Ghost School is an indie RPGMaker horror game by Kurousagi of Usakakesoft. I attempted to find more information about this game developer but unfortunately didn't find much.

This English translation was translated by The MemoriesOfFear team, and I definitely appreciate their hard work to bring these games to fluent English speakers!

I do want to advise that I played this game a little over 2 hours, but did not complete the game. I made it over halfway through, but lost motivation and felt that I was not receiving a resolution to conflicts and questions the game presented me. Throughout my game play, I felt very little had changed or developed within the game, and I would be surprised to find that anything in this review changed by the end.

On with the review:

I had no problems downloading or installing this game. I was quite pleased when the title screen appeared to see a beautifully custom title screen with an interesting font and attractive main characters. It was wonderfully presented, and even the background music for the title screen was slightly jarring and created a spooky atmosphere I'm sure the author of this game was going for.

I also enjoy that a walk through was provided, along with information about the game and developer. The credits were displayed wonderfully, with complete links and information about the creators.

However, after that, presentation quickly fell short.

Worldbuilding/Environment/Graphics-3/5

The character awoke in a gritty atmosphere, which at first was really neat. I liked the dirty hardwood floor, and the contrast it had with the red, sprawling font, and the occasional bright red blood stain. It was very consistent. But, that was the only environment, for the entire game (the duration that I played it). It actually felt like it hurt my eyes after 2 hours of playing it. The maps were very spacious, and while I appreciate the maze-like complexity of them, as you attempted to find your way around broken and brittle floorboards, they all looked the same. I understand that the game is set in an abandoned school, but it grew impossible to tell one map from the other. On top of that, the proportions of the map were very unrealistic compared to the size of the sprites. It was very hard to keep me captivated in this type of environment. Why not add a carpeted room? Or a school courtyard? A tiled cafeteria or kitchen? Even a carpeted teacher's lounge? I wish the developer had done a little more research and world building, especially as this game was not heavy on character development to keep the player engaged.

Pushing that aside, I love the developer's use of the brittle floorboards. It was a neat gimmick, and definitely relevant to the world they had established. But it was the only mechanic used in that regard, and I think if the developer had applied this gimmick to other environments it would have made for a better playing experience.

On a technical aspect, and this is just a minor problem, the long, vertical crack in the floor is an impassable tile. That made exiting classroom 1-C a little frustrating as it was right outside the door.

The face sprites, though they were attractive, clashed immensely with the gritty tiles. They looked very out of place and oftentimes broke immersion. I almost think the RTP faces would have looked much better. It appears these sprites were resourced out, and I wish the developer would have passed these face sprites up for ones much more compatible.

For the environment and world building I give this game a 3/5, the saving grace was definitely the intricate maze of the school, which I thought was a wonderful design to compliment this developer's horror puzzle game.

Characters-1/5

For the characters, I was very disappointed. The face sprites are very attractive and well done, but I think they are mostly just mouthpieces for the developer to drive the plot. They fall flat. I had a couple problems with the dialogue.

One instance, is where the main character (Senna Akizuki) tells her ally, Rei, "Not to worry." Which I found insane! They both woke up, randomly, in an abandoned, haunted school, they should be doing nothing BUT worrying! The characters don't seem to take their situations seriously at all, and even joke with each other, as though the rotting carcass of a haunted school is completely nonexistent.

Another instance, again with Senna, she tells Rei that he "ALWAYS" barges into dangerous situations. The characters had just met each other! How in the world does Senna know that Rei "always" does a particular behavior? Especially as, up to that point, Rei displayed no such behavior of barging into dangerous situations, regardless.

Lastly, and this is quite small, Senna exclaims "My hero! Thank you so much!" to Rei, who's response is "No prob." I just found that exchange extremely awkward. What drives Rei to shorten the word "problem"? What kind of person is he? Unfortunately, I never found this out.

I couldn't quite personally connect with any of the characters, and on that note, why were they there in the first place? Why did none of the characters question that? They took it as fact, and accepted it. Nobody doubted their sanity, their consciousness, not one of the characters even worried about it. While the goal of escaping the building is a reasonable one, they didn't even have the secondary goal of discovering why they were there.

Although, this is of course, during my 2 hours of playtime. Perhaps this changed at the end (which I did not get to). But I think this is definitely an aspect of the story that should have been explored at the beginning as well.

I really found nothing redeemable about these characters, unfortunately. If they weren't even there, and it was a first person game with no avatars or dialogue whatsoever, the game probably would have progressed as normal.

Unfortunately, on this note, I have to give the characters a 1/5. I have to give a 1 because the characters were there.

Story-0/5

Which brings me to the plot. This is a very lengthy game, so this was my last straw. I was hoping that maybe if I couldn't enjoy the environment, or the characters, at least the developer could tell a wonderful, plot driven story.

Not exactly. In my 2 hours of playing, I accomplished nothing about knowing what the school was, who the characters were, why the school is haunted, what the spirits residing in this school did, or why they did what they did. I know nothing about this game. I can't even write a fair review of this plot because it really doesn't exist. Scary things happen because scary things happen, and I don't want to sound cruel on the developer, but I realized after playing the game for so long, I would not reach any resolution. All I had were questions.

I understand that the developer was inspired by corpse party, but where is that inspiration or passion? Where is that drive to impact your players, because I certainly don't believe it was put in this game.

And because of this, I will have to give story 0/5, as I really didn't experience one.

Gameplay Mechanics-3/5

Despite all of these shortcomings, there is one place that the developer definitely meets the expectations at. And that is game mechanics. The developer did a wonderful job of pushing the possibilities of development in RPGM to its full potential. As I already said, the intricate maze of the abandoned school was a nice touch. The note telling your character to "not run in the halls" was wonderful foreshadowing to one of the puzzle pieces.

I wish the developer had implemented this type of thinking into the remainder of his puzzles. A lot of the time, I was lost and confused, and constantly had to refer to the walk through because a lot of the puzzles didn't make much sense. Why are there so many boards around, and so many gaps? A lot of the game my time was spent hunting boards. Why couldn't the characters just rip one off of the floor? And why am I using a broom to grab something out of the toilet? And how could a player possibly even think about looking for the broom? I understand the desire for challenging puzzles, however oftentimes this was not challenging, it was just weird.

One small thing, and this is just nitpicky, is that sometimes the characters when they were speaking to each other, would have the silence bubble pop over their head. Why?? They were speaking, so where did the silence bubble come into play?

But, on par with the average RPG maker game, I feel like the developer definitely met the minimum expectations, and for that, I give game mechanics a 3/5.

Audio-2/5

Onto sound-

I had such high expectations at the title screen. It was designed very well, and had a neat little sound- and then the introduction. WHO thought that glaring "gr gr gr" with every letter per dialogue box was a good idea? It was awful! I couldn't figure out how to turn it off, so I actually wound up muting the sound after about a half hour. I later found out that this sound could be removed by an item in the menu. Bad idea! If the sound is there in the first place (which it really shouldn't be!) it should have explicit directions in the menu on turning it off! Especially as the 'items' section of the menu I never accessed regardless because the 'items' the player collects are very few and far between and don't particularly vary.

The music in the game is also very jarring. It has a noticeable pause when it loops again which is another reason I muted the sound.

The music is very poor, and not memorable at all.

However, the little click sound effects at the title screen was very nice.

That said, I give the music a 2/5. As I'm sure the developer put some time into accruing audio resources, and the title sound effects were quite nice.

Horror/Jump Scares-3/5

I did find the headless ghost slightly creepy, and sometimes felt creeped out by the audio effects at the bad endings. The gory cutscenes weren't bad, but they weren't good.

I did jump once, at the beginning of the game. But after that, the jump scares became quite predictable and boring, if not cliche.

Why were all of the endings just black with sound effects? It felt really lazy on part of the developer. I'm not much of a horror junkie to begin with, but that doesn't mean I don't know good horror games.

All in all, the horror aspect of the game was just average. I give it a 3/5.

This concludes my review of "Ghost School". I think the author had an interesting idea of strangers being trapped in an abandoned school, but didn't execute it very well. I think the author could have put much more research and passion into his project, as I think the potential is definitely there to be a very good game.

Adding up all of the possible points (being generous by adding the horror category) the developer has a 12/30 possible points, and that fraction is simplified to 2/5.

With the ratings on RMN being described as
1-Poor
2-Subpar
3-Average
4-Good
5-Outstanding

I think that is a very accurate score. I applaud the developer for completing their game, but they certainly have room for improvement, and I look forward to seeing more work from them, as I believe they have potential to be a wonderful game developer.