Mutant Mayhem
The oddly named Dead or School is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity struggles to survive deep underground, forced from the surface from an array of dangerous mutants. As a curious young girl named Hisako, who is recently made aware of the wonders of what the world was like before the war, you’ll team up with a small group of survivors, all in an effort to establish a school on the topside, allowing Hisako to fulfill her dream of laughing, learning, and playing with her friends. It’s an interesting premise, with some engaging gameplay, but the title is plagued by an extremely poor translation and some design problems that really hold the game back.
Most of the time I spent with Dead or School was via a docked Switch, not just because the framerate was better in several instances, but because of the incredibly small details that are a bit harder to see when played on the smaller portable screen. Hisako herself is microscopic in some battles, and several menu prompts and UI elements can clutter up the screen to the point where it can be almost impossible to see what is going on, especially if you’re trapped in the bottom left of the screen when the camera is fully pulled back. (see below picture) Dead or School can often give off the visual identity of something you’d remember playing on the 3DS or early Playstation One games, with its mixture of low-resolution 3D graphics and hand-drawn 2D images.
Now, before I dive into the game too much further, I will point out that much of Dead or School was made by a group of three individuals, who created the game on a fairly limited crowdfunded budget. I placed a certain level of expectation going in of what to expect from a game like this, not hoping for the greatest game I’ve ever played, but one that at least felt competent and polished enough to be enjoyable. While I did have a pretty enjoyable time with the game, it’s hard to overlook the constant issue of items getting stuck in the environment, the frustrating level spikes, the awful camera when its pulled back, or the absolutely poor translation, a title that has constant spelling and grammatical errors, an issue that really should have been addressed when Marvelous Entertainment took the title under their wing as its publisher.
Now, that said, I found many aspects of the game to still be extremely well-thought-out and put together. The story of Hisako wanting to find a school to spend time with her friends is a pleasant one, filled with a lot of your typical anime positivity cliches. The plight against the mutants can often result in dialogue that is so-bad-it’s-good, and while it can certainly have that 13-year-old fan fiction approach to its word usage, it still made me chuckle a few times and kept me entertained. The game does have a few moments of fan service, considering the lead artist is known for his work as a hentai and doujinshi artist, but it is surprisingly tame by comparison. There are a few upskirt shots and some angles typical of anime fan service, but it’s very few and far between.
Dead or School is a 2.5D side-scrolling shooter and slasher that can often have the action at an angle, straight on or close up, or pulled so far back that it’s hard to really see what’s going on. One level, for example, has you making a jump as the camera is pulled back and angled to the point where you can’t even see the jump, largely because most environments are baked in some very dark locations. It’s not a constant problem. but it is one that does continue to rear its ugly head from time to time. You’ll explore a vast array of different underground environments, with several locations on the topside, such as running through an empty Japanese shopping district. Most locations have moving platforms, doors to unlock, switches to flick, anchors to jump from place to place, and elevators that allow you to get up close and personal with the invading swarms.
Combat is through a selection of three different categories; melee, gun, and launcher. Each category will have a varied selection of different options such as katana blades, large hammers, assault rifles, submachine guns, sniper rifles, to devastating rocket or grenade launchers. Each gun can be upgraded to deal out more damage or equip boosters that increase your defense, provide drone support, or offer you up more experience on a kill. Each weapon can also have its own set of perks as well, sometimes doubling up with the boosters, like having three drones providing assistance if you have that weapon and those boosters each equipped to that one weapon. There are so many boosters and perks that you can create some interesting combinations that keep you in the fight longer, dealing out swift mutant justice with little to no effort. This weapon system is frankly the best part of this game and can allow you to experiment with some insanely impressive builds. My biggest gripe with combat is that several enemies have lock-on attacks that will hit you regardless of their distance to you. While you can keep moving and roll around to try to prevent the attack from making contact, some of these attacks feel artificially cheap as opposed to providing a skill-based challenge.
As you kill enemies, you’ll find new weapons, materials to upgrade your guns, and cash to spend at various shops in case you stumble across a good deal. WIth how frantic it can get in combat, it’s unfortunate that you have to stop and manually pick everything up. You can find decently spaced save points throughout each location to customize your loadout, sell guns, or break them down into components to upgrade your current arsenal even further. While there are save points, they are largely just for progress as dying anywhere in the level will place you right back at the start, forcing you to traverse the entire stage to get back to where you had previously died. You also have a skill tree based on each weapon type that allows you to boost your offensive and defensive capabilities via a chalkboard that could have benefitted from seeing more of it at a time.
Most locations will often present a new enemy type, but you’ll find that most mini-bosses tend to be the same few throughout much of the game. The overall bosses themselves are decent enough with their own offering of special attacks to avoid, as you dodge and jump around them, using your collection of weapons to cut them down. Dodging at the right time will slow the world around you, Bayonetta-style, allowing you to get a few quick licks in while you have the chance. Progressing through the levels will often trap you in small areas with a few waves of enemies until you defeat them. As you backtrack through the Metroidvania flavored environments, you’ll see the same corridors refill with those same enemies again, but you’re free to run right past them this time should you choose.
The set up of most levels will have you finding shutters or various doors that need keycards or other means to open them and you’ll end up backtracking fairly often to seek out not just those keys, but the people who have initiated distress calls for help. Being that you’ll want to populate the school with new friends, you’ll often take them on board your train, as you push through the tunnels to reach new locations. While most of the enemy types are a variety of mutants, there is an interesting humanoid foil to Hisako that does serve the game well and provides some engaging conversations about the history of the war.
With dialogue like “why did people in the past wore this clothes that’s hard to move.” it’s a shame that the translation wasn’t a bit better as it currently adds to the list of things that this game could have benefitted from with a North American release, let alone with actually securing a somewhat major publisher in Marvelous. Much of the dialogue will sometimes not even fit within the giant speech bubbles provided and several characters will phrase things in ways that will make you wonder if this game was translated solely through Google Translate without anyone double-checking the results. Again, despite these errors, the story itself is still enjoyable, if a bit predictable and generic at times.
Dead or School is certainly a flawed experience, but the overall sense of combat and progression is its strongest element. The artwork is really good, for its female cast anyway, and it’s unfortunate we didn’t get more of it here, given the professional background of the lead artist. The visuals of the actual gameplay; however, leave a lot to be desired, even for a small indie team. The camera can often feel pulled far too back and it, combined with several contributing factors, can make some encounters much harder than they have any right to be. All that said, I still think Dead or School is certainly worth a look for those that engage in Metroidvania titles, despite there being far better options out there. If you can put up with the poor translation and pulled back action, Dead or School does give you a decent bang for your buck.
A review code of Dead or School was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review and played on a Nintendo Switch.
All screenshots were taken on a Nintendo Switch.