Morimiya Middle School Shooting is an arcade-style top-down shooter made in the RPG Maker MV engine. The plot plays out like a bizarre Japanese version of Hatred: A violent, misanthropic middle school student with a death wish arms herself with as many guns as she can take into her local middle school with the express purpose of killing as many as she can before getting arrested.
The standard game play loop is comparable to a rouge-like version of the original Postal. You have 5 minutes per run, and you have to rack up kills before either the time limit runs out or you get caught/killed. You get graded on the number of people killed/wounded on a 5 star scale, and depending on your score, you gain points to spend on permanent upgrades like new weapons and permanent perks.
The game is technically impressive, turning the standard RPG Maker engine into a admittedly decent top-down shooter, and it has a surprising amount of depth to the moment-by-moment game play. You have a base 50% accuracy and you have to go into an aim mode to raise it, at the cost of your movement speed. Running and gunning is a surefire way to get yourself caught, as it makes your aim absolutely atrocious. While most of the students are defenseless, the rare hero or two can catch you off guard and very quickly take you down if you get cornered. Teachers also roam the halls, the females alerting others of your presence and the males running to pin you down and end your run. Despite first impressions, the game is not the mindless "cathartic" murderfest I was expecting. There is a certain level of strategy and planning involved in each run, and from a certain point of view, it could even deconstruct the murder fantasy of its own premise, seeing as the murder fantasy is very quickly ended if you get too careless.
Let's address the elephant in the room though: It's a game about children murdering children. Even though the limited graphics and frankly cheesy sound design take the edge off somewhat, this is a pretty alienating premise for the vast majority of people (even the original Postal drew the line at child murder!) Plausible deniability isn't even a factor either, seeing as the game was developed by a guro artist, so the violence is definitely meant to get someone's rocks off. It's an abhorrent production all around, and the only reason to play it over other arcade shooters is if you're morbidly curious or if it's your kink.
The standard game play loop is comparable to a rouge-like version of the original Postal. You have 5 minutes per run, and you have to rack up kills before either the time limit runs out or you get caught/killed. You get graded on the number of people killed/wounded on a 5 star scale, and depending on your score, you gain points to spend on permanent upgrades like new weapons and permanent perks.
The game is technically impressive, turning the standard RPG Maker engine into a admittedly decent top-down shooter, and it has a surprising amount of depth to the moment-by-moment game play. You have a base 50% accuracy and you have to go into an aim mode to raise it, at the cost of your movement speed. Running and gunning is a surefire way to get yourself caught, as it makes your aim absolutely atrocious. While most of the students are defenseless, the rare hero or two can catch you off guard and very quickly take you down if you get cornered. Teachers also roam the halls, the females alerting others of your presence and the males running to pin you down and end your run. Despite first impressions, the game is not the mindless "cathartic" murderfest I was expecting. There is a certain level of strategy and planning involved in each run, and from a certain point of view, it could even deconstruct the murder fantasy of its own premise, seeing as the murder fantasy is very quickly ended if you get too careless.
Let's address the elephant in the room though: It's a game about children murdering children. Even though the limited graphics and frankly cheesy sound design take the edge off somewhat, this is a pretty alienating premise for the vast majority of people (even the original Postal drew the line at child murder!) Plausible deniability isn't even a factor either, seeing as the game was developed by a guro artist, so the violence is definitely meant to get someone's rocks off. It's an abhorrent production all around, and the only reason to play it over other arcade shooters is if you're morbidly curious or if it's your kink.