School 666 Review (PC)

I’m not entirely sure if I’m an inept clone of Morpheus from The Matrix or a high school janitor, a stand-in mascot for Doom Slayer or a steaming pile of turds slumped over the shoulders of a ritualistic student. At this point I don’t know what I am, much less what it is that I’m doing. But I do, however, know that this place—a school birthed by dozens of strange anomalies and abnormalities—has a lot of secrets to share. I can’t say that I know for certain what School 666 is about, or even which category it falls under. In fact, there’s a bit of everything peppered over this—arcade-style first-person action; anomaly analysis à la Office After Hours; and a multi-dimensional cortex of peculiar boss battles with oddly sinister twists and set rules.

Suffice it to say, School 666 is one thing above all else, and that’s a heartfelt love letter to the hierarchy of object-finding psychological horrors. Sure enough, if you were to staple the likes of The Exit 8, Shinkansen 0, and The Cabin Factory to the Holy Trinity of anomaly-centric puzzlers, then chances are you would find the looming outline of School 666 skating circles beside its monolithic shadow. The one thing that gives it that little extra oomph here, of course, is the fact that it’s a co-op game, and not just a run-of-the-mill replica of another IP. Saying that, is that enough to give it a leg up on the competition? Eh, let’s find out.

A Fork in the Road

School 666 doesn’t stray that far from Lokin Studios’ previous multiplayer horror, Hospital 666, by which I mean the signature gameplay structure is more or less the same, with progression based solely on locating anomalies and the various decisions that you make over the course of the campaign—identifying them, choosing which route to take, and making gradual changes to your strategy to ascend or descend, for instance. If you happened to miss out on that episode, though, then it goes a little something like this: a group of students find themselves in an endless corridor—a world in which anomalies take the form of inanimate objects and other subjects. Alone, and without a great deal of guidance to aid their efforts, they have the job of figuring out how to survive. If there is an anomaly, they must travel backward, and if there isn’t, they go forward.

The game itself can be played either alone or with the assistance of up to four players. Regardless, the idea is all rather straightforward: you travel through sections of the school, intuitively searching for anomalies and other environmental oddities, and then decide how to progress. The further you go, and the more anomalies you successfully locate, the tougher the game begins to get, with each passing milestone opening a portal to a “boss fight” of sorts. And that’s really all you have to worry about here: the bosses, as well as the special rules that each of them bring to the table. But more on that shortly.

Under Your Nose

Anomalies are a bit of a double-edged sword in School 666, mostly due to the fact that they’re painfully easy to identify—a convenience that also dampens the need to scrub the environment like a hawk. It’s due to how obvious these cloak-and-dagger fiends are that, from an atmospheric standpoint, a lot of that dread and unkempt suspense is thrown straight out of the window. And that’s a shame, really, because while it is a horror at heart, the significant lack of actual scares and hidden dangers is enough to steer it towards a different direction. It isn’t quite a comedy, but you get the point. It’s easy enough, which is a blessing in disguise. Though, regrettably, said blessing does also steal a lot of that signature charm that made Hospital 666 that little bit more frightening.

The good news is, locating the anomalies isn’t the sole purpose of your adventure. Don’t get me wrong, it does eat up roughly eighty percent of your time, but thanks to the game’s generous inclusion of lore and the aforementioned “boss” battles, there is, thankfully, a lot more to this experience than what initially meets the eye. Are all of these things enough to contribute to a grand infrastructure comprised of fluid mechanics and seamless designs? Absolutely not; the level of clunkiness in the mini-games has something to do with that, for sure. That said, it’s clear that the solo developer who birthed the sequel to Hospital 666 has every intention of tightening a few screws and making School 666 the best it can possibly be. Sometimes, you just can’t ask for anything more than that.

Verdict

School 666’s jumbled and often chaotic format might prove to be an insurmountable challenge for those who’ve little experience with psychological-anomaly hybrid horrors. That said, with a little patience and a whole lot of practice, you should be able to scrape a proportionate amount of ghoulish entertainment out of the succeeding chapter in the series. And sure, while it isn’t technically perfect, much less a visual master class in hidden object-like horrors, it is, on the other hand, a solid foundation for a great co-op game. It could be that it’s still leaps and bounds from finding that rightful place atop its chosen throne, yet judging by the responses from the creator, it’s highly likely that it’ll find its way sooner than later. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Sure enough, School 666 is still a relatively clunky game with its own share of problems and teething bugs. Nevertheless, for what’s it’s worth, I still think that there’s an oddly entertaining story to be told here, if not in the form of the anomalies who flesh out its world, then in the deeply rooted lore and open-ended love letters pertaining to several familiar IPs. As for whether or not it’s worth picking up at the time of writing, eh — it’s a tough one to call. If, however, the likes of Hospital 666 was enough to give you a reason to stick around long past the introductory chapter, then chances are you’ll find enough here to warrant the full nine yards.