More people know the spookier cover image
than this one.
than this one.Click "PLAY" button, and let's studying [sic] together, because knowledge is power.
— Viktor Strobovski, while starting an early version of the game
Advanced Education with Viktor Strobovski (also called Advanced Education and AEwVS) is a game based on Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning. In the beginning, it was declaredly a Fan Game which was heavily based on Baldi's Basics, dropping the 90's edutainment motif in exchange for a hardcore one that gave it a darker tone, more murderous characters,note more difficult math, and more complicated mechanics such as littering and lockpicking. Other than that, you could fill a page with things AEwVS and BBiEaL had in common.
During this time, it gained a lot of attention, and many people who played games based on BBiEaL played AEwVS for its uniqueness. After that, naturally, it dropped in popularity in exchange for more updates, a divergence in story, characters, aesthetic and gameplay, and a more niche fandom who had the free hours required to experiment with items, beat the levels and collect achievements for the first time. As of now, it still remains that way, despite furtherment in divergence, content, media, and community.
The player is Angellica, who has for an unknown reason, entered Viktor's school. Like in BBiEaL, Angell has to collect 10 notebooks in each level, almost each with an unsolvable problem, while avoiding the pursuing Viktor as well as the many other employees of the school who will attack her. The game is split up into floors, each with their own teacher who serves as the main pursuer, and with their own NPC characters as well. As Angell wanders through the building, she begins to discover the story of the curse afflicting the school.
Advanced Education with Viktor Strobovski contains examples of:
- Antagonist Title: The titular Viktor is the main chaser of the game, though only for the first floor.
- Art Evolution: The game turns from an old-style, supernatural, dark horror game about a bloodthirsty, nonsensical labyrinth of a school into a golden, Greek-style, anomaly-free facility about animal-based robots protecting, maintaining and refining the production of pure panacea. And none of the robots are scary. Not to mention that literally everything in the game has, on average, one redesign.
- Ax-Crazy: Viktor Strobovski. With an axe.
- Berserk Button: Applied to almost every character in the game, apart from a few who either don't have a button to start with (apart from seeing you), or who aren't enemies at all. Most of them are caused by the curse, which means that in reality they're just waiting for your imminent failure to happen, so it can prey on the characters' internal annoyance and amplify it into bloodlust.
- Viktor is the obvious example, working almost exactly like Baldi. However, it's later revealed that he's doing it for fun, especially during the extra notebook chase sequence where you're required to get all of the answers right, although the last one is possible this time, meaning he knew the other examples were impossible all along.
- Marzia is the most extreme example, yelling over the top of her lungs, despite moving slowly in the beginning.
- Do not break the school rules in school too many times, or the Head Teacher will eventually take you to be executed a violent death, while pulling out all the stops to make you suffer during the escort.
- Also, don't neglect Mr. Mix, or he'll do the same thing to you before he throws you into a cauldron.
- Christmas Episode: The Christmas Curse is this. It takes place after Angell breaks the curse, and reveals that she considers the school's staff her new family. Of course, as you can tell from the title, the curse returns. It may also count as Ironic Episode Title, since it isn't about education, but is a Grinding Game where you have to spend time picking up Christmas decorations and placing them in all the places where they need to be...as well as other things.
- Creepypasta: Was initially designed specifically to be scary, and as such included Mr. Mix and Smile Wolf as early characters, also including paintings of various creepypasta images found on the internet.
- Curse: Cast onto the entire school by an unknown entity as an Excuse Plot to turn all its members evil (so the audience could adore them without them just being evil and dangerous to do so with), except those with purer souls, such as Angell, Erie,note Scrina and Albert.
- Controllable Helplessness: You can jerk your head while being carried, or even spasm during an electric shock, but that's about it.
- Demonic Possession: The Curse.
- Easter Egg: Lots of memes, especially in the Language notebooks. One of the History subjects is also memes.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Exaggerated with "Puss Mode", which ends with Viktor telling you to fuck off and play the actual game.
- Edutainment Game: Exactly what forged AEwVS from BBiEaL. But the math notebooks just contain more complicated arithmetic, the language notebooks just contain random sentences with missing letters inlaid with
memes, and the history notebooks don't seem to test very much apart from a few topics including some notable histories, trivia about the game itself, and, you guessed it, more memes. And there won't be any other notebooks or levels after that, aside from the Panacea PAP Station, which requires you to mend and solve a stylised Rubik's cube to get to. - Evil Teacher: Pretty self-explanatory. However, the History floor may imply that the teachers and other characters aren't trying to kill Angell out of free will. This is also subverted if you get all 20 notebooks from the Language floor, when Viktor stops Marzia from pursuing Angell to the elevator.
- Excuse Plot
- Forced Meme: Secret character Antibreather was shortly followed by Thiccobreather, a Memetic Mutation version of Antibreather by the same creator which has many variants and emotes, and is jokingly portrayed as immortal and god-like. It's less a Forced Meme because the audience doesn't like it, and more a Forced Meme because the game lost popularity prior to its creation.
- Hostile Animatronics: The Language Floor introduces Doggos, an animatronic dog made from dog flesh who plays a musical tune as he walks around. He only attacks Angell if she moves while in his line of sight.
- The Juggernaut: Phonty Phonograph can smash through any door to get after you after its hostility has been activated.
- Leitmotif: Overture to the Sun. The creator possibly went and searched for every variant on YouTube.
- Nintendo Hard: The game was specifically designed to be much harder than Baldi's Basics.
- Non-Indicative Title: Viktor himself is completely absent after the first two stages, and education stops being relevant after the third.
- Not Even Human: Most of the humanoid characters in the series, although they still show themselves to have intelligence and culture. Subverted to some degree, considering that Marzia and Erie used to be humans, and Alice is possessed.
- Number of the Beast: The "truncate" in every fifth question in the math notebooks is 666. Typing it in reveals an Easter Egg exclusive to the Math Level when all ten are collected: the school flashes blood-red, the ambience turns into Death Metal, the notebook count increases to 666 (actually over 300, one for every table), and creatures called "Followers" swarm in to kill the player. And the game crashes when you're killed.
- Token Good Teammate: If all of Viktor's notebooks have been obtained in the Language floor, he'll outright stop chasing you, kindly praising you for your good work, and will wait by the elevator for you. What makes him a Big Damn Hero here, though, is when he repays that success by catching Marzia and halting her pursuit to give Angell time to get away. He even refuses to let Marzia go when she furiously demands it.
- Would Hurt a Child: Obviously the whole point. The first floor has chambers filled with so many corpses of dead students that it's no wonder the above floors don't even seem to include any.
