Motion Twin's "free to play" turn-based strategy RPG Teacher Story (which requires a free account) is one of those games that you just want to grab and shake a little. Maybe stage an A&E style intervention. "Why do you have such restrictive timers that lead to aggressive monetization?" you whisper tearfully, laying a hand on your computer screen the way you would touch the face of a brilliant but self-destructive invalid. Because despite the demand for hauling in other players if you don't want to spend money or wait around Farmville-style, Teacher Story is a gorgeous, fun, funny game with glimpses of serious cleverness. As the name suggests, you play a teacher who's trying to stuff his classes full of knowledge, but first needs to literally beat the stupidity out of them to get through. ... well, not literally, since the "combat skills" are more things like impassioned speeches, pop quizzes, and knowing how to manage your class' misbehavior, but you get the idea.
Each student has blocks of colour above their heads... grey blocks are boredom that typically need to be broken through first, while the red represents stupidity, or ignorance if you prefer a more PC term. Use your skills to get through to them and earn experience points, dealing with negative status effects and unique personality traits along the way. Each class is its own battle and has a timer (in the bottom right hand corner) that decreases with every turn, forcing you to think carefully and strategically about how you play, while the red gloop in the bottom left is your self control, and if either of those runs out, you lose. It gets more complex as you play, and a lot more challenging. Knowing how to make various status effects work in your favour, as well as organizing each class to get the most out of area of effect attacks or those that impart special bonuses, becomes the key to victory. As you hammer through students's skulls, you earn experience points to level up, which allows you to choose upgrades or new abilities to your poor beleaguered professor.
Sound good so far? Well, here's the thing. After you've finished a class, you have nearly five real time hours before you can play another. If you want to play right away, you spend your budget, and since you only earn a paltry amount for each victory compared to how much you have to spend to advance time or buy items, you'll quickly either need to nag people to sign up with your link so you earn a referral bonus, or pay real cash. Additionally, your self control does not replenish on its own after each class, so you either have to buy items using your budget to refill it, choose an action that takes fifteen real time hours to refill two thirds, or hope that the free actions that allow you to fill a tiny amount of self-control (usually only four points) will be enough to make it through the next class so your time isn't wasted.
Aside from the push for pay, Teacher Story also suffers a bit from other issues like typos, and some screens that have not yet been translated to English. It also would have been nice to be able to create our own teacher from a few cosmetic choices, rather than be stuck with one scowling bro who seems a single dab of hair gel away from Flock of Seagulls. Teacher Story is, in short, a game with an enormous amount of potential where the fun part, the actual gameplay, is being held back by the restrictions of its free-to-play style model. Why am I telling you about it then? Because in spite of that, Teacher Story is a gorgeous little game, packed with style and humour, expressive art and character animation. The gradual increase in class difficulties allows for, or rather remands, much more strategic combat, while at the same time remaining friendly to the casual player. It's a game I would dearly love to see succeed, and all it would really take would be for it to ease up on the time restrictions a bit. It's still worth a look even if you don't plan to pay a dime and don't mind playing for only a few minutes at a time, and its professional presentation and style makes it stand head and shoulders above virtually every other game in the free-to-play market. A game can be free-to-play and still be a success, like Echo Bazaar/Fallen London, and I sincerely hope Teacher Story gets there.
Typos?!
I don't know if I can play this game until we discuss that fellow's facial hair.
Intriguing. It's definitely full of cookies, and those pop-up windows tell you everything. I do want to know how the teacher's pet thing works, as I still haven't found the button for it.
Meanwhile, I'll come back tomorrow (since I don't like the character selections) and open up MyBrute, which I used to play all the time. It should eat up some of those waiting hours.
...daily?? The company as a whole seems to have extended a bunch of its waiting times.
Interesting game. I've been enjoying it so far
When the teacher is at his house, click on the bathroom (that little room on the right side of the screen), and he'll say:
"I don't need to go, I went alredy when you weren't looking."
XD
Oh yeah, well now I have a toilet! Woohoo!
Oops, I realized my previous comment said cookies, and I meant the metaphorical yummy cookies and not the browser ones. Though there may well be those.
Teacher's Pet
Unlocks after a class, it's in the non-turn taking "free" moves. Every student's special ability is different (they also become part of the gratis row). If I understand it right, they get an enhanced score if vanquished. However, you can't use that special ability ON that student, and it disappears from your board once they're vanquished.
Switching Seats
I just cannot do this correctly, resulting in much fail. The front row gets the biggest additional boost once defeated. The middle row gets a little, and the back row gets none. (I think it's +2 and +1 respectively.) So moving the kids around is crucial to making the objective.
This is also in the "free" zone, and recharges after 2 turns. By the way, you can move the kid to an unoccupied seat, just click on them and then their shadowy counterpart at the new desk.
As far as I know, a defeated kid will stay seated, frozen forever to witness the magnitude of your teachery, or until the bell rings. You'd think enlightenment would make them more pliant...
Tables and Columns
Some of the moves act on every kid at the table. Like some sort of cooties rule, two or more desks pushed together also constitutes a "table".
The other grouping is a column, which is you looking straight down the classroom from front to back.
Boredom and Effects
Besides the meaty red matter of the un-knowing, there's the grey foggy shield of boredom. The kids are pretty much all little shielded monsters, and you generally have to break the shield before you get to the meat.
Effects are like spell conditions. Some moves allow you to erase them. The green uppy ones may boost the kids' final scores if defeated (I think), and the red ones almost always annoy you and steadily drain your self-control. I'm not sure what happens then, maybe you turn green and rip your beard off.
Sadly, both of these can and will pop up again until the moment of defeat.
Picking Up Items
You seem to have one turn to retrieve them, AND it also wastes a turn on your creepy Atlas/alter ego clock. However it will go into your permanent collection. Shiny!
Now wondering if there's some obscure German word or metaphysical Indian concept to replace "defeated".
Man, I wish there were more in that staffroom! Hello, is Peggy.
Yikes, the Terms & Conditions could stand some Englishifying as well!
Simply by clicking into them ("using the site in any way"), I have "agree ... Against the violation of private correspondence." and who knows what else. :P
Oh, oh, I clicked Submit too soon. This gem as well:
"The software, games, web pages, scripts and graphics currently existing in the web are the sole and exclusive property of Motion Twin."
Sorry, it's not really in my purview to say that... but okay, sure, whatever.
The "Teach!" music is awesome. I wonder if it's available for download somewhere.
It's... copyright?
I believe this is a French outfit, and they've been on the web for quite a while. I should see if my older Brutes are still floating around, though I'm sure I'll never find my old username and password.
Ugh, what an awful possible bug. One of the moves removes a negative effect and a shield. Well, it *won't* remove the negative effect unless there is a shield, which is just dumb. With certain negative effects, you can't teach the kid at all. One thing standing between me and total victory.
regarding the green triangles (student boost)
When a child is attentive, they loose an additional shield when targeted for an action (ie action would remove 2 shields will remove 3).
You can get attentive by several actions, including letting kids go to the restroom.
Teacher's Pets
Insolent - Able to exclude student - finish class without one student.
Useless - Boosts a student's score by +1
And now the bug isn't there. They did update the site, though... or maybe it's on my side.
The game gets exponentially easier with possible power-ups, by the way. Typical of Motion Twin games, leveling and completing challenges will give you more 'firepower.' There's luck, though, because you might not get the power-up you want. Keeps the challenge fresh -- though it's a shame given that there's no replay unless you open another account, I think.
Ahaha, took a chance and went into the 15 hour Sick Leave. Aside from the busty nurse (whoa, 50s pulp much) ... huge entertainment value. Holy obscure references! If only the staff room were half as amusing. Totally worth risking a class.
This game is really paced for a typical workday, in that there's about 10-15 minutes of play, then there's another round waiting for you at lunchtime, and so forth. Lots of online turn-based games follow the same excruciatingly addictive model. Hmm... is sharing my 'casa' considered link-dropping on JiG?
I should work on making a Teacher's Pet list like delzoup but I keep forgetting. Will try to get on that this weekend.
What exactly is Farrier anyhow? All the context suggests that it's an alcoholic beverage, but then wouldn't your self-control go down when you drank one?
I was thinking it was a play on words w/ Perrier. Otherwise searching through names of tonics and seltzers.
Re: my earlier comment, I found out some of the negative statuses are critical statuses, in that they will only go away with time, rendering you helpless. K.O. is one of them.
There's a wikia for this game, by the by.
Would JiG players like to test out the pupil exchange system -- ewww, that phrase.
I'm ShuDog on the English side of Twinoid. Trying to clear up if you need to be friends for it to work, if you can send pupils from someone's profile, if there had to be a referral, etc. And then what happens when you do get the bonus objectives.
1. Just so you know, your year tops out at level 12. You get to keep all your collection, and you get a nice surprise from summer holidays, but you only get to keep one power-up. (All the Teacher's Pet attacks you uncovered will also disappear. First day of school indeed.) The next year starts back at level 1. Your teacher level (the pen thing on the side) will go up.
2. To properly do pupil exchange, you have to be mutual contacts with someone. Forum's great for this. (Beware: you may be sent too many pupils.) I may have triggered a bug by sending pupils to people I wasn't contacts with, just FYI.
Is the game link dead or is it just me?
I was just there, so...
By the way, there is a major update coming up, so the game may become even more interesting.
Weird. I've tried several times in the past two or three days, and I always get the same error: it tries to load for a while, then shows "Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to teacher-story.com".
Don't know if this will help... on my blocker I allow twinoid, teacher-story, jquery (all .com).
Also I'm on Firefox, so I'm guessing it's "try something besides Chrome."
I tried Firefox, too, and the symptoms were more or less the same.
I'd been able to access it just fine until recently. I don't know what happened. I'll try again after clearing my browser cache, but I think I've tried that already.
How to do pupil exchange
1. Click on someone's name, and there should be a pop-up box. On the right is Add Contact.
OR
On someone's Teacher Story profile, it's on the gray box on the left, the little man+ which also says Add to my contacts.
OR
Type in the name in the tab described below...
2. Pupil exchange is best done with mutual contacts.
Click the top right Twinoid side-panel.
Click on Contacts.
The pop-up (My Twinoid Contacts) will show a tab listing your friended contacts. ♥ [hearts] will indicate mutual friends.
Click on the back tab to see who's friended you. Friend them back with the [+] button.
3. Send pupils can be done from
Your Home }
You have # pupils remaining
This will pop up a list of your mutual contacts (2). The (1) is if you want to send an object, namely a drink/sponge/pill. Leave it alone if you just want to send pupils.
Just click each contact to send. It will tell you if they're full or you've already sent a student. If you've got a lot of contacts, there's a [Show All] button at the bottom.
4. When you receive pupils, the top left Twinoid side-panel will blink a notification.
5. You'll receive the pupil in the next available class. They tend to arrive in mid-class; with two, they show up in later classes. You'll see the extra classes and turns awarded as bonuses.
How about the forums? Do they work for you? Someone might be able to troubleshoot for you there.
They are rolling out a new update, but as far as I know it's not out yet.
Good luck!
Clearing my cache didn't fix anything.
I've found the main Twinoid website via a Google search, and it seems to be struggling to load. Every page takes its time loading, and some don't load at all, with the same symptoms I described above. Those that do load, I end up seeing very "lite" versions of, with only some components actually loaded.
Maybe it's an issue with my firewall, or some nonsense like that.
...It turns out my firewall isn't even on. So that's not the problem.
I can't exactly try a different computer. Maybe if I used a proxy...
Dude, that really is weird. Is it not loading at all, or just the one flash window? *grasping at straws*
Let's see. This looks like Twinoid support.
http://support.twinoid.com/help/?cat=834
Hope that one loads.
The whole page isn't loading. I clicked the support link you provided, and it doesn't load either. I think whatever's stopping me is affecting the whole Twinoid site family.
A server issue maybe? Where in the world is Twinoid located again? I remember that midnight for them is equivalent to 6:00 P.M. on the U.S. east coast...
...Motion Twin is located in France. The .fr in one of their website's URLs makes that clear. I've loaded a few other French websites with no difficulty, so that's not it.
I just played another class, though. Actually, I've played several Twinoid games since I last commented. I'm also U.S. located. I think they also support several languages, and I gather from one of the RPGs that they have different servers for different areas.
Hrm. Flash updated? Firefox plug-in interfering? Global clandestine organization? I think you may have to allow Javascript, but this is over my paygrade. Even when I disallow something, though, at least part of the page loads.
Okay, I'm trying again on the same laptop on the local library's wi-fi, and it loads just fine. So the problem must be with my wi-fi at home. I'll reset it and see if that fixes the problem.
...Resetting the modem didn't seem to help. At least I know where the problem is... I'll keep tinkering and see if I can't figure things out.
Good luck, SonicLover.
...because the update has apparently rolled out.
There are new helpful characters with skills (unlockable). Number of collectable objects have increased, including rare objects from referrals. Even more hilarious texts -- I assume they're hilarious, because I enjoy all the ones I get. And of course they're running a sale for that real money stuff until the 16th.
My next class is in half an hour, so I'll see if I get any goodies.
It loads just fine now... and I didn't even do anything.
Update