Made by middle school students who won a contest sponsored by PlayStation, which also featured judges from XBox and Nintendo, and developed using Kickstarter money, this is a 2D platformer about the secret lives of middle school students and a teacher. You navigate the halls of the school while avoiding symbolic enemies, and learn about the backstory behind each character. Complete all four characters' stories, and you get to see the true ending.
The cast of playable characters are:
- Isabella: A girl who is bullied for her awkwardness, especially by Oakley.
- Oakley: A bully who is secretly gay.
- Taylor: A boy who gets bad grades no matter how hard he tries.
- London: A teacher who secret suffers from depression, and tries to hide it from her students. Her coworkers, meanwhile, are very aware.
Enemy characters and attacks are often symbolic, with anthropomorphic bad grades attacking one boy who struggles in school, and bullies attacking using insults that literally hurt.
This game contains examples of:
- The Bully: Oakley, who you also play as to find out what's eating away at him.
- Closet Gay: Oakley, who takes his frustrations out on other kids.
- Escapism: Taylor, the kid who possibly has a learning disability, plays video games to escape his problems. One level takes place inside the game he's playing, only for his real life problems to enter the game!
- Expressive Health Bar: Every character has a picture of their face next to their life meter, but as they take damage, the face changes. For Oakley, the bully, he actually changes his expression to try to look tougher when he gets low on health, as if trying to hide the pain inside. For London, the secretly depressed teacher, her face looks pained if she exhausts her attack power, which is shooting compassion hearts.
- Gendered Insult: The only insults that hurt Oakley, the bully who's secretly gay.
- Hidden Depths: Every character has more to them than is obvious at first. This is revealed in multiple ways, such as thought balloons you can read that show the character's thoughts, and end-level narration. Or even in the actual levels themselves, such as symbolic obstacles and boss fights unique to each character, such as Oakley having to fight his darker impulses.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Eating ice cream refills Isabella's life. However, the other three characters refill their life by collecting other objects, so it's less an example of food specifically refilling your life, as it is the fact that each character has their life refilled by collecting their favorite thing. For Isabella, that happens to be ice cream.
- Platform Game: A 2-dimensional one with hand-drawn art.
- Stepford Smiler: London, the depressed teacher, hides her depression with a smile. Though her Expressive Health Bar changes to show what she really feels. And her internal monologue shows what she really thinks.
