Hardcore High School

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.48
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.48
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.24
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.09
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.40
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.86
Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.50
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.78
Deep in the mountains lies a secret school, the fabled Hardcore High School, where all the most hardcore men and women from all over the country go to refine their hardcoreness. Now it's your turn. Except it isn't. After all, as you must already know... you are the principal! Of Hardcore! High! School! [faint echoes saying core... core... core and school... school... school..., but it's not really an echo, it's a guy backstage saying it]

Bear with me, grizzly with me, I feel I need to explain how this came about from summoning: I had two base root ideas: One, you are a principal summoning students to expel or not expel them. Two, "something where you summon stuff like in scribblenauts and some rock-paper-scissors stuff so it's, like, a game". So in the end, neither really worked out so I mashed them together, like potatoes and... more potatoes. And then the thing became a thinly veiled Otokojuku parody, because what comes to mind as super cool principal you want to play as is that series' Edajima Heihachi. This ludum dare did not go well for me, I couldn't really put the stuff I wanted to do in practice, but I hope you can still get a little something out it. Thanks if you try it out!

Update: Dreamcast version is up too now.
Tags: #hardcore

Comments20

LightningST
LightningST15 Apr 2024, 05:33
Didn't realize I had to hit enter to start. Lots of instructions, not sure what the point is
Frogman
Frogman15 Apr 2024, 10:58
It's always fun seeing what sort of completely unhinged concept will you come up with for every Ludum Dare. And this one was... certainly something :) Finally a game which accurately portraits me as an eldritch abomination. And that double-twist ending was certainly twisty!

The gameplay was a bit rough, though. It was a bit confusing having two separate people with the same portrait - at first I thought the flavour text & trouble level were just randomized, like your previous game - and I only got it in the second level. Fortunately, it was also pretty easy, so I never got stuck or anything, just confused. It was clearly not the focus here anyway.

Other than that, the graphics, story and VA were hilarious, and I really enjoyed them! Great entry!
blobo15 Apr 2024, 15:39
Good thing we had someone hardcore enough to hardcare about the cats until the end. RIP king.

As always, the more insane the plot, the better with your games! I'm glad to see the voices in the game, and the trailing monologue after the text box is finished writing is always a treat. Truly, the ohio-core school battling game of the ages.

Here's my full playthrough:

LDJam user 202408
LDJam user 20240815 Apr 2024, 15:42
lol I can tell you had plenty of fun making this badass hardcore game full of hardcornessness and other things (ice cream cone optionally included). I found this to be a nice change of pace from other games and I enjoyed going through it to the very badass end! it gave me a good laugh when you just forget what you were talking about and go on to talk about something else entirely :laughing: I should make a game like this one day.

for the gameplay part (choosing to accept of expel students) I found it fun but too simple mechanically so at some point I just kept accepting everyone until the meter is almost at 100% and I guess if it works it work right? I'm totally a badass-non-ghosts-bullet-spong and I love it!
LDJam user 376203
LDJam user 37620315 Apr 2024, 19:25
What a concept haha
The audio is amazing!
I never expected explosion will happen on expel student lol
silkworm_sweatshop
silkworm_sweatshop16 Apr 2024, 16:09
I remember watching a couple of episodes of Otokojuku and the principal is pretty much the only thing I remember :smile:. Always appreciate a humorous and unique kind of entry but I wish the gameplay was a bit more deep.
brunoklipel17 Apr 2024, 04:22
Okay, it took me by surprise :laughing: Very cool!
Foursay
Foursay17 Apr 2024, 05:26
THIS IS SO COOL I AM LITERALLY LAUGHING ALL THE TIME PLAYING THIS ENTRY HARDCORE FOREVERRRRRRRRRR!!!
tomi-vahamaki17 Apr 2024, 19:53
I really enjoyed this one :D The gameplay was simple but I liked the concept and the narration was hillarious!
wilsk17 Apr 2024, 22:20
This was very entertaining, I loved the voice overs and the humour. There was quite a lot of artwork and dialogue in there, I have no idea how you found the time.

The only feedback I'd have was that because in the battle screen both sides had similar graphics, I wasn't 100% quite sure which side was mine until the results screen after the fight. Maybe some uniforms, or school banners behind would be helpful as a hint?

Great job, I had fun playing it.
woona19 Apr 2024, 08:54
I love the humor and voice acting.

As for some feedback, I would prefer if keys for actual choices (expel or summon) were different from keys for progressing through the game, I think I accidentally summoned someone once or twice. Also, I couldn't figure out on which side were my hardcore dudes during battle, I think it was left side, but not sure.

Great job! But... where did you get my hardcore picture?
Dissonance Generator
Dissonance Generator19 Apr 2024, 19:41
What. The. Heck did I just click on!? This has got to be the strangest jam game I've played in a while. I love that there's so much (110% ridiculous) voice acting in here!

A bunch of the voiceover audio clips had an ugly speaker pop sound at the end after you're done talking. Maybe a bugfix version can clean that up? It's narrsty.
tykenn
tykenn20 Apr 2024, 00:43
If I was to sum up my experience with this game in one word, I'd say the game is...hardcore!
braktheman
braktheman20 Apr 2024, 05:01
Voice acting really brought it all together also love that you have a Dreamcast build of this. Nice job.
Aune
Aune21 Apr 2024, 16:43
Genius.
I would have loved to see the result if things had gone better.
runningopenloop
runningopenloop22 Apr 2024, 08:13
Wow, finally really get to mash that humor rating. :)
@frogman, apparently I now will be playing all of captaindreamcast's other games!
happyglitch26 Apr 2024, 14:58
This is the most hardcore game I ever played.
OadT
OadT1 May 2024, 14:43
Love the voiceaction and hardcore story! (Actually also liked the music and graphics) Stay hardcode!
OddballDave
OddballDave3 May 2024, 11:51
5:star2:'s. Would play again. You actually had me laughing during this one. Great fun. :8ball:

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