Freshman Year is a short, free-to-play game about two friends heading to a club.
Freshman Year jumps into issues involving women being taken advantage of when they go out sometimes. Two underage college students are planning to head out to a club for the night and talk over this via texts. You start with an initial information section on their past, how they often go out partying and getting wasted and posting pictures of this on Facebook.
You can make some semblances of “choice” in Freshman Year, though they don’t really seem to do much to affect the ending. Your character will pretty much go do the same things regardless of what you choose, all that really seems to change is what your character looks like and some of how they give the narrative.
Freshman Year highlights going out drinking and getting weed. Wait, how is that a good thing? Well, it isn’t really. It also highlights how quickly a situation can get bad, and how much one can get taken advantage of. Granted, the issue is more widely known for women (which this highlights), though it also happens with guys. Though, the game doesn’t do that good of a job at showing what’s going on and you don’t really known until after it happens. Even after playing through it twice I wasn’t completely sure. I had tried different choices each time, just to see what would happen… and like I said, it doesn’t really change much.
Well, if anything, this game has pretty decent art. It has a pretty great watercolor style design which does work well. Though you’ll only really see it in the in-between and make-a-choice screens. Most of the time you’ll be seeing your phone or the narrative in-between.
So while Freshman Year has great art design, it does have a few issues with giving you a decent thought of “choice”. No matter what you do, you’ll just end up seeing the same thing in the end. Perhaps there could have been a way to try and avoid the situation that happens from happening, perhaps not. It’s hard to say really.
For the price of free, I can’t really complain much though I suppose. It just feels like maybe there should have been something more to it. Freshman Year is a game you should avoid though if you are sensitive to particular subjects. You’ve been warned.
Freshman Year Review Score
2.5/5
