Kindergarden (Steam): School is still rough.

I tend to pretty savvy when it comes to video game releases. As you can tell from this very blog if you have actually read some of it, you would know that I haven't had a whole lot to rage about because apparently I know what I like. So rarely when I take a flyer on something does it bite me on the ass (*coughNightsOfAzurecough*). But I am not one to ignore recommendations either from sources I trust. It's basically how I found Undertale.

One of those sources is the Game Theorists' MatPat. He can be a polarizing figure on youtube, but I genuinely love his work. So when he said on a recent GT Live that this game is one of the best games to come out of 2017, that made me turn my head because were in July (at time of statement) and we already have like 5 Game of the Year candidates already. I fired up steam and saw the inexpensive price and decided why not take a shot on this one. 

KINDERGARTEN(PC)

What makes Kindergarten clever is that the narrative of the game is constructed over the individual stories of the characters. The primary arc of the story is that you are are young kindergartner in a very Groundhog Day situation where you are perpetually reliving monday morning as a bright eyed child out for another fun day in kindergarten class.

But as you play through, you learn the stories of the various children and learn that many of them revolve around one of the students, Lily, and how her brother has recently gone missing. In order to learn everything that has happened and to learn all of the games secrets, you need to properly befriend everyone by the end of the school day.

At the start of the day you can bring items or money you have earned,
as well as admire you Monstermon card collection.

And that's really it. There is not a lot of really introductory story to really explain things more than that. You learn from Lily in the very first school segment about her brother so that is not exactly spoilery, and you learn from each of the children right off the bat exactly what character archetype they are. But it really give you a proper setup of what kind of experience this is, it would basically be easier to explain what happened in my very first play through.

It was time to wake up and go to school. I didn't have any money in my piggy bank nor did I have any Monstermon cards. So without much to do I left my house and went to class. I said hello to Cindy, who asked me to her boyfriend, but told me off when I wouldn't put gum in Lily's hair. I tried to talk to Jerome, but he doesn't think I'm cool enough. After getting some weird pill from Nugget, I started to bother janitor. He didn't take to kindly to me sassing him, and warned me that if I didn't skedaddle, he would wipe up my blood with his mop. I called his bluff, and he proceeded to bludgeon me to death with his mop handle. 

Well then, THAT caught me off guard.  Yes, the world of Kindergarten is not just a playful romp with other children ending with show and tell. No, Kindergarten has a very very dark sense of humor about it and there a lot, and I mean A LOT of ways for you to get killed during the course of this game. It's actually pretty hilarious.

If I had to summarize how game play actually worked, I would say that it is very reminiscent of how old adventure games used to work, but a much more stripped down version of it. Think of it if they took old LucasArts games like Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion and stripped down the majority of the actions down to conversation options, and only item prompts when you have something you can use in the situation. It is very simple.

Navigation is easy too whether you are using either the controller or keyboard. Keyboard actually uses both arrows and WASD controls to move, and shift, enter, or space all function as a confirm button. The mouse click also works as well. They keep things simple in that you can only interact with certain objects, and they will always be marked with an exclamation point to signify that this is something you can interact with.

The rub is you only have a limited number of major actions that you can do. After you leave home for the morning, your day in Kindergarten is broken up into 5 segments: schoolyard, class, lunch, recess, and show and tell. During these periods you have 5 apples in the bottom of your screen to signify the major actions that you can perform during the course of that period. So while you can talk to and interact with most things, to make moves on the story you need be selective on what you will take, sell, use, or who you will talk to. You can also spend these apples to earn .25 cents for each that you don't use. 

It takes a very careful approach to deal with Cindy....

So your objective when you start a new Monday (and it is always Monday) is to decide what character you want to follow through on the story on, and try to decipher what items and actions you need to see it through to completion. Some of them can be done going to school with nothing. Some of them require money or items from other completed stories to finish.

There is also a collectible objective as well, as you play through the game you will find or earn Monstermon cards throughout the day. Some are hidden in plain sight, some require a puzzle to solve, some need an item, some are gotten from other characters, and etc.

As you play through the game and collected cards and talk to people through the various conversational options, you will unlock hints that can be accessed through the games menu. These hints can tell you tidbits of how or what you need to solve a specific character's objective to friend them at the end of the day, or the locations and how to get Monstermon cards you don't have. Some of the hints are more helpful than others because I haven't collected everything yet.

Kindergarten is not a very long game, to be sure. I think a cycle of like 24 Mondays I managed to get through all of the individual character stories and saw what I guess you could consider to be the "ending" of the game?  But from what I've read from other players, there is also an additional hidden ending if you can collect all the Monstermon cards. So it looks like there is still stuff for me to do.

Normally in these reviews I discuss the graphics or music but there isn't terribly much to say. It uses some simple but fluid sprite work that manages to look alive and rhythmic, but there isn't a whole lot of motion happening during scenes aside from a little walking. It's always a little funny when a death animation comes out of nowhere.

There is only like 3 or 4 songs in the whole game, and they make for decent background music I suppose but it's nothing I would catch myself humming. The title screen song, a game song, end of day and death jingles, and song for end of the game. So I suppose the longer it takes you to play the more grating it might get. It's a perfectly serviceable soundtrack for the length of the game.

I mean... We were all thinking it. The janitor just said it out loud.

I suppose I could complain about how much text you have to skip through as you play through the game, but that would be a foolish complaint since the game is 100% narrative based. I wouldn't say it's as dense as a visual novel but if you make mistakes through a run, that means you have to go through all the text over again, and sometimes that can be tiresome.

This doesn't feel like a game though that is going to have a lot of staying power after you have played through the majority of the stories. Because to go back and complete others you might have to go through the same dialogue options you have already read multiple times by the end of the game. Once you hit that point Kindergarten does admittedly lose a little bit of its fun factor. I only have a few more cards to get and I find myself lacking motivation to bumble through a lot of these same text options again.

But I can't really complain about the length of the game or difficulty, because the price of this game on steam is only a scant 4.99. So the fact that I got more than a few evenings of streaming and entertainment out of the game certainly says I got way more than paid for on this one. So any complaint that I have is a nitpick and really doesn't sullen the experience for me.

The fact that I only paid 5 bucks for the game and got at least well over 10 hours of entertainment for it says that it was a worthwhile purchase in my book. So if enjoy low stress decision based adventure games that don't require the tedium of excessive menus and options , Kindergarten is certainly worth a play in book. It's only a couple of bucks and it's pretty damn funny. It's certainly different from a lot of the stuff I've played on steam, so I'd give this a recommendation.

Seriously Cindy, what kind of home situation do you have?
Dial it back a notch.