Preview: Whimel Academy is clearly a work in progress
“Cozy” games and life simulations seem to go well together, giving people the chance to go through everyday experiences in comfort and with an Impossible House feel Whimel Academy are counting on that. It requires the player to spend six years studying at the Whimel Academy of Magic. However, its current state, while fine, also feels like there could be some higher stakes and more bug-catching to deliver a more solid experience.
Comes from the idea of one Harry Potter-esque fantasy, all of it Whimel Academy Players find themselves attending the school after being invited to train to become a witch or wizard. Like other positions where planning is key, your goal is to build statistics to find a path for yourself beyond college. There are also students you can get to know, ideally eventually building something deeper with them.
Everyday life is simple. You choose the classes and activities. These increase your stats in the Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Magical categories. That, in turn, will affect your interactions with other characters and how you can react to them. You can also customize your room, interact with cats, and collect and use items like books, food, and medicine to help achieve your goals. Because there are no minigames and this is a simple stat builder like Princess creator, you basically choose your actions and then figure out the results.
For some, that might feel a bit tedious. The real “excitement” here I feel comes from interaction with others. There really hasn’t been any important activity like the activities in Princess creator or Tokimeki Memorialwhere you’re filming certain events, worried about tests and milestones, or stressed about time. In fact, the six-year term was almost too easy for me. At this point it lacks the driving feel I feel in other life sims, I think that might be because it’s in early access and there are more elements in development that could assist more goal-oriented players.
But really, my biggest concern now is what could be a combination of multiple errors or incomplete content. It tried to send me instructions by repeating that prompt a few times during the first year. I spoke to Theo three times after I had been involved for four years. I can’t tell if the next relationship events aren’t ready or if it’s a bug that keeps happening. The ending I got was extremely brief and didn’t mention any of the characters or other details about my “life.” Not to mention the script in general definitely needs a bit of tweaking. I found some problems with sentence structure and awkward dialogue.
But then again, since this is a game that just launched in early access and won’t be out for a year, there’s hope. This may be a normal consequence of growing pains.
I understand what Impossible House is trying to achieve Whimel Academy. Simulate life like Princess creator or Tokimeki Memorial It can get stressful when you start thinking about statistics and deadlines. However, the current build almost makes everything feel a little too low pressure, especially with bugs that hinder the experience and lead to endings that aren’t what you might expect after time has passed . Since the full release is still about a year away, I’m curious to see if there’s anything more to make school life a little more engaging.
Whimel Academy available in early access for PC via Steam.
