Creme de la Creme

Married the class clown and the goth kid, beat the hell out of the school across the lake, aced the final exams and still had time to slam dunk a human trafficking ring into hell where it belongs. 10/10, would set the gym on fire again.

[h1]DISAPPOINTING[/h1] As someone who absolutely adores WLW romances, I finally decided to give Creme de la Creme a try. It’s one of the most highly recommended interactive text-based novels (or interactive fiction, if you prefer), so I went in with high hopes. Unfortunately, I ended up disappointed. While Creme de la Creme works fairly well as a slice-of-life story, it struggles when it tries to build drama or mystery. The romance aspect also felt underwhelming. The game spends too much time expanding its cast of romanceable characters, and as a result, most of them end up feeling underdeveloped or simply uninteresting. It wasn’t the worst six hours I’ve spent - [b]the writing is solid overall, and there are a few genuinely interesting moments and ideas - but it still isn’t good enough for me to recommend.[/b] [b]World[/b] The worldbuilding in Creme de la Creme is fairly minimal. We hear about other places (even entire nations), but nothing is ever really explored in depth. At most, we get to visit another school and a nearby town. For the majority of the game, we stay in and around Gallatin College - a private school for upper-class students, where they not only learn various skills but also build their reputation and social connections. [b]Characters[/b] The game isn’t particularly unique when it comes to its characters. At the start, besides choosing your own gender, you can also change the gender of every romanceable character (or leave it random). Most of the cast is based on cliché school archetypes: the bully, the nerd, the sports enthusiast, the weirdo, the delinquent, and so on. Is this a problem? Yes and no. No, because the writing is solid enough that the clichés didn’t bother me too much. Yes, because there are so many romanceable characters—ten in total—that none of them get enough time to develop a meaningful relationship with the main character. [spoiler]Obviously, this depends on who you choose to date, but some options, like Blaise or Florin, have barely any content.[/spoiler] Cutting the number of romanceable characters in half and giving more depth to the remaining ones would improve the game tremendously. As it stands, it’s easy to end up in situations where you barely flirt with someone, and ten minutes later you can already kiss them. One other thing that started to annoy me after a while: why does everyone use last names when addressing each other? I get it with teachers or people you don’t know well, but friends and romantic partners? It feels so unnatural and occasionally pulls you out of the immersion. [b]Story[/b] The first half of the story was decent. Nothing particularly weird happened, so you could easily treat it as a slice-of-life with romance elements - introductions, classes, making friends, and a bit of drama. The only part that felt slightly off was the [spoiler]"supernatural" subplot, which I personally found unnecessary, but it's easy to ignore.[/spoiler] Then the second half hit, and I started losing interest because some ideas were just idiotic. [spoiler]The Headteacher trying to force us to spy on teachers? Dumb, but okay - maybe some extra drama. But when the whole missing children conspiracy started unfolding, my brain just checked out. How did nobody discover this earlier? They barely tried to hide it! This stupid mine was even nerby! It’s literally impossible that none of the families checked on these kids. And worse, I come back from the mines with Blaise and a badly injured teacher, and people barely react. Kidnapped? Oh, okay. Time for the party! The last two chapters were just awful.[/spoiler] I was also disappointed with the "epilogue". Relationships with characters you didn’t pick as your main date only get a short text about what they’re doing, and that’s it. It was seriously underwhelming. [spoiler]As someone who ended up in a poly relationship with Delacroix + Max, with Blaise and Rosario on the side, I was especially let down. You can tell them all you like them/kiss them, but only your final choice actually matters - everyone else is basically ignored. It just sucks.[/spoiler] [b]Audio & Visuals[/b] This game is purely text-based, so there’s not much to comment on in terms of audio or visuals. Still, I’ll leave my usual note for interactive fiction: even basic visuals and audio could make these games more accessible and appealing to a wider audience, similar to what Roadwarden or Wayfarer have done. [b]Technicalities[/b] The lack of a save system - or at least a "back to the previous page" button - is just incredibly frustrating. I can’t stress enough how much I dislike it when interactive fiction games do this. It’s all too easy to misclick on a choice you didn’t intend, especially in longer games, so give players a way to fix it. Other than two or three instances where a character’s gender was randomly swapped, I didn’t notice any other issues with the game.