asThe UK has everything at first glance, everything comes back to the class system. Verity Amersham, a scholar at Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls, has been accused of kicking the hockey captain out the window, and the school’s horrifying principal is determined to banish her despite the most frivolous evidence. When Verity protests her innocence, Miss Mulligatawney remains unacceptable, speaking explicitly of her reasoning.

All injustice in it is a powerful driver and I guarantee that Matilda will set my goal of preventing Verity’s expulsion with fixed enthusiasm, as opposed to the hateful Miss Tranchibald. Like developer Inkle’s 2021 game overboard, they are given time limits for work inside and a handful of areas that travel between the library and the hospital room (aka the “SAN” where the school’s gross matrons lurk. Each area has characters to discuss and objects to find, and each action moves the clock forward. The game continues on a strict school timetable. For example, at 2pm, all students will be in the military to the library for Latin.

The idea is to solve who is where and plan your exploration accordingly. For example, you might want to sneak into Sun while Matron teaches the gym on the premises. The secret you reveal unlocks the new conversation line. This unlocks even more secret paths, and everything is locked with the ultimate goal of preventing Verity from being unjustified expulsion.

However, you cannot achieve that on your first attempt. The game is designed to be played multiple times, and each 30-minute run improves your character’s motivations and understanding of what’s going on in this strange school. I don’t ruin it here, but the plot goes to some fun and unexpected places, and the 1922 setting provides excuses to riff on the effects of the Empire, World War I, and of course the class system. And that system is really equipped for verity. He quickly discovers that the only way to fight back is to get nasty.

Cheeky and poisonous retorts unlock further dialogue. If you want to help verity not only to avoid boredom, but also to succeed in becoming a head girl, you will see her lying, stealing, and threatening. It also gives the feeling that Verity may be a somewhat unreliable narrator. She associates it with her father, so the story changes subtly with each story.

This helps to shake things up a bit, but inevitably the structure of the game will bring about some repetition as you perform many of the same actions each day. It takes a little patience to keep all the paths of investigation in your head. But it’s worth persevering to uncover all the intimate secrets of the school and enjoy more of the excellent writings of story director John Ingold.

It only took a few nights to reach the game’s ending Coker, and Verity’s arc is extremely pleased. Here, the public school system mainly serves as a way of creating inequality, normalizing bullying, and encouraging ruthlessness. The only way to succeed is to beat the asshole in your own game. What options do you have when your system is so rotten?