Cherry Tree High Comedy Club (by 773, 2012, for Windows PC)
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Overall: 8/10
I recall nights spent playing Persona 4 and getting frustrated with how much dungeon running was getting in the way of my in-game social life. I relished the bits just after finishing a dungeon and before the start of the next one, because I could just play the life sim bits. I still haven't finished Persona 4, and every time I pick it up again, I find myself wishing that I could skip the TV world JRPG sections.
Cherry Tree High Comedy Club is pretty much that! It's a high school life sim / adventure game, and it's even got a level system that doesn't require a long, monotonous grind. In CTHCC, you play as Mairu Hibisu (or Miley Verisse, depending on which localization you use) in her quest to rebuild the titular comedy club. To do so, you've got to manage your schedule, stretching it as thin as you can between making friends, making money, doing homework, and rounding out Mairu's repertoire, all while keeping her stress low to maximize efficiency.
The game plays a bit like a visual novel with more agency; a lot of time is spent reading dialogue accompanied by character portraits. I was wary about forced humor in a game with “comedy” right in the name, but the writing is great and avoids constant cornball humor. Each of the characters are fun and interesting, and you learn just as much about Mairu as you do her friends as you read each of the personal story arcs. And for a game that mostly involves running back and forth on a 2D plane and navigating UI, it manages to be oddly intense. It's not an especially long game, which works great for the central feature of schedule management. With less than two in-game months to realize Mairu's dream of starting the comedy club, there were times when a very real anxiety visited me and made me wonder if I'd make the deadline after all!
Along the way, between nervous, worried hand-wringing, I really enjoyed the visuals in the game. The character sprites all have a nice unified look without being homogenized, and the character designs for the portraits are great. The backgrounds are bright, colorful, and pleasant to explore, and the music in the game is equal parts fun to listen to and maddeningly catchy. Neither of these assets are particularly large in quantity, but the sheer quality will ensure their novelty outlasts a single playthrough. The sound effects are nice, but mostly consigned to the opening scenes and menu noises. Some footstep loops or ambient crowd noises in certain locations would have done nicely to pull me into the setting more. I also really could have done without the laugh tracks and canned applause in certain dialogues, which threatens to change the tone from “endearing” to “trying too hard.”
Initially, I was afraid that the time management might be a little too relentless in this game, but by the end of my first playthrough I'd managed to get the minimum requirements for a decent ending with a week to spare. The difficulty is balanced just right to make you sweat a bit while shooting for very achievable goals. I did feel a bit betrayed when the concise tutorial forgot to mention that you can only use a conversation topic once per recruitment target; something that makes sense for game balance in hindsight, but something that initially led to my wasting good topics before Mairu was especially knowledgeable about them. Thankfully, there's enough of a margin that the player can take missteps like that here and there, finally getting a recruit through sheer persistence, if nothing else. There's also a new game plus feature that lets you keep all of your stats from the previous playthrough, which is a nice way to add replayability and see any of the story arcs you might have missed the first time.
With very few exceptions, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club is a pleasant adventure without blemish, and a great value at the current $7.99 on Steam. In the microcosm of video games dominated by high-octane violence and treacherous intrigue, this game is a summer's picnic accompanied by a light breeze. If you're looking for a little change of pace, you won't go wrong with CTHCC. After all, variety is the spice of life! Except in cooking. I'm pretty sure spice is the spice of cooking.
~ Kyle "Kaypar" Parker