Trigger Warning: This game immediately starts off with free to use sounding Ukulele music which is by far this game's biggest offense to humanity, from the get-go because of that Ukulele song (WITH VOCALS ADDED ON TOP AAAAAAAAAA!!!!) it probably will make you think otherwise of this game but as a lil choose your own adventure visual novel-dating-sim-RPG-class-esque experience you'll be surprised how engrossing it can be.

Oh and I guess considering that I already have jokingly added a trigger warning, speaking of, this game is NOT MEANT FOR KIDS, it presents itself as that game your dumb child (of which you do not take care of) would download on Apple Store or GooglePlay, in fact it looks exactly like those dress up games or the terrible Elsa surgery ones, but it is anything but, it includes references to drug use, self harm, alcoholism, I mean the developers' last two games were Weedcraft Inc and Oh...Sir!! so they really didn't start off as family friendly, but with that said it's mild, it is like Degrassi (I haven't done enough paths in this game to know if there is a school shooting ending but I don't think it tries THAT Hard).

Aesthetically this game is all over the place, with some music seeming free to use ukulele hell, and some art actually having some more soul to it, with that said the writing is inoffensive and even charming at times, from there many paths are open with multiple dating options essentially, depending from the get-go how many stats you put into what of your skills, this will dictate what person you end up meeting first, it is very common to keep meeting up with Richard because he is the one you get when you invest in Imagination, you may date later-on with characters you only meet up during your high school period or if you wanna play the long con, there are characters since preschool that you can build a life-long relationship with (as someone who never got to live their entire life in 1 city I always found this to be kinda weird, like, how un-eventful does one have to be to marry the girl they met FROM PRESCHOOL AND NEVER MOVE FROM THEIR TOWN?).

The way you progress sometimes can be very funny as well, because your characters could be 12 year old and already fully known algebra, or how about one of my characters I waited until she kissed a girl at 16 years old to then later on learn about the birds and the bees, the game is quite open for some funny commentary and shenanigans with what you choose, which would make this game be a perfect fit for streamer bait, or a game to play with your significant other and imagine you are raising a child or something.

The parent expectation system is a bit wonky (random as hell, sometimes their requests make no sense and it is just put there as little challenges to stray your character built off the path you were doing, you know! like real parents), but it is easy to work around once you learn how to balance, the game gives you a lot of passes too with the strike system, I found it extremely easy to calculate play vs gaining respect from parents, especially with money stuff later on. Here's a tip, you can raise their respect towards you only when you have enough respect points to use the last requests. Also, I feel as if there is some influence on the parent expectation system, especially if they are past characters you controlled, in a loop, one of my characters became the next parent, and due to his investment in physical, he asked his child to work with coaching.

There is a brain system that is basically, you uncover one state, you may find other stats, it is as addicting as scratching cards, after your first attempt at a character you'll realize a few hours in that the game loops you with a new character, from there you can explore other paths and the characters that come with it, guaranteed the game is simple and short but like most dating sim-type games, it is what it is, and until you go through all paths, that's pretty much it, there is some RNG here and there to keep you off track but most of the game's initiate comes from "Ok well, now I'm gonna go for a Jock built (easily the most overpowered and easiest build by the way, because obviously).

Believe me when I say, this game has more investment into RPG Class building than some so-called RPG games out there. There is a schedule system like some other dating sim games there, where you start off with 4 slots (after the toddler stage, you get more later on and can even upgrade it via money or requests from getting parent expectation points) to fill out what you want to do on that day, it is much like Monster Rancher and training a specific skill to gain more of that stat like +10 Strength, +5 wisdom. You also have action points that allow you to train your skills in certain locations without having to schedule them.

And then it hits me: ...This is Monster Rancher. This is literally Monster Rancher. And much like Monster Rancher, it is an extremely flawed RNG mess, but that only adds to the fun that is the special Monster Rancher, these games have to be often times rely heavily on the RNG and nonsensical randomness, some might call that unrealistic but what is less unrealistic than the unknown of chance? There are relying factors within life that our feeble human minds cannot comprehend, life is beyond any form of control and gives into chaos. Plus! It is a must-have for games like these, these games wouldn't work without those RNG features.

As for other complaints of it being unrealistic: I'm not entirely sure anyone would want to play a video game like real life where you actually cannot make up for your lake of mental health by working a part time job and getting happy points from eating out all of the food stocked at the diner.

The look and initial feel of the game completely underestimates the interesting characteristics this casual game has to offer, I honestly hate a part of these games because its like "Well now i am left with this weird, almost dirty pedophile idea of wanting to re-live my high school life so that maybe i could change my course of actions to fuck the mean girl who is a power bottom" and it's like, what am I? A Japanese developer trying to make everything about high school?

Save some from suicide, motivate others to become a musician, help some people not drop out from school, do some weird butterfly effect shit that will alter the life of these loopable characters that if you felt bad, you can always go and see their path the next loop.

There are 7 characters date paths that are all pretty good (or you know you can opt to not marry or date anyone at all in the end, feel free to lose all of your friends), you can max your skill tree to the end of like 15 SKILL TREE PATHS (with usual 13 tiers of each that you have to train on your planner like 3 times to then 6 times, to then 14 times, and so on) and it is quite fun to go out and try to unlock all of them, or even discover where you unlock them and what can even make them available for unlocking.

In order to specifically direct your character to a skill tree, sometimes you need to actually move to a specific location, and sometimes that location is only unlocked if you have a cutscene with one of the 7 characters that may appear depending on what stat you put into. For example, you can only go through the musician skill-list if you interact share a cutscene of the location with probably a character who is into poetry (basically learn poetry in school)

Another interesting thing about building a character in this game is that, much like school, no matter how much you wanna min-max into a single stat, chances are you have to have a balanced character to get good grades overall, it is very much like college in the sense that you’ll have a character majoring athleticism and seconding sociology, and up to a third skill too, this is very on par with how the game often times work as you’ll have at least 3 romancable friend characters by the end of most path cycles.

Again, the RNG being a huge factor, it is also based on what is offered to you what you can do with your life (which kinda reminds me of the chance factor in real life too, not everything is in our control as to what is accessible to us), sometimes the brain map will only have from the start, later on in the highschool years you can even combo the fuck out of the brain map and it is such a satisfaction when you do that (tip: uncover map fully, restart map with extra 60 brain points until you can no longer, get the most out of the stats)

If there is anything I could complain about fully, it has to be the final exam at the end of the game, no matter how much you prepare to it, it always seems to be against your favor, giving you a mess of things that you can barely get a combo with, you’ll be throughout the game getting As and Bs and then on the final exam: D!, unless being successful at the final exam is a build specific thing and I haven’t seen something related to that because by High school a lot of non-main high school career paths open up, basically there are some skills that are not good for high school, but may end up being what your future is, like clothes design, music, etc. Much like real life high school has not much love towards Physical skills, Imagination or Charm.

It is hard to say why, and maybe this is the nail of the coffin that makes me have the most stereotpyical woman moment, if this game wasn’t directly feeding into my need to play a more refined version of those flash games from 2000 where you build up a character that girls used to play, but this casual game hits all of the spots of addiction that makes you want to go out and unlock and see every path, and has honestly some very good motivational dialog that probably would actually help parents raising their kids?

Try not to judge too much this a book from it’s cover when it comes to this game, yes, it is EXACTLY that type of game, but it has a lot more to offer in the tinier details with it’s fairly expansive yet simple to get into character built systems, it scratches the itch left by those addicting PS1 games like Monster Rancher or some dating sim that was only available for Japanese audiences from the early 2000 on the Sega Saturn. On top of all of these factors, it is a game that I could install at any time whenever I feel like going another round to see if I could accomplish something new.