Psy High 2
by Rebecca Slitt (Word count still unknown. Inquiring minds want to know @ladybird …)
Published Aug. 2019
Psy High 2 is the sequel to (gasp) Psy High 1 where you get to continue your character after high school graduation as they take a job as a camp counselor at a summer camp, Camp Cedarcrest. There you discover a new mystery involving magic and can help determine whether or not the summer camp stays open or gets shut down by land developers.
I have a soft spot in my heart for summer camp fiction, and to me, the setup of Psy High 2 is more intriguing than the first game’s story. Mysterious missing memories, ghost lady in the woods, old objects suddenly turned new, etc. The concept of playing as a camp counselor is also inherently more interesting to me than playing as a high school student, so it had a lot going for it as I went in.
PROS:
More interesting choices. The choices in Psy High 2 are generally more interesting than the ones in the first game, in large part thanks to a central conflict that has more layers of complexity. It says something that when I was asked to make a choice on what my goal would be regarding that conflict, I actually had to sit and think for a moment, and even decided to take a break to think on it some more before continuing.
It’s always a good sign when an IF game causes you to take a coffee break to debate with yourself about how to proceed.
You also have to often pick between doing what is best for the kids, the camp, or yourself, and all can be equally attractive paths of action.
Lots of callbacks for an imported character. The sequel does a good job of referencing what you did in the first game, even importing your stats straight over unchanged. It remembers your hobbies, your interests, who you were dating, and what you accomplished.
I really did feel like the same character with another year under my belt, even if that may have caused some issues for the author to deal with…but more on that in a minute.
Still one of the best CoG games with regards to power use. A lot of IF games that give the player powers seem terrified to let the player actually use those powers, but in Psy High 2, it’s a rare choice block that doesn’t have the option to choose, “I’m going to use my powers for this, please and thank you.”
Still, there was a notable difference in the sequel versus the first game, where I think at times I could almost see Rebecca Slitt sitting there as the author going, “Oh, no. The player has powers.”
CONS:
Inconsistent powers compared to the first game. So, getting back on how importing a character might cause some issues for the author…there are a lot of ways your character could have ended things in Psy High, and where that would leave them ability-wise. I can’t even imagine what this must have been like trying to balance here in the sequel.
For instance, my character, Maria, was a very selfish, very magic obsessed, and very driven student in the first game. I took every opportunity to make myself more powerful. I broke the Fairmath value of the Magic stat. I had a 96% value in Magic, which for Fairmath is just nuts.
Maria ended that first game as a sort of omniscient clairvoyant telepathic mini-god, able to see what was happening in the whole school at once, browse thoughts like reading street signs, and even protect her thoughts into other people’s heads.
I’m pretty sure you could also finish the first game with no powers.
So that’s the situation Slitt found herself in while writing Psy High 2. To me, it felt, in Dungeons and Dragons terms, that you had just finished a campaign where the DM gave you a +10 Vorpal Sword of God Slaying to fight the big bad boss. You then brought that sword to the next campaign, got the first minor threat put in front of you by the DM, and said, “I draw that god-killing sword.” Then the DM face-palms.
Only in the case of Psy High 2, the player’s powers are internal, so you can’t do something like take away the metaphorical sword.
Still, Slitt tried a little bit of revisionist manipulation to keep the powers from steam-rolling things. As an example, one of the first tasks at camp is to find an object you have a detailed description of. Now, you’re told you can’t use your clairvoyance to immediately locate it. There is some fairly good explanation given for this, but it still felt strained, especially since the very first use of our powers in the first game was locating an object we had only a description of, and locating it from inside a supply closet, inside a student’s backpack, walking through the hall. And that was with the baby version of our powers.
In another instance we’re told we can’t use our clairvoyance to look at papers inside a container, when we had read papers with our clairvoyance in the first game to cheat, and looked at objects inside containers in the first game too, even examined objects inside other rooms inside locked closets. Again, all with weaker powers.
I’m really sympathetic to Rebecca Slitt’s dilemma with this situation. Essentially, the player has an “I win” button if they ended the first game in the state my character did. Even with attempts to reign it in by the author, she does still allow you to hammer that “I win” button here in the sequel, for better and worse.
It does terrible things to the narrative. You can avoid introducing yourself to or meeting characters just by reading their thoughts. You can look at locations and never set foot inside them. You can spy on the people at the heart of the game’s mystery and never actually talk to any of them but one.
I’m fairly certain, because I nearly did it, that you can solve the mystery and resolve the conflict without ever having a face-to-face with the principal participants in it. I voluntarily had a conversation I could have avoided, and aside from that, I wrapped everything up with a bow without actually engaging with any of the main people involved.
The game might have been better with a new original character. I know I sang the praises of the author for making it seem like a seamless transition of your character from the first game into a new adventure, but I think the game would have been a better game if no character importing was allowed.
It would have made more sense to maybe call it Psy Camp and set the story in the same world as Psy High, but not have any character overlap, making the player take on a new role as a new character, perhaps with their own powers, designed to mesh well with this story, and maybe even an internal or external reason to make the temptation presented by Psy High 2’s mystery a better thematic fit.
There is very little overlap with returning characters as it is, and having a player character who isn’t clairvoyant would’ve enriched the plot. As it stands, the player’s motivation as a character coming in from Psy High with an established relationship and powers gives them very little motivation beyond altruism or selfishness for getting involved with the central mystery going on at the camp.
The mystery solution is presented too quickly. The setup is really intriguing, but I feel like it could have been drawn out more. Out of a six week long camp, the mystery is solved by the end of week one when after minimal investigation a character just lays it all out for you.
I was also asked to make a choice regarding which side of a conflict to side with, when I’d only had the opportunity to talk to one person and the conflict wasn’t even brought up. I wouldn’t have known about the conflicting stances if they weren’t presented as options, basically.
I really wish the mystery would have built and sustained itself for longer, at least until the mid-way point, and if the player had been more instrumental in piecing everything together themself. Instead, you just get the answers handed to you in one or two back-to-back conversations.
The antagonist isn’t very antagonistic. This is a pattern I’ve noticed with both of Rebecca Slitt’s Psy High games—she tends to defang her antagonists by insulating their wrong-doing from any meaningful harm. They violate consent and personal autonomy, sure, but no one seems to truly suffer from their actions.
SPOILERS:
In the first game, the principal literally makes the students he brainwashes into model citizens and helps them improve their grades and get into colleges, then makes sure they can afford to do so, because he also helps them with scholarship applications. He does this against their will, but the fact that many of them continue these learned behaviors voluntarily after the brainwashing is removed shows it wasn’t an awful traumatic experience for them. If magic wasn’t involved, it’s basically like an overbearing mentor figure or parent forcing a kid to buckle down and apply themselves against their wishes.
In the sequel, the White Lady is saving people in a time bubble and being very meticulous and careful about the amount of time she steals from people to accomplish this. On the surface, it sounds horrible, literally draining part of children’s lives away to fuel her magic, only the narrative immediately defangs the harm by mentioning she deliberately only takes 1 hour a night and 6 hours at the end of camp from each camper. That’s 48 hours per summer, or, if a kid attended all the way from 8 years old to 18 every year, less than three weeks from their total lifespan. Again, it’s bad, but it’s not that bad, you know?
Maybe it’s a consequence of her wanting to give the player the option to side with the antagonists, and she doesn’t want to let the player be truly bad, so rather than have morally ambiguous antagonists commit genuinely consequential wrongs that cause real harm, she ends up cushioning their actions in the narratives until objections to them almost become philosophical.
Final verdict:
(6/10)
Final verdict, I would still recommend Psy High 2 if you enjoy YA literature, liked the first game, or just enjoy summer camp stories in general.
Rebecca Slitt’s writing style and choices are all very enjoyable, even if I wish the thorns on that rose were sharper.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful review! I really appreciate all of your comments, both about the elements you liked and those you didn’t.