.

Fight progressively harder battles and solve abstract riddles to get strong enough to kill the end. Will you be the one who saves the world, or will you end up as food for the outer gods?



Features:
  • 28 randomly-generated students
  • Bullet hell battles
  • Leveling up
  • 3 exams and then one final exam
  • No save system
  • Guest music vocals by Ica: https://twitter.com/1caaake

Controls:
  • Keyboard: WASD/arrow keys to move.
  • Mobile/mouse: click a corner of the screen to move in that direction.
Here are some of the cool monsters you'll encounter:
prepbr28_promo_engineering.png
prepbr28_promo_math.png
prepbr28_promo_physics.png
 

Rob

Member
Hi Adrien, I promised I'd start checking out community games more often and yours was the first:

  • I thought it was well made, although most of the humour went over my head!
  • I thought the music was awesome
  • I didn't feel like I was "progressing" much in the usual RPG way
  • I would have preferring auto-aim to be optional although I think I understand why you went for it
  • Was nice to see varied enemies - I never knew what was going to come at me
  • I felt I should be able to take more hits before I died because I was levelling, I realise that 1-hit-deaths is a staple of bullet-hells though

 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
After many attempts I finally managed to complete the game with what seems to be the best ending (SAVED). About 90% of my restarts were caused by failure to protect the teacher in the engineering section, and the fact that I always had to start from top area because of how physics work didn't help. >.<
(eventually, I managed to team up with 2 friends with weapons, so this - on top of my then level 5+ weapon - was usually enough to take down enemies from the get-go)

I liked the variety of enemies and their thematic patterns as well as punny names, though sadly - not being a native English speaker and not knowing some scientific terms in English - I couldn't quite get some references. On that note, I feel like Carnage Map would perhaps be closer to original and more punny than Karnaugh Massacre? 🤔
Some attacks felt unfair, especially when the opponent was slamming around the screen at high screen from unknown sides giving no time to react (I think binomial coercer was guilty of that?); maybe it makes more sense for someone who designed the patterns and thus knows how to reliably avoid them, but for new players it comes out of nowhere. Adding some telegraphing before the large scale attacks (like divider's bars) or quick body slams from offscreen (like the coercer) would make them better balanced, I think.

The exam conditions added some nice variation to otherwise samey fetch quests. However, the way physics exam is handled is somewhat unfair from the blind playthrough perspective - if you choose do the other exams first, you'll likely end up getting level 5, and then you just fail the exam right away (I also didn't catch the explanation during my first playthrough, so I ended up failing it on my next playthrough as well; and that's after I successfully saved the engineering teacher, too...).

I generally like the graphics, especially in terms of enemy designs; a variety of students is also a nice touch. Soundtack is among the high points of the game, though apparently many tracks are re-used, judging by the soundcloud history (e.g. Uncontained from over a year ago was used for SYSTEM)? I wish there was a playlist of tracks appearing in Prep School Horrors specifically, rather than having them spread over quite a vast soundcloud history... ^^'

I appreciate the inclusion of vocals on the last section before the final exam, though I'm afraid the singer still has ways to go to the professional level. I had hard time making out some consonants (I think it's particularly prominent with w/n/m/r?); maybe it's also caused by drawn-out vowels, which makes the boundary between them and consonants too blurry? Either way, I could only make out single words/phrases of the lyrics when playing, and when re-listening it on soundcloud I could only figure out about half of these.
(once again, I'm not a native English speaker and songs are usually harder to understand than regular speech; still, I listened to other English songs from some shows before, and I didn't have as much trouble making out the lyrics, except for occasional words or phrases)

One thing that irks me a lot, though: during physics exam, when I collect the proton, I collect the thing that orbits around the core, and when I collect the electron I collect the part of the core (I've completed the physics exam *many* times, so I'm pretty sure I'm not misremembering how it played out). Shouldn't it be the other way round? >.<

Overall, I've found this quite enjoyable and I like how it connects to other games ("There is nothing here" and "There was something here").
The engineering escort quest - especially combined with the low-level physics quest - was quite a drag, though, requiring frequent restarts to go for the best ending. ^^'
 
One thing that irks me a lot, though: during physics exam, when I collect the proton, I collect the thing that orbits around the core, and when I collect the electron I collect the part of the core (I've completed the physics exam *many* times, so I'm pretty sure I'm not misremembering how it played out). Shouldn't it be the other way round? >.<
OH NO, I guess I need to update the game to fix the physics? X)

Anyway thanks a lot for playing and for the thoughtful review :)

Also it seems that you've noticed the reuse of music, which means you know more about my work than most people now X)
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
OH NO, I guess I need to update the game to fix the physics? X)
"oh no" - Prep School Horrors catchphrase

By the way, I've finally tracked down both maths battles ("Master Chef - Kitchen Time" and "Master Chef - Kitchen Boss") and both engineering battles ("Theme38 Kaiju Fight 8-bit" and "Uncontained") but I can't seem to find physics battles on your Soundcloud history (neither regular nor Entropy battle). 🤔

Could you maybe post them if you haven't already? ^^
 
"oh no" - Prep School Horrors catchphrase

By the way, I've finally tracked down both maths battles ("Master Chef - Kitchen Time" and "Master Chef - Kitchen Boss") and both engineering battles ("Theme38 Kaiju Fight 8-bit" and "Uncontained") but I can't seem to find physics battles on your Soundcloud history (neither regular nor Entropy battle). 🤔

Could you maybe post them if you haven't already? ^^
Here they are :)
https://soundcloud.com/adrien-dittrick%2Fprepbr28-physics-battle https://soundcloud.com/adrien-dittrick%2Fprepbr28-entropy
Soundcloud upload duration is limited so I sometimes remove tracks there.
 

K12gamer

Member
Was it hard getting the game to switch to fullscreen?
I've been trying for months to do that with my HTML 5 games...with no success.
 
Was it hard getting the game to switch to fullscreen?
I've been trying for months to do that with my HTML 5 games...with no success.
Here's the code I use: (it only works for a 1024x576 resolution though, you'll have to change the numbers if you want another ratio)

GML:
var scrw=display_get_width();

if scrw>display_get_height()*1024/576
    scrw=display_get_height()*1024/576


if view_wport[0]!=scrw
{
view_wport[0]=scrw;
view_hport[0]=scrw*576/1024;
display_set_gui_size(display_get_width(),scrw*576/1024)
surface_resize(application_surface,scrw,scrw*576/1024);
window_set_size(scrw,scrw*576/1024)
}
 
T

Toxikat

Guest
That looks awesome! I've been working with a similar art style, and I love it! Keep up the good work!
 
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