Schoolboi Pacaman of Love

"Schoolboi Pacaman of Love" is a very short visual novel about a perverted alpaca who realizes on the last day before break that he has not managed to woo any girls in his school yet. You proceed to change that!
It was originally created for the "Dumb Game" contest (aka RMN's 11th Birthday contest), and as such has questionable plot-lines, jokes, as well as exaggerated characters. It was updated since then.

As such, it is hard to judge the game's quality, as it is meant to be "dumb". This is expressed in various plot holes that could easily be covered up, varying degrees of image quality, as well as exaggerated and stereotyped characters. This also includes sudden and numerous plot-twists.

What you do in this game is walk around a bit, talk to various NPCs and search rooms for items that you can use as "gifts" to "woo" the girl of your choice. Clearly, there is no other way. *cough* RPG logic *cough*
I will say I missed the ghetto fight and I am not sure where it would be.


Yes.. yes you are one wonderful Alpaca.


The Good:


Jokes
There are many jokes spread throughout the game and most of these are references to "dumb" tropes and actually do a great job of making fun of the train of thought the story employs.
There is the joke of being able to name your character and friends from earlier RPGs, for example. The characters being named are aware of this, and complain how our protagonist forgets their name continuously, but at the same time simply accept their new names. The mechanic of using gifts is also put in a similar light, and the items you can gift and find are spoofs (like a green ruby from Zelda), dumb (salmonella fish from last year), as well as funny in-game references. Our protagonist is happy to snag an infamous teacher's pudding, for example. He is also fully aware that his "collecting" of items is in fact stealing.

The characters
The characters are delightfully one-dimensional. You have a leech friend who plays the "pervert friend who is sure everyone has the hots for his friend and needs to encourage said friend to hit on them", you have an Alpaca bro "bro", a sexually portrayed school nurse as well as the busty teacher and childhood friend that make for your love interest. Other NPCs are simply named Nerdy Girl or similar.

Plot twister for our teacher
It is short and adding any more would be a major spoiler, but it fits the dumb theme. It is overblown, you have two stack on top of each other while deciding if you still wish to stay with her, and it suits the game.



The Bad:


Our Childhood friend
She is slightly too random, too nonsensical without a clear line of thought even within this universe. There is "random funny cheese" humor out there, but I myself do not consider it that worthwhile. Other than "crazy" she is the only character in the game you do not get a feel for, character-wise.
Even when it comes to gifting her items the dialogue was unclear, she first asks for a black vial - and takes it immediately without any further reference. It had me searching for it all over before realizing that she simply took it, and THEN needed the "fill heart with gifts" game afterwards. I was mildly confused.
The plot twister is mildly foreshadowed and not a real surprise, nor all that satisfying to watch, either.

Unclean Image borders
A lot of different images were put together (likely ripped together), and did not have the borders properly set as transparencies - causing white jaggies to be on some, but not all images and icons. This is especially jarring for your inventory/gift selection, as it makes the rugged ones stand out even more.
During the character creation screen, text also overlays with the description below, making it harder to read.
Additionally, as you can see in the screenshots, different menu overlays also make for a very inconsistent aesthetic.

Ridiculous Pacing
Story development itself is, of course, extremely fast given how short the game is. However, a lot of the dialogue lines could also profit from taking just a little bit more time to stick with the joke they were going with. For example, when your leech friend comments on the imposed name-changed, the comment is a single line in which he interrupts himself to accept it. It took me a moment to even realize that is what he was doing and a second text box would have made the transition clearer.


You are hereby named LEEROY. That was accepted fast!

Background volume varies
The first classroom's music (as well as the menu's) is much louder than the rest of the game. This makes for awkward changes, and since the volume options in-game are fiddly, one may want to use the computer's sound options.

The dumb:


You know an adult's heart.


Most of the game.
Characters are exaggerated and not all that likeable. Your protagonist hits on any and all living lady, for one and openly admits liking breasts over character. There are some typos here and there, but nothing too troublesome.

It may have been planned as something without logic, but nonetheless it could easily be made into a relatively coherent comedy game based on "dumb characters" with some subtle jokes about dating game conventions.

Your stats have a minor impact on the game. For example, you are stuck with homework, unless you can either do it yourself (intelligence), or can get a girl to do it happily for you (charisma). Or you can threaten someone (strength). It seems you can always achieve all endings, though.
There is also a bug where if you go back to the menu and start a new game, your base stat points will be those of the character last created, resulting in first higher stats, and then a dead end. You max out stats at 10, and cannot finish character creation with points unspent. Closing and restarting the game resets it to the norm. The friends' name selection can be skipped via the skip button.



All in all, this is an amusing short game with many flaws that does not take itself seriously (thankfully). It could be much better, however, as even the good is rough around the edges.