School For The Friendless

Intro

I'll admit upfront I'm probably not the best person to cover "School for the Friendless" considering I'm not particularly fond of visual novels, but I figured this would be a relatively short game to cover. And I suppose it is depending on if your willing to commit yourself to a single playthrough or the bad ending. If your interested in getting the worst end possible and leaving school just as friendless before you can get through the entire game in under twenty minutes. If you want to go for one of the longer actual endings it will take closer to 65 to 80 minutes to get through the game.

Story
Summary

You play as Harold, whose name can be changed at the start of the game as well as their gender, a friendless loser whose been forced to attend a college where the goal is for those attending to make at least one friend. Of course, our character quickly finds himself involved with three girls with very wild personalities from the trouble making Anima that likes to play with fire, Vivian a girl whose potentially more perverted than most anime martial arts masters, and Scout an innocent girl whose an absolute glutton that likes to hunt ghosts in her spare time. And our job is to befriend at least one of them if we don't want to leave this school as we entered it.



Strengths and Weaknesses

On the plus side the girls are a wild and fun bunch. Though how much fun Vivian, the super pervert, is will probably depend on your personality and how much you think with your genitalia since she spends most of her time talking about sex in some capacity.



And is more than willing to let complete strangers fondle her breasts if her dialogue is anything to go by. Though considering the school outlaws sex twice on it's list of things not to do. If you actually took her up on any of this stuff you'd probably both be expelled. At least if you did it on school grounds.

As for how crazy the other two routes are I can't say since I decided to call it quits after covering the worst ending and Vivian's route since I wanted to get to work on some other projects before breakfast.

At the same time it's hard to deny that this game is effectively a dating sim which can definitely push certain people away on general principle. Albeit this game lacks any of the adult related content associated with those beyond Vivian teasing the player with how she'd be willing to do just about any kinky thing you'd ask of her.

Gameplay

There really isn't that much to cover in this section since this game was made with Renpy. As such the player will spend the bulk of their time in this game reading large chunks of dialogue while occasionally being presented with a choice that will push the player down one route or another.


Guess which one of these will push you into Vivian's perverted grasp.

If anything one of the biggest bummers or pluses with this game depending on your perspective is the player really isn't presented with that many choices. And the outcome of the few choices the player does get to make are pretty obvious for the most part.

Graphics

Graphically the game is underwhelming for a few reasons in my opinion. For starters the girls really don't blend that well with the backgrounds since those images are clearly of images in the real world while the girls are clearly inspired by anime characters. To make matters worse the game presents opportunities for original artwork like when Vivian and the player get tangled up when they trip in a hallway.



But doesn't actually take advantage of these opportunities to provide any original artwork which is probably one of the few draws a game like this could have.

Sound

Sound wise the game is alright in my opinion which is to say I can't think of anything particular positive or negative to say about it. Though, I suppose that is the case for most games. After all, not every game can have an amazing song like "My Glasses are Addicted".

Conclusion

I'm not sure how to feel about this game as an overall package. On one hand the girls are interesting in their own ways, but this game definitely comes across as a dating sim game that just happens to be devoid of naughty content. So I can't imagine most people playing this game will truly enjoy it since they'd probably be playing this game for erotic content.