Sei Crain Gakuen (St. Crain School)

St. Crain School is an all boys' school where the sons of the rich and famous attend and live in the dorms. However, even though the students come from rich backgrounds, they also come from painful backgrounds, and now a lot of nasty things have been happening around the school, particuarly to the student Yuuya Takaki, who seems to be the chosen victim to several instances of rape.

Takaki Yuuya - The main character of the game. He is a quiet boy who has grown up in some unkind treatment due to the fact that his father, a great politician, had him from an affair and he is not the son of his father's wife. Because of this, Yuuya has never really adapted to the atmosphere of St. Crain School, where so many rich and famous people attend.

Haruhigaoka Ryou - Ryou is one of the athletic stars of the school, and he is popular among the other students because of this. He's known to sneak away from the dormitory, and apparently had a relationship with a junior student in the past where photographs were taken and sold for profit. He is a rather cunning individual.

Tokishima Sei - Sei is the foster son of the owner of a private university hospital, and is currently the successor, even over the owner's real son. This is mainly due to the fact that Sei's foster father was having a sexual relationship with him, and Sei entered the St. Crain School dormitory system to escape from it. He speaks gently and easily, and is the kind of person that associates with lots of people.

Sakakinomiya Kazuma - Kazuma is the president of the student council at St. Crain School. He is known to be a rather calm yet excessive person. However, there are some questions around the school if his good grades and position in the school are legitimate.

Enjyouji Atsushi - Atsusi is a rather unkind individual, especially when it comes to Yuuya, and he is hard on him and picks on him often. He could be considered your typical school bully, and the quiet Yuuya is his chosen prey.

There isn't much to the playability of St. Crain School. This doujin game was made entirely with webpages (HTML), and it's simply a matter of viewing the image on screen, reading the dialogue below (if you know Japanese), and then clicking the "Next" button at the bottom to move to the next page. Occassionally there will be branches in the story where you click one of two links and they will go to different areas of the story, but they are rather few. As typical of boys' love games, you click through the pages and get CG images, and eventually reach an ending point.

Basically, the layout of the game is so simple that anyone who can click a link in a webpage can play it. But then, it also has the "static" feel of webpage browsing, and not the more "interactive" feel of a game. Also, if you can't read the story and dialogue information on the pages (like me), it's a rather boring experiance. There isn't even really a point of playing through it for CGs, as they give you a link to all the CGs on the main page, and it's rather easy to just go into the "jpg" folder and view all the pictures there yourself anyway.

The one nice part about this game is it is pretty much guaranteed in the technical department: if you have a web browser, you can play it. If you have Japanese language support installed on your browser, it should have no problem displaying the text, but even if you don't, you can still go through the pages with the text in jumbled JIS and not have a problem.

St. Crain School is so simple in design, one has to wonder why there aren't more doujin games of this nature around. Made completely of HTML webpages with options going to different links, anyone with basic knowledge of HTML could make a game like this. It almost makes me wonder why there aren't any English boys' love games of this sort, as it's just really far too easy to do.

That said, there really isn't a whole lot of point to playing it, as you really just feel like "web browsing" and not "playing a game." If you can't read the story that is playing out on the pages, there just isn't anything to keep you interested. However, if you can read Japanese, that would probably make the game a lot more time-worthy.

So why play it at all? Why even bother? One word: art. The art in the game was done by Yura, who was the artist for Enzai, and it is rather spectacular for a doujin game. I wouldn't be surprised if this is how she started out to get to move on to do the art in the popular Langmaor games. However, even the nice art has one fallback: there just isn't enough of it. While the few sprinkling of pictures you do get are gorgeous, there are only around 20 images anyway.

Apparently a newer version of this game was released in 2003 called St. Crain School DX, which ran for 1500 yen and featured /lots/ more of Yura's art, and enough different ending paths to warrant a capture guide, though the game is still all in HTML. I'd definitely be interested in seeing it, and that version would probably be much more worth your time. However, most people label this 30 MB or so version as "St. Crain School DX" often, so trying to find the true one has become rather impossible. For this original version of St. Crain School, unless you can read Japanese, I'd suggest just downloading the CGs and enjoying Yura's art.

Disclaimer: All written text and capture guides © Boys' Love Games Headquarters. All pictures and downloads are copyright of their respective companies and artists and are for promotional use only. I am in no way claiming the art as my own, nor am I trying to infringe upon the company's rights. I am trying to promote these games by allowing a foreign audience to see some artwork from the game.