Scholomatch - TV Tropes

Scholomatch is an upcoming Modern Fantasy Match-Three Romance Game being developed and published by Dire Kitten Games. A playable Steam demo was released on August 30, 2024, and the full game is scheduled to release in 2025.

In the game, you arrive as a new student at Horizon Wizarding Academy, an eclectic institution deep in the spirit realms. As you embark on your magical education, learning how to bring bits of elemental magic into alignment in order to power spells, you get to know your classmates and begin to uncover secrets that threaten the very foundation of the academy.

Scholomatch has eleven datable characters, each with their own ten-chapter storyline (plus bonus content) that weaves together into an overarching story. The demo includes the first three chapters of Riley, the first four chapters of featured characters Miko and Typhon, and the first chapters of five more characters.

The Scholomatch demo provides examples of:

• Demo Bonus: When the full game releases, people who have played the demo will be able to continue where they left off.
• Equal-Opportunity Fanservice: The cast of characters is full of hotties of different genders.
• Experience Points: Scoring points toward the completion of a puzzle earns the player XP.
• Extra Turn: Each puzzle must be completed within a certain number of turns, but leveling up Time increases this limit.
• Featureless Protagonist: The game has you as a new student at Horizon Wizarding Academy, with little defined about your character by the story although Typhon’s storyline establishes that your character has above-average skill at fighting. Some dialog options let players choose/express PC characteristics or aspects of their backstory.
• Mana Meter: Pure mana, obtained by matching pure mana gems, is used to power cantrips–small “helper” spells that can aid in completing a puzzle.
• New Skill as Reward: Completing certain chapters unlocks new cantrips (special actions you can take by spending pure mana) or magic styles (special bonus effects that take place whenever you match-4 or match-5).
• Our Fairies Are Different: Many of the students you meet are fae of various kinds; most have an elven appearance, with pointy ears and no wings. All are humanoid and human-sized.
• Personality Mechanic: Each dateable character has a unique mechanic that slightly alters gameplay while playing their storyline.
• Polyamory: At Horizon, most students are “enjoying a social scene without constraints,” as Riley puts it. Meaning that any character you decide to date won't be surprised or bothered if you date other people as well, and may be simultaneously dating others themselves. This makes it possible to experience most of the game's content in a single playthrough, because becoming romantically involved with a character doesn't lock you out of other romantic routes.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The player’s choice of pronouns doesn’t impact their experience.
• RPG Elements: You can use XP to level up Water, Air, Earth, or Fire (earning you more points for matches with those elements), Pure (causing you to start each puzzle with more Pure mana stored), Chaos (reducing the penalty from Chaos matches), or Time (giving you more turns to complete each puzzle). Over the course of play you also unlock cantrips (survival actions you can take by spending pure mana) and magic styles (special bonus effects that take place whenever you match-4 or match-5) that can be equipped in different combinations.
• Story Difficulty Setting: One of the game’s three difficulty settings, Story, removes all puzzle gameplay for players who just want to enjoy the story. (As opposed to Archmage, which ramps puzzle difficulties up for players who really want to test their skills.)
• Wizarding School: Created and maintained by the wizard Galdran, Horizon Academy boasts the most diverse student body of any sanctioned academy in the realms.

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