Demonschool
Developer: Necrosoft Games
Publisher: Ysbryd Games
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S (Reviewed), PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $24.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
When it comes to fighting demons in a school setting there are a few certain franchises that come to mind. Developer Necrosoft Games hasn’t been shy about making nods to these games when it came to advertising Demonschool over the course of its time in development and for good reason, it takes plenty of inspiration from many parts of these familiar games but goes its own route in terms of combat, exploration, and even time management in what makes for an interesting indie RPG, albeit one that tries a bit too hard to be unique and falters a bit as a result.
Story
Set in the year 1999 the demon-obsessed Faye is on a mission, a mission to go to college. And stop the apocalypse. Conveniently timed right with when Y2K would have happened, Faye, a descendant of a long line of demon hunters has been trained by her now deceased grandfather in the ways of demonic exorcisms and combat. It is from her same grandfather that she received a prophecy signaling that the demonic invasion would begin in the year 2000 on Hemsk Island, the same island university (of the same name) that she is traveling to. After managing to worm her way into being pseudo friends with the only other person on the boat willing to talk with her, a girl named Namako, the pair find themselves battling possessed students on the ship before arriving on the island where things only grow stranger.
Not only is the island seemingly being controlled by a gang of local mobsters that can dictate who even gets to attend the school, but nearly everyone on the island itself seems to have barely any idea what is happening around them, having only vague memories of the past days as they go by. To make things even stranger, the teacher for Faye and Namako’s homeroom singles them out from the rest of the students and assigns them a special mission, to hunt down a haunted video tape by the end of the week or risk being thrown in prison forever. As things begin to spiral out-of-control between strange events being forgotten by the townsfolk, odd threats and even odder situations, it is up to Faye and her misfit group of ever-growing friends and allies to avoid falling prey to the demonic invasion and put a stop to the apocalypse all while still trying to stick to a school schedule and take weekly tests on things that happened that past week.
The general plot of Demonschool isn’t too groundbreaking, but it is filled with tons of colorful and unique references to horror and demonic elements and the quirky type of writing that keeps players guessing whether the next moment will involve some Scooby-Doo level antics or a dire threat as well as an absolutely wonderful cast of characters that end up becoming the best part of the game by far. This combination of referential horror, goofiness, and the eclectic cast of characters and the way they interact with one another not only through the storyline but even during “bond” scenes, do wonders to help carry the day-by-day storytelling of Demonschool’s weekly school set-up. Since, without it, the set-up is used a bit too often to drag things out longer than they should be, often tossing in random obstacles that make no sense to draw out the plot a bit before players can take on the next “big bad” properly since, unlike other games with a school calendar system, players cannot simply beat the story at any pace and take time as they go, it is kept to a fairly rigid structure.
As mentioned before, the characters are what make Demonschool‘s story worthwhile and considering there are fifteen different party members to eventually join the player’s group, it is quite the unique blend of personalities that range from eccentric to a bit more down-to-earth to so quirky that Faye seems normal by comparison. Each of these characters has their own little side-stories that take place in the form of affinity events that not only build up through minigames, more on those later, but through dialogue choices in the game as well. These reveal a character’s backstory a bit more and expose a bit more of their personality. It is also interesting to note that the game does not care if players push their relationships to the max with every character, meaning players are free to go wild should they wish.
It also must be said that the island setting is a bit of a unique being in and of itself when it comes to worldbuilding and background developments. Players can travel to nearly any location they wish to during free-roam and interact with random NPCs in locations or take part in little activities or pop-up quests. These quests can range from simply talking to an NPC and “cleaning” a grave or literally just petting a dog as often as possible to quests that must be resolved by fighting against demons. Ironically, some of these side-quest demon battles can pit players against higher tier demons before the story even does, spoiling the surprise a bit.
Most NPCs get new dialogue every week, with the dialogue shifting to reflect the events happening over the prior one and they tend to be just as eerie as ever, especially seeing a man with a happy family of seven children one week to have a happy family of four children a couple of weeks later, none the wiser to what has happened since those without some form of demonic fighting capability are susceptible to memory loss, building a strange world that only grows stranger as players progress.
Gameplay
Demonschool is something of a tactical RPG but with a twist as it also tends to play a bit more like a puzzle game at times than an actual RPG, especially since the RPG mechanics are extremely bare-bones. Whenever players enter a battle they will be able to bring four party members with them (with Faye always required) and given a set number of demons that must be slain before they can clear a battle by reaching the end of the battlefield with at least one character. Doing so within a certain turn limit and without losing any party members will reward a higher grade ranking from A, to B, to C depending on performance, but generally the only actual punishment appears to be fewer opals (the game’s currency) which players will end up drowning in eventually regardless of performance.
At the start of each turn players will begin their “planning phase” where they will have eight action points (AP) to utilize per turn. The unique element here is the fact that the more a specific character moves and attacks, the more AP it takes. For example, using Faye to move and attack an enemy uses 1 AP her first move, sliding to the side and moving to attack a second enemy costs 2 AP, and running back to avoid counterattacks would cost 3 AP, burning 6 AP in total just for moving Faye around instead of having Namako use 1 AP to shift through an enemy and move them while stunning them or having Knute move to heal or buff a character with only 1 AP.
This makes battles something like puzzles as mentioned earlier since there are clearly optimal ways to go about fighting foes, especially since every character has unique attack options and special abilities of their own that can be unleashed when their “special” meter fills up to max. When finished setting up their planning, the player can let the action flow in an impressive showing of combat as all the characters will move at once along their planned attack, healing, and buffing routes. If a player has a character die in combat, which is a real possibility since characters start with only 3 health and there is an elemental strength and weakness factor involved as well, making some enemies deal either no damage or two damage per hit, there is no real punishment besides a lower grade but it is worth noting that having all offensive capable characters die does mean players are stuck, having to redo the battle entirely and this is something of an issue in the early hours of Demonschool as players are limited to only a small cast of characters for a fairly long period of time, limiting what eventually opens up to being a far more customizable experience for far too long.
It is also worth noting that unlike most RPGs, players do not obtain any experience or level ups from winning battles, only Opals. These opals can be used to purchase skills that can then be researched by the characters and equipped to them to provide additional buffs and stats like increasing their special ability’s damage, making them immune to status effects, etc. or even add bonuses to their class-specific attack, but that is unfortunately it. There are some more fun and unique abilities that come into play, but they generally only show up late in the game, far past the point of feeling relevant and when nearly every side-quest and every story scene involves one or two of these battles, things start to grow repetitive due to near non-existant RPG mechanics. There is no equipment to unlock, no items to purchase and use in combat, nothing to grow a character beyond abilities and even then these can only be equipped to one character at a time.
Encountering random enemies players can beat down easily in a standard RPG can be tedious, but feeling boredom in a tactical RPG is a real bad sign and unfortunately that happened to become the case with many standard battles in Demonschool. Thankfully boss battles, while we won’t divulge their exact details here, really change things up. Most bosses introduce new mechanics into a battle that players will need to contend with, be it extra hazards in the field, unique ways they can only be damaged, and more. Combine this with their prominent visual flair and these boss fights are truly spectacles that serve to cap off every week with a memorable encounter, it is just the journey getting there that is filled with tedious generic foes that is the problem.
Outside of fighting players will be doing various bonding activities with their party members and taking on side-quests. These little side-activities, as mentioned earlier, tend to either result in text or more fights against monsters and give players an extra look at the island’s history with opals or a skill being the reward. Bonding activities with party members often involve taking part in mini-games such as rock-paper-scissors, fishing up demonic fish in a fun little mini-game, or even singing on a cursed karaoke machine where every proper lyric must contain the chosen theme. These little moments are fun and make us wish there were more to them mixed in throughout the city’s many other activities such as wishing at the well, dropping coins in a prayer box, or reading up on the weekly newspaper to see what the gang’s been up to the past week, including a review of a niche movie should players let one of their party members rent one, once again showing how fun the world of Demonschool can be when the demons themselves aren’t on the battlefield.
Audio & Visuals
Demonschool features some excellent pixel work when it comes to creating its world and character sprites. The sprites in motion look absolutely wonderful with the team’s own style coming through perfectly, especially involving the designs of the demons and creepy battlefields players will fight in. The designs of the demons are decent enough and the bosses are extremely memorable, even if a few feel like references as well. It is nice to note that the character portraits feature the same type of aesthetic feeling of the sprites, a retro styling but more detailed, and these portraits feature a wide range of expressions and even cut-in slices when players chain together a combo attack in combat.
Unfortunately, there’s no voice work throughout Demonschool so this leaves the game’s background music to do the heavy lifting and for the most part it is successful as the soundtrack is filled with creepy tracks that can flip as easily as the mood does in the plot. One minute Faye might be making some dumb remark with a light-hearted track or a party member can be talking about snakes only for the next to involve demons swarming through a portal trying to open it wider with the music growing dark and sinister to match.
Overall
There is a certain level of love that can be felt when playing Demonschool. One that rarely gets touched on especially in a genre filled with trying to take itself too seriously at times and that is humor. There’s always a risk of inserting quirky goofy characters when the world is on the line but Demonschool manages to pull it off thanks to a strongly written cast of characters that makes the whole thing worthwhile, even if the combat grows tedious as time goes on and starts to drag down the whole thing. It feels like somewhere along the line parts of what made this tactical RPG more of an RPG were cut in favor of creating a more puzzle-focused combat system, but that may not have been for the best in the long run as it holds players back from the best parts of what makes this indie RPG enjoyable, the cast of characters and seeing what ridiculous thing might happen next as the plot unfolds day by day.
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