Prom Dreams: A High School Love Story

[QZProductions]

Summary

Prom Dreams: A High School Love Story is a freeware romance/horror adventure game created with RPG Maker VX Ace.

You are Kyle Mason, a soft-spoken, popular senior at the elite St. Giles Academy. After a traumatic breakup with a girl from his old school, Kyle is eager to move on with his life - and his senior prom, he believes, will be the perfect opportunity to do just that.

With the help of his nosy best friend Randy and the rest of the school, Kyle must win the hands and hearts of one of three girls: the cute, bubbly junior, Neela Devar, the brash basketball MVP, Maggie Pham, or the cool, intelligent class leader, Brooke O’Keefe. It’s up to you to ensure the perfect prom night for Kyle and his date!

Or… is it?


As you delve deeper into the many mysteries of St. Giles Academy and its students, the air of romance and teenage nostalgia will slowly give way to uneasiness, dread, violence, and fear. Explore the halls of the academy to find clues, story details, and scares that only become more disturbing as the game goes on.  Even the most mundane of characters and objects may have terrifying tricks and surprises up their sleeves; in Prom Dreams, exploration and curiosity is key to yours – and Kyle’s – survival.

Prom Dreams: A High School Love Story features:

-A combination of light-hearted dating sim antics and cerebral, puzzle-based horror gameplay (Think Tokimeki Memorial meets Corpse Party.)
-An original story with twists, turns, multiple routes, and three unique endings
-An (almost) entirely original soundtrack, also available for free download and on YouTube
-Subtle (and not so subtle) changes to the game environment as the horror slowly unfolds
-Three unique sidequests
-Multiple unique death/Game Over scenes
-A hint system for struggling players, contingent upon getting Game Overs

Important note: As a horror game, Prom Dreams will contain scenes of graphic violence, sudden noises, and other disturbing content. It is NOT recommended for the faint of heart or anyone under the age of 16. Please view the Read Me file for additional content warnings.


Screenshots
(Note that screenshots are from earlier builds; the dialogue and environments are all the same, but NPCs have been added in the final release.)

Spoiler

Downloads and Other Links


Download Prom Dreams Version 1.2
Download RTP (REQUIRED)
Download Original Soundtrack (Download only AFTER beating the game to avoid spoilers!)


Original Soundtrack on YouTube

Official Tumblr Blog
Walkthrough
Haunting Events Guide
TVTropes Page
 

 

[Chester]

That moment when you look at the screenshots...

 

[QZProductions]

That moment when you look at the screenshots...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdU9ZQXvMPA

Okay, I'm totally gonna replace the audio for that scene with this sound clip for version 1.1. Mark my words.


Not really but that was pretty funny

 

[Chester]

Hey but nice title gif by the way, I might give it a try this weekend.

 

[QZProductions]

Hey but nice title gif by the way, I might give it a try this weekend.

Thanks!! I'd love to hear how you liked it.

 

[SinSilver]

Will have to add this to my games to play list, looks interesting.

 

[QZProductions]

Will have to add this to my games to play list, looks interesting.

Thanks! I hope you enjoy it!

 

[QZProductions]

Prom Dreams Version 1.1 is now available! See the original post for the updated link!


This version of Prom Dreams contains several bug fixes, typo fixes, and a few quality of life changes to make the game a bit less frustrating. A complete list of changes can be found in the Read Me.


Thanks again for your continued support!

 

[QZProductions]

Prom Dreams Version 1.2 is now available! Updated link in the OP


Version 1.2 contains more typo and bug fixes, some map changes to make the school easier to move around in, additional buffer time before choice boxes (to minimize accidental choice confirmations), and other minor tweaks. Please see the Read Me for a full change log and thank you for your continued support!

 

[Jhale M.]

I am playing the game and I think the choices are actually much easier to mess up with the delay. I have been waiting patiently for the choices, but because of the delay, I press as soon as the choice box shows up almost every time. I think a better solution would be a text box with a short sentence hinting that there will be a choice before every choice. It feels really confusing when I go through a big text box and suddenly there is a list of choices to choose from, especially since the text keeps changing pace to be even slower when a sentence ends or ellipses are used or whatever else. 

 

[QZProductions]

I am playing the game and I think the choices are actually much easier to mess up with the delay. I have been waiting patiently for the choices, but because of the delay, I press as soon as the choice box shows up almost every time. I think a better solution would be a text box with a short sentence hinting that there will be a choice before every choice. It feels really confusing when I go through a big text box and suddenly there is a list of choices to choose from, especially since the text keeps changing pace to be even slower when a sentence ends or ellipses are used or whatever else. 

Thank you for the feedback; I'll try to see if other people have this problem as well.  And thanks for playing the game in the first place too!

 

[Jhale M.]

Well, I finally played through the game. It was a good ending and a very familiar experience that felt like I was really in high school again. The end of the game was pretty fun and I would have been able to figure out almost all of the solutions even if I was not given hints, but it also felt like a good test of puzzles. I hate ridiculous puzzles so I am very glad I could solve them all without feeling like anything was impossible to guess. However, I was expecting something very different on the dating simulator side (since you mentioned Tokimeki Memorial) and more quick to start on the horror side (since you mentioned Corpse Party) so maybe you should remove some emphasis on the comparisons. My comment about the delays making choices harder to get right still stands and here are my new critiques:


- The game seems well-written even if the plot is somewhat simple, but I feel like a lot of people will miss out on the good parts of the game because the buildup is very slow. It just does not feel user-friendly for multiple reasons:


1. The game is a lot longer than most people would think. It took me essentially 20 hours to beat the game and I was originally going to try going fast through it. For a horror game, that is a lot longer than I ever expected.


2. The day system feels a bit counterintuitive. Although it seems more reasonable to be with the girls for three days, it feels like two of the days are almost pointless until the third cycle.


3. The sidequests make the game feel more pointless and all over the place until the game starts to unravel and that made me want to stop playing since it took at least 5 hours to feel like I understood and was engaged. (Most people would not be so patient.) 


4. While it is technically possible to go through the game very quickly, it is unlikely that most people COULD. I had a hard time finding the girls most of the time - they are pretty hard to notice among the other students and I did not realize where I was supposed to look. It feels like we should get the choice to be automatically led to the girl we want to meet or alternatively be given the chance to explore because wandering around the school for an hour during a lunch period broke the immersion a lot and made things feel boring and needlessly complex.


5. The main characters look too similar to other students - that is the main reason why I did not know where to look for people, especially since most of them are not seen for a very long period of time. It is really ridiculous to me that there are about five red-headed students along with Brooke. If you do not go with the idea of automatically being led to the girls, maybe you could put an aura around them or something to make them stand out more.


6. The last thing is that I did not know how to run. I had to look at the walkthrough in order to beat the one part of the game where running was required. I think it would be important to teach people how to run more than once because it would also make the game feel better-paced if people knew.


- It is hard to feel engaged with a game that is either slowly moving through a ton of text that changes (both the dialogue box and the words of the students) at somewhat unknown times or that is skipping through classes with gaping leaps, only showing two of the classrooms as part of the school day. I felt like it was wrong for me to be controlling my character at multiple times because I was just disoriented.


- Having fire extinguishers all over the place made it really annoying that you were supposed to use another item to break thicker glass with or to open a glass door.


Anyway, I liked this game despite my initial stress with it. The story and characters are just excellently written and seem to have been done with a lot of care. I love D. I would totally want to go to prom with her or spend eternity with her. Neela was a great girl-next-door character who I also found very pretty and I chose her first, but I don't like her idea of savory food. Brooke had a lot of depth to her personality, but she does not manage to steal the show too much either. Maggie was probably my favorite character to learn about and it was really cool to see how she acted as my third choice. It must have been a lot of work managing such a gigantic story. It was a lot more effort than I ever expected to see, especially since I thought this game would be five hours at the most when you played every possible story.

 

[QZProductions]

Well, I finally played through the game. It was a good ending and a very familiar experience that felt like I was really in high school again. The end of the game was pretty fun and I would have been able to figure out almost all of the solutions even if I was not given hints, but it also felt like a good test of puzzles. I hate ridiculous puzzles so I am very glad I could solve them all without feeling like anything was impossible to guess. However, I was expecting something very different on the dating simulator side (since you mentioned Tokimeki Memorial) and more quick to start on the horror side (since you mentioned Corpse Party) so maybe you should remove some emphasis on the comparisons. My comment about the delays making choices harder to get right still stands and here are my new critiques:


...

Thanks again for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed the story and the characters :V


As for the pacing, it is a little bit slow at first, yes, but I thought it was necessary to fully introduce everyone and lull people into a false sense of security before the "Scary Bomb" dropped. Perhaps I should have specified the average play length, but in my defense I wasn't able to get those numbers until a few other laypeople had played it. Regardless, I never did say it was going to be a short game, even with my original playlength estimates.


The Read Me file does explain how to run.  Sorry it caused you trouble, but the explanation WAS there... ^^;


The comparison to those two games was meant to emphasize the marriage of dating-sim tropes with gorey horror adventure, not necessarily imply the game's pacing or gameplay mechanics. It was more meant to describe the aesthetic and story elements, so I still think it's a rather accurate comparison.


Thanks again for playing! ^3^

 

[QZProductions]

Hey all, bumping this thread so I can let y'all know about the post-game survey I made to help me better plan for my next game in terms of content, promotion, etc. Also because I just want to know who everyone's waifus were HEH


If you want to, you can take the survey here after completing the game (there are certain character name spoilers, after all!), and I'd appreciate it a lot. Thanks again for your support!!