Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble - Initial Thoughts

About The Game (From the Steam Store Page)

"Well behaved women seldom make history." - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

This is the game where good girls get better by being bad!

In the 1920s, young women had a chance to change society--by misbehaving. Gather a gang of girls. Explore. Battle petty townsfolk with quick, naughty games: Fib, Flirt, Taunt... Win boyfriends and other useful prizes. Expose the town's depraved secret before it entraps your girls.

Explore four beautiful game boards, dozens of character cards, and thousands of dialog cards (worn and aged from decades of neglect) which comprise the zany world of an American small town in the 1920s.

Encounter nearly a hundred individual personalities. These denizens form the core culture of intolerance and repression your girls can overcome with wit, charm, and brazenness.

Conflict using a variety of naughty mini-games: Taunt, Flirt, Fib and others to stand up against bullies, cozy up to boyfriends, and evade oppressive expectations.

Conquer increasingly more powerful faculty and townsfolk as the story develops from the curious, to the weird, to the absurd, finally to collapse down a frozen crevasse of all too real inhumanity. Only the victorious will emerge, smirks on their faces, heels on the throats of the wicked, and their futures assured of freedom.

Acquire dozens of prizes to swing games in your favor and help others along your journey. Gain experience and level up the talents of your gang members. Win boyfriends willing to sacrifice themselves for affection.

Wind your way through an epic of literary satire in an fantastical world where nothing is real but all is true, during a mythic time of social upheaval. Help the young women trapped in this world transform it for the betterment of all -- by misbehaving.

Previous Playtime

2 hours

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This

This is the second game I bought on Steam and there's actually a really stupid story behind it. I was a latecomer to the world of e-commerce and modern finance. For the longest time, I did all my business in cash and had basically no presence in "the system." It wasn't until December 2012 that I even got my own checking account.

Now, hitherto, all of my online purchase had been made by buying those prepaid credit cards from the supermarket, but one of the perks of my new account was that it came with a debit card. At the time, this seemed very exotic and mysterious to me, so as soon as I got it, I resolved to give it a "test drive" by buying something online. Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble was on sale for about three dollars at the time, and the title made me chuckle, so I went ahead and did it.

That's really all there is to it.

Expectations and Prior Experience

Because of its unique provenance, I wound up playing this game right away. It was interesting, but honestly, I'm not sure I needed much more than two hours. It's a quirky, story-driven boardgame/rpg with a distinctive and charming voice, but I didn't actually find it very fun. If I recall, there are a lot of opaque and chance-driven mechanics that made playing through its (admittedly intriguing) story difficult to do in any sort of systematic way.

I expect this is going to be one of those games that is good for the first few hours before it starts to drag in the midgame and then will be a chore to replay after I finish before my deadline (most of the reviewers on its store page had fewer than 15 hours in it).

On the other hand, it does have a lot of attitude, and swagger is something I admire in an indie game, so I may find myself pleasantly surprised.

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