Yanno, I do a lot of digging through the depths of console libraries to find things that might look interesting whether that be just by looking through curated lists made by people online both on and off this website, or just looking through huge ROM fullsets that contain a painstakingly comprehensive list of every possible piece of software released for a particular platform. While I obviously don't have an absolutely comprehensive knowledge of every video game that has ever been released on this earth (retro computer games and itch.io indie titles in particular being two large blind spots of mine), in the realm of console stuff it does feel like there's more that I am aware of than not. It's certainly cool to know the depths of obscurity on a consoles library, but on the other hand the thought of running out of interesting games to play on a system does make me kinda sad, as at the end of the day there do be a limited number of releases on a given system. Sometimes though, there manages to be games that go completely under my radar completely despite the fact of them being exactly the kind of shit I tirelessly look for. Case in point: as I was looking through the Wii U Eshop archive and stumbling into several games labelled "Nintendo Game Seminar", I knew that it was investigating time. Considering the fact that I'm apparently the first one to review something here, I don't think I'm the only one that had these games slip through the seams.

The Nintendo Game Seminar was a program held in Japan where game design students could work officially with Nintendo in order to further their understanding on game development, with various finished projects in the program being released as free downloads for the public to enjoy. Doki Doki Tegami Relay is one of said titles, being made in the 2014 Seminar. The point of the game is to use the Wii U gamepad to pass notes around a classroom without being caught by your teacher on the main TV. Given that it's a student project, it's not the longest game, but it does actually have a reasonable amount of twists in the levels and gameplay to stay engaging throughout its whole runtime. There's a level where you prank the teacher by putting notes on them behind their back, a level where the teacher throws chalk at nonchalant students which disables them from being part of your note-passing path, levels where a music teacher makes certain students stand up to play which forces them to show any notes they might be holding, levels with ghosts that steal your notes, etc. Passing notes is done with the gyro of the gamepad as you move it in front, to the sides, or downwards and behind you to shift the note to its destination. The gyro can sometimes cause a little bit of inconsistent jank (especially when trying to pass behind you) but that honestly adds to the tension of not getting caught as there's no guarantee that quick note passing will go the way it needs to. You can also hold the B button to make the note into a paper airplane that can go over empty desks as a shortcut, but if it gets caught at any time it's an instant game over. It's a really ingenious use of the Wii U gamepad that would feel right at home as a minigame in something like Game & Wario or Nintendo Land.

It's crazy to me that I hadn't discovered this or the other Nintendo Game Seminar games sooner given how small the Wii U library is and how I'm always looking for games that could only have been done on that system. And this was published by Nintendo, too! For FREE!!! I am definitely now curious to try the other Nintendo Game Seminar projects, because it's always interesting to see what up-and-coming talent can bring to creative video games. It seems like there are 8 seminars worth of officially released projects across the DS and Wii U, so I definitely have a lot to check out! I don't know where the team that made this is now, but I hope they are continuing to make unique games wherever they may be.