Sutoraiku High

Sutoraiku High (click to play, no download required) is a visual novel about drama, friendships, prejudice, bullying, total societal upheaval, and high school romance - by which I mean it is a Scyther dating sim. Have you always wanted to date a Scyther? Stand against abusive authorities alongside a revolutionary-minded Scizor? You have come to the right video game.

This game originated as an April Fools' Day joke in 2019, when I published a 'demo' containing a rough version of the first two in-game days, with sketchy black-and-white character portraits on free visual novel backgrounds, ending in a promise that the full game would be coming in April 2020. Long story short, 2020's April Fools' Day joke was that the promised release date wasn't a joke, and I did in fact publish a full version of the game with four days of content.

Accordingly, this game has a very bizarre, absurd premise - you are a Scyther who is for some reason attending classes with a group of other young Scyther (and a Scizor) at what looks like a regular human high school. The general concept was inspired by Hatoful Boyfriend, a dating sim also originating as an April Fools' Day joke, where the love interests are pigeons. However, also like Hatoful Boyfriend, Sutoraiku High's actual story is played pretty straight.

Although the game is nominally a dating sim, and you can romance all of your fellow students, romance is a very minor element of the game and entirely optional; mostly, this is a branching narrative exploring how your actions can affect how things ultimately play out. There are no 'relationship stats', just a lot of branches and conditionals based on what you've found out, who you've befriended, and how your actions have influenced the other characters. Although you can play just once through the game, I highly encourage playing multiple times, seeing at least a few different routes and endings, and learning about all the characters - that's the intended experience of the game, rather than simply picking the character you want to date and fixating on them. (In particular, fixating on one character will not at all necessarily net you the 'best' ending for that character.)

Note that this game features some violence and dark themes; I'll call it a PG-13.

Page last modified April 5 2020 at 03:00 UTC

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