The sound effects are good, but not amazing, coming off as a bit over-compressed at times, with the alien monster’s grunts being a good example of this. Each stage has a catchy little electronic beat before you start and the music, while you’re trekking through the stages, is creepy, setting the tone nicely. One aspect of Splatter School that isn’t annoying, however, is the music. The ghost boss I mentioned earlier highlights this the most, in which there’s the issue of him being too easy, dissipating any tension and simply making the situation more annoying than anything. I can see how this can be argued as a good thing since it can be used to build tension and always keep you afraid, but that requires a refined difficulty curve to keep you on your toes, which is something Splatter School simply doesn’t have. It was so easy, I was worried that I was missing something and wasn’t actually doing any damage to him, which brings me to an issue Splatter School has: the bosses have no life bars. The fights themselves may be pretty simple once you get the attack pattern down, but they’re visually interesting most of the time however, the gym ghost boss was a noticeable letdown, with a boring design and painful simplicity. After every couple of stages, you’ll run into a boss of some horrific theme, from a mere ghost to a mass of guts, all the way up to a flayed human head with all the tendons and sinew on display. As you play the game and become familiar with the enemies, you get into a bit of a rhythm as you quickly respond to threats and dance your way through the school in its perverse deformation.
A disembodied hand may break through some glass to strangle you, but you’re never bitter about it, especially since it even gives you the opportunity to experiment with some deaths here and there just to see what the game has to offer. Additionally, if you do die, you only have to restart from the corridor you died in. As Jessica takes more damage, her clothing is removed layers at a time, meaning the death animations are only ever with a bare Jessica.ĭeath isn’t much of an annoyance in the game, since stages are quite short, with only a couple corridors before a boss fight.
Monsters and traps pop out of the environment pretty quickly, but with just enough delay to respond to them if you know what to do and have enough life to not be too deterred from pressing on. You can only move right as you make your way to the exit down the corridor, crafted of flesh, bone and sinew, but braving through the halls rewards quick reactions. Splatter School actually has a pretty fun game hidden behind the simplistic design. The setting and brutality is what keeps you playing, and it’s quite the enticing experience, with solid pixel animations and a myriad of ways to die. I find it’s much better to start immediately, leaving you fearful and alone in a gory world, as the plot isn’t really important here you have an easily identifiable horror setting with a 2D plane to progress in, and that’s really all I need. The controls are pretty easy to pick up too, using the arrow keys to move, Z to jump, X to attack, S to pause and A to use any item you pick up. Splatter School pretty much drops you in with nothing unless you linger on the title screen long enough for the attract video to start. Of course, you don’t need or get this much of an introduction going into the game. Armed with merely an old box cutter, Jessica must fight her way out or die where she stands. Jessica, the game’s heroine, took a nap during class only to awake to the sounds of a fire alarm and the sight of her classmates slaughtered by various horrific monsters. The premise is simple: you’re a girl trying to escape a demonic school without dying in various grotesque ways. Welcome to Splatter School, a 2012 2D, side-scrolling, guro action game by Ankoku Marimokan that delivers a disgusting descent into horror and erotic death.