Prom season politics at Rose Academy
Richard is a Shakespeare-inspired social simulation set at Rose Academy for the Gifted—a place where popularity can matter as much as grades and first impressions can decide your entire year. You play as George, a transfer student arriving for his final year of high school, immediately thrown into the orbit of Richard: the most popular kid in school… and your roommate.
Your goal isn’t to win a tournament or save the world. It’s far more personal (and arguably more brutal): navigate cliques, decode what people really mean, and build alliances quickly enough to campaign against Richard and claim the title of Prom King before time runs out.
How it plays: conversation as your main weapon
At its core, Richard is a game about social reading comprehension. Success comes from paying attention to tone, picking up character tells, and choosing dialogue that matches what someone wants to hear—sometimes even when what they say out loud suggests the opposite.
- Converse with students: Meet the academy’s popular crowd and work to earn trust, one interaction at a time.
- Reveal what they’re really saying: The game challenges you to interpret subtext and respond to the underlying intent, not just the surface-level words.
- Snapshot information: George can take “mental snapshots” of key character details, then use those insights later as dialogue options to gain additional trust.
- Explore the school week-by-week: Choose where to spend your time each week, look for specific characters, and improve your grades while you work the social ladder.
The campaign against Richard
What makes the premise pop is the built-in rivalry: Richard isn’t a distant antagonist—he’s in your daily space, shaping the social ecosystem you’re trying to crack. That gives the game a steady sense of tension: every conversation can be a step toward influence, and every missed read can cost valuable momentum in the race to become Prom King.
If you enjoy narrative games where the "combat" is persuasion and timing, Richard leans hard into that fantasy: a strategic scramble for social credibility where information is currency and trust is the win condition.
Who it’s for on Mac
Richard should appeal to Mac players who like:
- Dialogue-forward games with strong character focus
- Social deduction and reading between the lines
- Relationship-building systems and branching conversational choices
- School-life stories with a competitive edge
Mac system requirements
Minimum:
- OS: OS X
- Processor: 2.6 Ghz Quad Core
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Integrated Graphics
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Bottom line
Richard turns the final year of high school into a tactical, Shakespeare-tinged climb through reputation, favors, and fragile alliances. If you’re confident you can read a room, weaponize what you learn, and build trust under a deadline, Rose Academy is ready to test you—one conversation at a time.
