"Welcome to Kraken Academy, a technicolor fever dream that for legal reasons can only be described as "technically a school.""
A totally normal school.
Kraken Academy!! is a 2021 adventure game by indie studio Happy Broccoli Games, about happy little demonic cults, soda conspiracies, courtroom drama, and preventing the end of the world.
You've found yourself at Kraken Academy, a school(?) home to four distinct clubs: The art club, the music club (the one you're in!), the sports club, and the drama club. A girl made of broccoli, and a "woke" conspiracy theorist blogger are just two of the strange students that attend this even stranger school. The place is barely functioning, infested with alligators, and violating every health and safety law known to man, but none of that really matters in comparison to the impending apocalypse you've been tasked with preventing.
But there's a problem: The apocalypse is happening in just a few days. To stop it, you need to join each club, and free the spirit that watches over it. That'll probably require a bit more time. Thankfully, the Kraken that lives in a lake on the school grounds gives you an amulet that lets you rewind time. With this, you can relive your first week of school over and over, retaining your memories and somehow your inventory, too.
But don't let any of that stop you from still enjoying your school life! You've got all the time in the world, after all. So go on dates, make friends, and destroy school property while you save the world!
Kraken Academy!! contains examples of:
- Almighty Janitor: Of special note during the Sports Club mission in the mines. The School Janitor is apparently a spy of some sort who has infiltrated Mepsi's workforce in order to try and stop their plans against the school and aids you in trying to rescue the missing children.
- Anthropomorphic Food: The creatively named "Broccoli Girl", is a walking, talking piece of broccoli. Actually, she's a human who was cursed, and only turns back into a normal girl on the full moon. Ironically, she actually prefers her broccoli form because it's so cute.
- Apocalypse How: What will happen to the school after three days and what you have to prevent.
- Big Bad: Nadia, who is revealed to be the Mepsi Corp Boss, holder of the Spirit of the Drama Club, and even have the ability to rewind time as well.
- Big Good: The Kraken.
- Break His Heart to Save Him: An odd example, and Played for Laughs a little bit. Broccoli Girl had to break up with her ex, Dimitri, after she was cursed and turned into a living piece of broccoli. It just so happens, Dimitri is allergic to broccoli, so being together would have literally killed him.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: For how talented an artist Nikolai seems to be, he really doesn't do a lot of actual drawing. He'd rather practice his DDR moves even as a project deadline is fast approaching, much to his partner Stanislav's frustration.
- Compulsive Liar: Nikolai has a habit of inflating his accomplishments juuust a bit. For example, he claims to be the #1 DDR player in the world, yet can't even best his fellow classmates, and keeps the game on easy mode.
- Cooldown Hug: Bernadette and Pierre give one to Nadia when she panics over her defeat.
- Disgusting Public Toilet: Honestly it's a surprise the sinks even work. In addition to the usual grime of a filthy bathroom, there's also rats in the walls and tentacles in the toilets.
- Financial Test of Friendship: After Nadia's defeat and the rescue of the Spirit she was keeping captured, she panics that she'll lose her funding and be kicked out of Drama Club. Surprisingly enough, Bernadette and Pierre show they consider her a friend and offer to help pay for her to remain in the Club so they can continue their school and club activities together.
- Fantastic Caste System: The Drama Club is clearly overfunded and the priority of the school, to the point they have a much nicer gate, better buildings and amenities, actual fancy vases and artwork, sinks made of gold, and a bodyguard to keep people out. The students themselves are indicative of this as well, as most of the Drama Club students are rich elitist snobs. Meanwhile, the rest of the school is practically falling apart and the students in the other Clubs have had to go to some extreme measures just to make do.
- Foreshadowing:
- It's notable that The Principal's desk and office is substantially large. That's because the Kraken is the real Principal and it was originally his office before he was trapped in the lake.
- Some mention is made of an "incident" that occurred some years before at the Academy. If you learn of this and try to ask The Principal about it, the most he says is that it was the "worst day of his life". It was the destruction of the Science Club that he was the Spirit of.
- Gay Option: Of the three music club members you can take out on a date, Vladimir is the only guy available; you can't date Kostadin because there's already a subplot where you help set him up with Isabelle.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Headmaster, who turns out to have been the Spirit of the long-since destroyed Science Club.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The main gameplay loop is based on a time loop where you can control when you loop back to the beginning. Though, you still need to make sure you don't forget to loop back before the apocalypse arrives in a few days. Somehow, you also keep your inventory when looping, along with the usual Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. Taking copies of items from the future and using them in the past is actually how you complete most quests.
- Gym Class Hell: Considering you almost get crushed underneath a horse while doing an activity that has nothing to do with horses, this gym class is definitely hell. Along with the rest of the school.
- Long-Lost Relative: One of the side quests reveals that The Hobo and Stix are long lost father and son.
- Mystery Cult: The evening Art Club tutoring session that apparently involves the participants wearing special robes, a cauldron, a potion, chanting, and demon summoning.
- Omnicidal Maniac: The Principal ultimately wants to wipe out the school entirely. The school and everyone in it.
- Rationalizing the Overkill: Even when it's pointed out the loss of life involved, The Principal insists that the school can only start anew once the old has been torn down.
- Revenge Reveal Story: At the finale, you are actually taken into the memories of the Science Club Spirit in order to witness his backstory and motivations.
- School Idol: Vladimir has most of the female students at Kraken Academy under his spell. Not only is he extremely good looking, and he knows it, but he's also the lead singer of the music club's band. The drama club students, who are somehow more self-absorbed than Vladimir, are probably the only ones who don't worship the ground he walks on. Them, and his fellow bandmates of course. But that's just because they know what it's like to have to put up with him for extended periods of time.
- Sealed Good in a Can: The Kraken is trapped in the lake.
- Shout-Out: Multiple.
- The missing Sports Club student, Marin, has what appears to be a Duel Disk.
- The whole court case for the Art Club is reminiscent of Ace Attorney games.
- The class in the Drama Club requires you to act out a story of "Gorc the Orc" which sounds suspiciously similar to Shrek.
- Stanislav makes a reference to drawing Sonic commissions.
- Sibling Rivalry: Between you and your sister, Nadia.
- Start of Darkness: The Principal was originally the Spirit of the Science Club until an experiment went wrong that resulted in the deaths of all his students. Then while he was grieving, the other Spirits and the Kraken chose to abandon him and decided it would be better to just get rid of the Science Club entirely and reallocate the funds to the other Clubs. Needless to say, he did not take it well.
- Starving Artist: Poor Stanislav just wants people to see his commission sheet and share his art on Kraken-Net. He's by far one of the hardest working students and actually focuses on his schoolwork, and yet seems to be absolutely broke. He's even admitted that, in his desperation, he's accepted commissions of a ***certain blue hedgehog doing "things you wouldn't believe".
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: A literal example in the trial, it's revealed that Patitsa the dog ruined her own painting herself due to the stress being put on her for her talent.
- The Reveal: The Principal was the true mastermind behind everything and is actually the Spirit of a long forgotten fifth Club, The Science Club.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: At the end of the Mines section, you have a wall with four levers of which you need to activate the one that will free the captured children. The other three levers can fire someone, reduce holiday leave for the office workers, and release gators. The levers are clearly marked so you will know which one will do what before you pull it, and there is even an achievement if you pull all four.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Nadia. She is a massive witch who delights in mocking others and who has among other things become the Corrupt Executive head of Mepsi, kidnapped children of the Academy to force them to work in Mines, and is rather blatant about being part of an evil plot to destroy the Academy. Yet everyone adores her.
- What Happened to the Mouse???: Alex, who was apparently the previous Kraken underling before he was abandoned in the woods and his position given to The Protagonist. He is briefly mentioned by certain parties and hinted at in the nurse's office. He does later appear briefly in Dimitri's quest when he's mistaken for a bear, but nothing is explained of what happened to make him leave the Kraken's service or why he'd choose to stay with bears in the woods rather than return to the dorms or just go home.
