Unity - Completed - Daigaku Gurashi [v1.07] [YamiToast0401]

Daigaku Gurashi is a game that has the necessary baseline for a school simulator with somewhat in-depth dating elements, it's very respective of Artificial Academy 2 with more flexibility in mind, such as a fully explorative outside area with interactive elements such as shops for food/accessories, your own apartment to do activities in and randomly generated students to keep the roster fresh with each playthrough.

You can create your own character with their own traits and personality and goes beyond that by having the dating system complement two characters a lot more if they share the same interests, making it easier for them to get to know and like each other. This is a feature I am very fond of as it makes everything a lot more natural and thought out since you can't just beeline to any character and instantly get them to love you. Though the gamble between making your characters traits line up with the other randomly generated students can be quite displeasing to try to get right so you can build meaningful relationships, especially if you spot a character that you particularly like.

This is where problems arise as there is no way to initiate a proper conversation outside of guess work by standing near someone and waiting for them to talk about something that they either like or hate, then leading to you responding accordingly with a 50/50 coin flip depending on if your character likes the same thing or not. This could have been alleviated by having a questioning phase for each character, as long as the other party was comfortable (dependant on the opinion meter), such as asking if they like a particular topic, their Sexual orientation or other relative interests.

The Student bio tab holds nothing of use outside of the Headshot and Opinion, Love and Lust meters. The description might as well not be called one since for randomly generated student's as it literally says "A randomly generated student" rather than a brief description generated alongside depending their randomly generated traits, Reputation straight up does nothing and that fact is even acknowledged by the creator themselves in the How to Play tab. This really could be fleshed out more if the reputation did something more such as other students with considerably lower reputation attempting to hang out with you more to gain more reputation to help themselves be more recognised by their peers.

I like the idea of naturally forming group conversations during gameplay as it shows characters who like each other always hanging out during or after school hours as it gives a good idea on who leans towards who during these moments.

As I've said at the start of this review the game is a very good starting point to what could be done in the future if the same developer or others were to go further with their visions, I have high hopes for the developer coming back and updating once again or even creating a spiritual successor that alleviate some of the gripes that I have in this current version.

Daigaku Gurashi in the best short summary i can think of is if Yandere simulator had a more focused smaller-ish scale execution and wasnt associated with some like Yandere dev.

what that means is that the game can be fun but because there isnt much to do and a number of quality of life elements that could/should be implemented it ends up feeling more unfinished than a 1.0 game should

[The Good]

• the creation of your character's personality is pretty alright. some good variety and depth with what can be decided
• flavor text for actions in loading screens can be fun and quirky
• the school tests, while not really hard, are actual questions that reflect your real world knowledge
  • to go with this you can "study" to get points to BS your way through the_quiz which can help create what you beleive your character would get for grades
• character are randomly generated allowing a near endless variety of classmates to associate with
• you CAN be an asshole and that's ok... technically
• if you really like a character you can export their data to use in any new saves
• you CAN be that harem protag and you can get all flavors of participants
• your character has their own relationship values distinct from your intentions so you do have to play to them as well on some level

[The Bad]

• this will get repeated a lot for a while but the map is extremely barren
  • stores are basically just for buying food besides occasionally checking out accessories you unlock by completing achievements.
  • There are no activities to take part in so there's no reason to be out and about unless you're lookin to fill your inventory with food or you're looking for classmate to shmooze
• There is no map of the area so the barren and same-y landscape can feel deceptively hard to navigate because you hit the wrong corner of the map that looks like the corner you meant to go to
• you cant go to other people's houses and they cant invite you so you are left to initiate and coordinate everything to further relationships
• you cant date
• interactions and intimacy can be cheezed quite easily by simply talking over any other topic and spamming things you know you align with you target on
• there is no nuance to conversations like ending conversations to do/focus on something else, telling people to go away, or simply avoid negative topics without simply just talking over people to avoid negative scores
• the actual metrics of your relationship with a character are poorly explained outside of tips that you will only see AFTER TESTS which speed up time making it impossible to get through all 106 in one sitting
• your relationship with someone can mysteriously hit a brick wall because unbenownst to you you dont fall into that character's sexual preferences and you would never know this because-
• - the game does not provide any means of acknowledging or remembering any details about any character including yourself. essentially you have to memorize what you like/ dont like and who your character is actually willing to smash
• there is no mode to just create students meaning you have to constantly start a new game over and over again to make more characters to fill out a class roster
• there is no way to put in new students
• you can not develop an interest/disinterest in things or at least it is such a mind numbingly slow process that is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE if you find someone into what you like leaving you and every other student particularly static in terms of development outside or reputation
• (minor) when doing private time it seems that actions are randomly selected and sometimes your guy might be... "catching" when you really didnt intend for him to (hasnt happened yet but the writing is on the wall)
• (minor) the art style leaves a bit to be desired.
  • the head is a tad too large/fat for some faces
  • there is no slider for the upper body
  • there are 3 different outfits for girls and 1 for guys and they both share another 1 leading to little variety among male characters that dont crossdress
  • girls get thongs for underwear but men dont get bulging speedos (i might not let my player character wear it but i am a man of equality)
• there is no cooking in the game despite some food items implying that you should cook them (at least 1)
• there is no faster means of map traversal
• you cant decide on you character's mannerisms, they will pose and run however the feel like
• (minor) voice lines are not entirely context sensitive as you will occasionally hear laughter in regular dialogue and vice versa
• (minor) no endless/ 4-year modes. yes 365 is long even in gameplay terms but it would still be cool
• no ability to associate with any teachers. i understand why they may have decided against this but that is apart of a bigger problem-
• -no consequences for you relationships. essentially despite characters having their own relationship dynamics with each other i havent seen any notable reaction from inserting yourself into this. there is a missed opportunity in having to coordinate your interactions around avoiding certain people or saying certain things in the open with certain people

NOW, that may look like a lot of negatives but id honestly put this at 4 and 1/2-stars if i could because i like the idea and foundation that much. if you like character creation and randomly generated/ community generated content then this could potentially work for you. i am particularly driven by my interest in character creation so this game does work out as a time sink

[some suggestions/improvments]

• add a map
  • (minor) add an optional waypoint system
• add a dialogue box or make a more overt indicator of who you're talking to and who is responding to you
• add flirting, insulting, goodbye, and neutral opinion options
• pet goat
• allow your interests to change based on your investment in the subject or interactions with people that have opinions on the subject and their opinion affects your opinion
  • have this system be partially governed by your opinion of the person in question, ie: if you think highly of them their opinion will shift you more to their side while if you hate them it pushes you away and this works with everyone towards everyone else UNLESS they choose not to voice an opinion or have a trait that makes them stubborn in their opinion
• allow other students to invite you over, decide actions, and initiate intimacy similar to them choosing to kiss you
• implement dating/ hangouts in and out of school
• fine tune the follow mechanic so they keep pace with you and you can take them to aforementioned date/hangout spots
• add minigames and events to activities to spice things up like small games when playing video games, conversations when watch shows or reading.
• pet Goat
• allow the option to have positive or negative experiences when doing something so as to affect your interests in the relevant manner
• add cooking, basically the classic exchange some of your time to save money and fill you up when eating in the future
• [PET GOAT]
• actually let us visit the soap land as well as have reactions to meeting classmates there on occasion

in the end id say it's a 3/5. even though i wouldnt disagree with calling it a "boring game" i would say that it isnt a normal 2-3/5 game (ie criminally average). this game puts effort into its concept and could easily go up a full point with less than half of its issues fixed to me (depending on what they fixed) i would say to the people i could talk to about this game on a smut game site, it's worth playing at least for a short while

This game is an interesting take on the school dating sim genre, but its greatest flaw is simply feeling incomplete. I feel that it lacks a sense of achievement and payoff, and that its world feels mostly hollow.

What's good about this game?
+ The character creation system is the most unique and interesting part of this game. It features a unique art style, with plenty of options both in the way of personality and appearance.
+ Classmates are randomly generated. It seems that the driving idea behind this game is that the player doesn't understand everything about the npcs they're interacting with. So the main challenge of this game is in finding out how the game works mechanically, and then learning how to earn the approval of each of your classmates.
+ The in class quizzes ask multiple choice questions that would realistically be asked of students in each given subject, and therefore test YOUR irl knowledge of each subject. This mechanic is implemented quite well, and worth seeing.

What's bad about this game?
- As I alluded to earlier, you will waste a lot of time roaming around a mostly empty environment. The dev seems to have tried to alleviate this boring aspect of the gameplay by having gift boxes occasionally spawn in random areas, but the rewards are insignificant enough that I wonder why they even bothered.
- While it seems that the whole point of this game was to have an element of mystery behind your interactions with npcs, it ultimately fails in that regard, because all you need to do to get anyone to like you is to find whatever topic they respond positively to, isolate that npc so nobody else gets mad at you, and then spam that single topic until their affection increases. I don't think that this is bad, however, until you realize that the payoff for having them LIKE you is relatively small. Sure, you can invite them over, or date them, but the impact on the game's world and mechanics is so small that it feels like the only real reward is getting to check off one of the game's achievement boxes. You do unlock a little more dialogue, but really, what's the point? If you are trying to craft a narrative, in your own head, using this world as the medium, then it is going to remain relatively hollow. So, in other words, my complaint is that this game's mechanics are NOT mysterious enough for it to feel like you aren't always in complete control of your relationships with npcs, AND there aren't enough things to do with either your friends or enemies. If you're looking for other games that fulfill this one's premise more successfully, then you should just play the sims or artificial academy.
- Time moves too slow. The game has an "auto play" feature, which is absolutely useless when compared to controlling the player yourself. Ideally, I believe that the auto play feature should have been combined with the ability to speed up time. I was able to see practically all of this game's features in just a few (in game) days. I can't imagine spending a whole (in game) month playing this, let alone the full year that the game implies it lasts.

Ultimately, this game's biggest flaw is that it feels unfinished. It just needs more content. More states of success and failure, more things to do, more ways to interact with npcs. I'm really just left a little curious what the creator is working on for 2023, since they said it's going to be a totally different type of game. But while their new game will hopefully be better, this one's not worth playing unless you're the type of person (like me) who wants to play around with every unique looking character creator. I can only hope that this dev also gets some help with creating their new game, so it can be more robust and can be released faster.

[v1.05]
Somewhat okay game, but I won't play it again (played for 1 hour)

-Great mechanics
-Great features
-Mid people's models
-Crude movement
-Cool dialog system

The biggest downside is HOW LONG IT TAKES TO PROGRESS.
I focused 1 specific character for an hour to get to see some "kinky" content, but the love/lust stats were static.
In the instructions it is said, that you can raise them by inviting characters to home, but it is not clear what exactly you have to do.
BUT to invite them you have to finish school (10-20 minutes) or don't go there(maybe).

Simply put, you have to use a lot of time to get some content.
And there is no plot aside from you going to school.

Hopefully there will be updates with more content/fixes/plot

Also when you sprint outside the school the sound is similar to the "Terran engineer" building sound from Starcraft 1.
Laughed a little.

A nice game with great potencial
Looks like a cross between a yandere simulator and an artificial academy. On the one hand, the gameplay is simple, but due to the element of randomness, it becomes more exciting than it seems at first glance. Different characters and different characters