Preview: Whimel Academy Is Clearly a Work in Progress

“Cozy” games and life sims seem to pair well together, giving people a chance to go through day-to-day experiences in a relaxed way, and it feels like Impossible Home’s Whimel Academy is counting on that. It tasks players with going through six years of school life at the Whimel Magic Academy. However, the current state of it, while fine, also feels like perhaps there could be some higher stakes and more bug-catching to make the experience feel more solid.

Pulling from the idea of a Harry Potter-esque fantasy, all Whimel Academy players find themselves attending the school after being invited to train to become a witch or wizard. Like titles where scheduling is key, your goal is to build up stats in order to find a path for yourself outside of university. In addition, there are fellow students you can get to know, ideally eventually building something deeper with them. 

Day-to-day life is simple. You select classes and activities. These increase your stats in the Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Magical categories. That, in turn, influences your interactions with other characters and the ways you can respond to them. You can also customize your room, interact with a cat, and collect and use items like books, food, and potions to help reach your goals. As there are no minigames and this is a straightforward stat-builder like Princess Maker, you basically select your actions and then find out results. 

For some, that might feel a bit tedious. The real “excitement” here I feel comes from the interactions with others. There aren’t milestone activities really yet in the same way as ones in Princess Maker or Tokimeki Memorial, where you’re shooting for certain events, worrying about major tests and milestones, or stressing about time. In fact, the six-year deadline almost felt too effortless for me. It’s lacking the sense of drive I felt in other life sims at this point, thought that could be due to it being in early access and more elements on the way that could assist more goal-driven players.

But really, my biggest concern now comes down to what could be either a mixture of bugs or unfinished content. It tried to send me through the tutorial by repeating that prompt a few times in the first year. I had a conversation with Theo repeat three times after I was four years into it. I couldn’t tell if ensuing relationship events weren’t ready, or it was a bug that kept it triggering. The ending I earned was incredibly short and didn’t mention any other characters or details about my “life.” Not to mention in general that the script definitely needs some work. I spotted some issues with the sentence structure and awkward dialogue. 

But, again, given this is a game that just launched in early access and won’t be out for a year, there’s hope. These could be normal consequences of growing pains.

I get what Impossible Home is attempting to accomplish with Whimel Academy. Life simulations like Princess Maker or Tokimeki Memorial can get stressful when you start thinking about stats and deadlines. The current build almost makes things feel a little too low-pressure though, especially with bugs getting in the way to hamper the experience and result in endings not being what you might expect after your time passes. Given there’s still about a year from its full release, I’m curious to see if there’ll be more added to make school life feel a bit more compelling.

Whimel Academy is available in Early Access for PCs via Steam.