i shall steal abra's joke and say that i give this game 5 stars in art, 5 stars in story, 5 stars in music and 0 stars in humanity :D
(SPOILERS)
this is such an original and creative interpretation of the school of dark arts theme, and just an awesome concept in general! the idea of a secret school focused on torture is great on its own but it's super impressive how it's used to its fullest potential. torture methods being a balance between pain and art, the graduation project and the consequence of failing it, even small things like mathematics and biology being some of the subjects goes to show how much thought was put into this world. and on top of a great foundation, the plot is really interesting! i got really invested in knowing if the main characters would come up with a good enough idea for a torture device (please don't take that out of context) :>
before delving into the plot, i have to mention that the presentation is amazing! the pixelart is perfect, everything feels like it has the right amount of detail. the characters being so tall is a neat change from the common rpg maker character style, and the variety of poses and movements they can do is really great. i especially loved the gorey scenes; the messed up look of the tortured people, the big (but not excessive) amount of blood, their small movements as they breathe, the fact that they're usually faceless... from the artstyle i still can't tell if in the presentation projects they used real people or not, and tbh that's really unsettling haha. and the busts are great too! limin's rugged artstyle fits the game like a glove, and the amount of unique character designs is really impressive (at the start i assumed only harry would get portrait privileges so it was a fun surprise to find each new one!). i did notice harry's sprite and busts look somewhat different (maybe it's just the hair color), and at times it felt a bit jarring, but it didn't take me out of the game of anything. and of course, the best art in the entire game, brian's drawings. 11/10 no notes. overall this game looks absolutely fantastic! (almost forgot; the machinery-like dialogue box did not go unnoticed. such a cool detail!)
and the music!! in the first scene when that weird mechanical reversed sound played for the first time, i knew i was in for good shit haha. super atmospheric and well made. whenever a track played it fit the scene so perfectly that i almost forgot it was there (that's a compliment i swear-). super moody. and the sound effects were great as well; their scarcity definitely made each one pop out a lot. the presentation is just top notch!
one of the things that sticks out a lot in this story is how... realistic everything feels. i've already said there's a great attention to detail in the worldbuilding, but the general plot and the succession of events felt incredibly real. like, if there was actually a school of torture irl and this was the graduation project, i'd believe this game is exactly how it would play out haha. the main characters pitching in different ideas while overlooking their flaws, getting advice from different people who graduated, getting anxious as time goes on and they haven't progressed as much as the others... and the way each idea for a project gets picked apart and analyzed, bringing up real concerns of why it wouldn't work, really goes to show once again how much effort was put into the writing. it would've been easy to make everything super over the top but the more grounded feel makes the plot genuinely compelling; i really wanted these guys to make their own torture machine, damn it!
but obviously everything here isn't grounded in silly reality, and when the plot gets creative it's always extremely fun lol. the different graduates harry and his friends go to being actual real life people?? including fucking david szymanski?!?! (AND YOU GOT PERMISSION FROM HIM WTF THAT'S AMAZING?!?!???!?!?!?) it legit took me a while to process it when it happened haha. but it honestly fits the story? like, if the point of this world is that this school actually exists but it's secret to everyone else, using fictionalized versions and/or descendants of real people makes perfect sense. like, you can't prove they didn't attend a torture school, can you? (and on that note the pop culture references (which were really amusing as well, the jojo's one made me actually scream lmao) also work in establishing how everything takes place in the real world!) maybe i'm reading too much into it haha, but it's really clever! and of course, i can't talk about creativity without mentioning the torture methods, cuz... idk if they are original ideas or not, but HOLY HELL they're so clever!! each one is extremely creative and actually getting to see them in action was gnarly as hell. a couple of them made me physically flinch in concept alone lol. i got a little worried that the project harry would go with maybe wouldn't quite reach expectations, but nah man, the vitruvian is actually diabolical. this game is filled with so much creativity and polish!!
i will say there were some points in the story where i felt conversations were going on for a bit too long, or getting somewhat repetitive. the overall banter and jokes are fun and make the dialogue really amusing! but some scenes (like the ones in the cafeteria) could've been a bit shorter, and at the meeting scenes i feel like the group explaining their project ideas could've also been cut, since they've already talked about them before. and this is a nitpick but it got a bit hard to tell apart the members of harry's group that weren't harry, maybe their names could have differently colored text to make it easier to tell them apart visually? also, i found a bug (i played the 1.4 version) where in david's room, next to one of the posters, you can go through the wall. not a big deal ofc! but i thought i'd mention it.
but yeah, overall this game was fantastic!! super original and all the ideas were done great justice. i was honestly a bit skeptical of how this jam's theme could be used in creative ways (nothing against schools of dark arts, it's just not a concept that intrigues me a lot personally), but this game proved it can be used to its full potential. amazing job!! :D
(only 3 stars in pain though; the playing experience was mostly completely harmless. except the moment where we're reminded of the e.t. atari game of course, this should be reported just for that /j)