School's Out! Academagia Demo Released
Hogwarts-simulator-in-all-but-name Academagia now has a demo out! And dear lord, this game is every bit as in-depth as Kieron described in his awesome impressions article. I was laughing out loud at the endlessness of character creation, not to mention some of the skills. Greengrocery? How important is greengrocery to a young wizard? Just how bad is the dining hall food? Should I put the points in gossip instead? Or a familiar? A rat? A cat? A bat?
It's utterly bewildering. Spellbinding, even. Everything about Academagia screams labour of love, and you should almost certainly check it out for that reason alone. The demo lets you play for half an hour, which is probably only enough time for your face to begin to unscrunch itself from the balled up paper-bag expression this game will reduce it to in moments. And if you look at the official site, you'll see the developers are adding even more adventures, items, locations, skills, abilities and actions every single month.
I think a few of you are going to fall head over heels in love with this one. Kieron actually ended his impressions by saying that it's far too much of a specialist product to not have a demo, but now there's a demo! So, yeah. Take a look. And here's a four part video tutorial to ease you gently into the game's muggy waters. You could definitely go fumbling through the game yourself (as I had some success doing (by "some" I mean I got mauled by a lion on my first day at school and caught fire the following Wednesday)), but if you're after something more organised, these are what you want.
