Science Girls Demo Impressions

Ok, let me explain. I was going through yesterday’s news when I found this demo impressions piece from Rock, Paper, Shotgun about an RPG called Science Girls. It’s made by Hanako Games, which as far as I can tell is a tiny indie developer looking to make games for girls. A developer that doesn’t just make pink games with dresses and all that girly B.S., but a developer that asks the question “why aren’t there more girl games with unicorns instead of prom dresses?” The game itself is billed as an RPG in which you control a group of school girl scientists as they battle an alien plant invasion, or something. Clearly, this game is targeted at me.

The game unfolds into 3 main things to do; talking, fighting and exploring. The talking is done through some still images and text boxes. Occasionally you get to pick an answer to a question, which might have some impact on something, maybe. The exploring is simply a basic grid showing where you are and the areas unexplored. The combat is where it gets interesting. Well, actually it isn’t. It feels like very generic turn based RPG combat with less animation than an early Pokemon game.

You simply take it in turn to attack or defend. Each member of your party has HP and SP and… well it’s a very basic JRPG, you know the rest. It’s also very hard to not die. In the demo you start at the top of the school and have to go down stairs to get to the teachers outside (who are fighting the plants, I think.) You need to have visited every room and beaten the plants inside on each floor before progressing.

By the time I reached the second floor, me and a couple of the other girls from the Science Club had banded together, but were in poor shape. The doughnut I found on the stairs could only serve one and it made a negligible impact on my stats. The first fight had us all downed and me returned to the game’s menu. Perhaps grinding is the answer? I tried again, this time sticking around upstairs to get some totally-awesome XP. But the enemies just whittled down my HP more during battle than I could ever hope to gain back from the loot dropped.

Trying again on the second floor I got through all but the last room. This last room was one of the flights of stairs, which for some reason you need to have cleared before you can go down, even though you could just go down the other set of stairs. Here I was put up against six enemies which are not only strong, but can also “mirror” themselves. The mirrored opponents only take one shot to take down, but you don’t know which ones they are. I gave up after two attempts.

So, on my next re-start I made sure to focus. Efficiency in battle is vital, as is making sure you keep an eye on when party members can have their stats increased. I found keeping track of this did actually make the game a bit easier, but it still felt like quite the chore. Not helped by the fact the way attacks are dodged during combat seems to have come from the Sonic Chronicles school of thought. In some battles I was going for three rounds and missing every one of my attacks. It was most frustrating.

As I continued my epic quest through the school, I noticed that the between-battle chats with my BFFs from the SC (Science Club for you not cool enough to know) were getting educational. Learning how rockets work or what a plant is, me and my girls really were the smartest kids. But I bet that cute popular guy never noticed us T_T. I bet he’s like a level 2 guy with like an accuracy of like 3. I don’t like even want him in my party anyway, like, this is me and my girl-friend’s club for girls. Not smelly boys! Eww!

Where was I? Ah yes; even with all my careful planning and levelling up, the fight against the annoying, mirroring enemies was still way too frustrating. Perhaps I’m not meant to get past this point? Either way, it was totally not worth my time, especially because I like have an afternoon of watching America’s Next Top Model planned. Maybe if Tyra Banks was in my Science Club I could win. I wish she was, then the boys would like me. *giggles*

Like, this one time I was totally into this guy in the cafeteria and that Samantha girl totally like sat next to him and I was all like “no wai did she do that” and she looked at me and was all like “uh hum I did” and I went to Jennifer and was like “like OMG guess what” and she was like “OMG what” and I was like “so Samantha is totally hitting on the cute buy I like” and she was like “OMG!” and then she called Nicole who was like “no wai” and we were like “yes way”. Samantha is such a whore. I want a pony.

You can download the demo for yourself right here.