School 26 Preview

Silicon Sisters Interactive announces multi-platform high school sim School 26

The hardest part about going through high school isn’t necessarily getting good grades, but navigating the complex social hierarchies that exist among classmates and friends. School 26 is an upcoming casual sim that lets players step into the shoes of a student named Kate as she tries to make friends and keep them at her 26th new school.

Kate has trouble maintaining long-term friendships, but you probably would too if your family travelled as much as hers do. As Kate enrolls in her 26th school at the beginning of the game, she and her parents strike a deal: if Kate makes good friends here, the family will stay put. You’ll help Kate use intuition, empathy, and strategy to build friendships and navigate the moral dilemmas of high school. These dilemmas range from power struggles to peer pressure, from romance to betrayal, from alienation to acceptance.

School 26 is being developed by Silicon Sisters Interactive, Canada’s first female owned and operated video game company. The game was inspired by research that was done into the important role that social engineering plays in the lives of teenage girls.

Kate must get to know her new classmates’ personalities, resolve their issues, and strengthen her connections to them. These objectives are met through various types of gameplay including dialogues during which players pick up on social cues and select appropriate emotional responses, quizzes that provide insights into other characters’ (and the player’s) personalities, and a card matching game with shifting rules that reflect the evolving social dynamic among the School 26 crew.

School 26 is launching in April, first on the iPhone / iPod Touch ($2.99) and iPad ($4.99), with versions for PC, Mac, and Android to follow.

Erin Bell