Recently I came across a Japanese dating sim parody titled "Gakuen Handsome." It exaggerates many aspects of bad anime drawing, including chins point enough to
stab someone, which actually happens at some point. Hilarious, but not why I'm starting this thread. While looking for more information on that game, I stumbled upon
"Syukusho Gakuen" a seemingly straightforward JRPG made with the RPG Maker VX engine -- the same one behind
Tales of the Drunken Paladin. Take it away, Tropers!
TV Tropes wrote:
The plot revolves around the detective, Chijinda You, investigating the mysterious events and disappearances at Yabaize High School. The game plays itself out like a straight JRPG, where you explore for clues and items and engage in various battles for the first part of the game. You'll find yourself running into characters from Japanese anime left and right. You can even get Kyon as a party member. It seems quite innocent enough.
Then you find out just why it's called Shrink 'High.
Needless to say, the focus of the game takes a sudden turn. Suddenly, 90% of the cast is bigger than you. And most of the 90% will either mistake you for an insect, or be a part of the secret society that's behind it all, and will do anything to ensure you don't meddle in their plans anymore.
So I jumped through a couple hoops to get myself a translated copy. It's actually a rather well-made game; surprising degree of strategic depth, plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor (if a bit overbearing at times) and an almost Dark Souls-style approach to optional bosses.
And then there's the fetish material. It's introduced gradually through side conversations and optional examination quotes, with plenty of "wink-wink, nudge-nudge, eyebrow-waggle" indications of what the plucky protagonist is up against, and that he might be rather
into this sort of thing. Once the big twist occurs, the players is susceptible to plenty of non-standard Game Overs, each with its own artwork. Plenty of stomping and seven shades of vore. Right up our alley, yeah? Well... as I mentioned this game is
extremely Japanese. So it's all done with anime schoolgirls, with the occasional maid outfit. Okay, you can get a normal(?) housecat as a party member, and there is one enemy (boss?) that's a cat girl, but one that's even closer to "human" than Felicia from Darkstalkers. Still, it is an RPG Maker game, so all the graphic and sound assets are freely viewable (and modifiable within reason).
The rest of Shrink High's flaws stem from how strictly it adheres to traditional JRPG conventions. You'll need to explore the safe areas to find starter equipment so you can survive the weakest of random encounters. You will need to grind a great deal (Exp, Money and Items) so that the first few bosses aren't a complete slog. You'll need to talk to everyone multiple times, backtrack and revisit just about every area since event flags are triggered seemingly at random and you are given minimal direction on where to go next. It's not fair to refer to Shrink High as ecchi, or eroge, or whatever the Japanese call it to avoid ending up on some government watch list - this is a full-length RPG that
just happens to have a giantess-fetish twist. If you think the non-furry "payoff" isn't worth the wait and don't care for the
game part of the game, you can give this a pass.
The only active download links and discussion regarding this game are on
some vore-centric forum. I'd rather not create an account there, so I made a thread here. I'm considering writing up a proper walkthrough, at least as far as getting to "the good part."