A cartoonish furry school simulator aesthetic on a ranged roguelite, it's pretty solid. There's a couple weird janky bugs and odd balance, but the latter is kinda hard to notice if you aren't paying attention.
Some of the animations and combat are great, but some are a little lacking. All of the characters are pretty adorable, but the static poses and faces can be uncanny at times. I get it's kinda low budget in that regard, but specifically the protagonist has the dopiest expression and look about him, especially when he's grinning. Every character kinda does this, but to a much lesser extent than the protag.
The story is pretty typical, but the writing is sometimes basic and meh. There's some interesting world building and background to the characters, but I'm not sure it leads to a lot. Sadly, there is no voice acting. I think it would've been funny to hear Cinnabitch constantly talking trash and raging at you.
Combat is pretty fun. Your base gun is not bad, and I found myself alternating using it in tandem with potion weapons. At first, potions seem like a very precious resource, and it kind of is, but the later stages really add a heavy emphasis on trying to round yourself in combat. Between specializing aspects of different potions (which can be annoyingly RNG in a few layers), you can focus on using weapons, throws, or consumable effects, with all of them being different. You can rapidly craft in the middle of combat, and use different potions in different ways rapidly. For example: A ton of enemies spawn and surround me, and it looks bad. I can drink a water potion for high speed maneuvering, and then craft a lightning potion to try and chain attacks. Or throw a fire potion, and finish them off with a water potion gun. You're not meant to use the same setup run to run, since you don't have much control over whatever specialization you end up with, but the guns all served a decent purpose. I liked the air rifle for sniping, and taking out tough enemies and bosses, but I used the hell out of my base potion gun to preserve potions, and used my potion weapons when they'd be more effective. This is, without a doubt, the best part of the game (once you can roll resources, and start budgeting and dispensing as needed). It makes the boss fights much better. iFrame dodging is a thing, and pretty important to the gameplay, too. In case anyone wanted to know, it has a cooldown, and there is no stamina function attached. You can get an extra dash through an Agility badge, and maybe reduced cooldown (idr), but I didn't have those on my first clear, and badges are things you pick up for a run--not permanent upgrades.
Animations overall are solid and lively, and the world is colorful and cartoony for an appropriate aesthetic. Seasons sometimes change for the academy, but the rooms can be bland at times. I think there needs to be a little more detail in them with objects or lights, or something. It's just a bit sparse for my taste, even in the academy sometimes, where NPCs sometimes wander around, but mostly just idle in varying places.
Difficulty: Hard starting out. Kind of expected, and most roguelites vary on this. There's various progressions, and some of it is tied to the affection with characters. This is because you can unlock ingredients through them, which can be used as a choice on how certain potions function. This isn't really a problem, since the base ingredients for all of them are perfectly fine (and generally my preferred anyway). It's just kinda odd, I guess, but I beat the game without unlocking all the potions, or even all the characters. There is a skill tree, which is very impacting, and where grinding your inevitable win will be. Normally, I pick up the healing nodes when learning a game, but I ended up beating my first run with the bonus stardust (level up/skill currency), and some weapon nodes instead, and had an okay-ish set of badges. More than anything, it was just playing my butt off, and really leaning into the various potions and the effects I specialized in. This is what makes it an enjoyable challenge to me. Post-game has 'Ambition' which is like Heat from Hades, or extra challenge parameters, and the bottom one you can set is to disable your skill tree. I can't even imagine. lol
Some enemies have some pretty crazy attacks (ultra fast dashes, especially in the Biology portion), and Melee weaving--which is very powerful--can be super risky, and sometimes not worth it. Strategically speaking, it was great to use this, but you have to observe and learn the enemies to find out when it's safe to combo this in. There's some pretty great badges for this, but you can avoid them and just try to lean on your guns and alchemy if you don't want to bother. The game does have a bit of a rating system based on your time (unsure if other metrics affect it). I didn't seem to struggle with getting a decent grade, but I'm sure running all A+ is possible with some good RNG, player skill, and the skill tree. I wasn't far off on my first completion, and that was around 4 hours in (felt kinda like a lucky run, for the most part).
I ran into a bug with the Water Potion dodge resulting in animation locking, Dash having a temporarily frozen cooldown, and my basic shot being disabled a few times, as well as my directional--seems tied to the elixir accept screen in the middle of combat. Rare, and not lethal, but you can take several hits completely out of your control. I don't know why the exact trigger for this is the way it is, as most of the time I could hold an air rifle shot with it, so it might be tied to trying to fire or reload the base gun as you dash, too.
Recommend: If you're into the aesthetic and gameplay, it can be pretty fun. It's not a high budget game, but it's solid with the combat through the various options in alchemy; multiple guns to activate, throw effects, drinking effects, and badges.
Though my main PC is a 7800X3D / 4090, my backup PC (which I recently used to travel) ran this with medium graphics just fine on an i7-8700k / GTX 1070 Ti at 1440p, 120 FPS.
