Hanako Games

New Case Suggestions

#1 by hanako - May 28 2015

Disclaimer: I am not adding new cases right now, because right now we're doing the art upgrade and then working on the custom game mode. However, I do plan to add some more cases eventually, and I'm willing to listen to ideas.

Submitted ideas are not guaranteed to make it in!

Some general guidelines for random cases:

1. Must be something that can believably happen within the school setting. The Student Council cannot investigate bank robberies.

2. Must be possible for case failure to cause a scandal. Not every variant of every case does lead to a scandal when failed, of course, but at least some variant should be scandalous in order to be worth assigning to the council. That means some outcome needs to be something that the public would be upset or gossipy about. Two girls calling each other names in the cafeteria isn't scandalous because nobody outside the school really cares. A girl laughing until she pees herself doesn't reflect badly on the school, so it's not a scandal.

3. Must not require the minions to target a teacher. The student council does not have authority over teachers. This means student/teacher romance cannot be a case, even though it would be scandalous.

You don't need to try and suggest all the details for variations and the like, that's my job. This is just a place to toss out concepts for cases if you have an idea you'd like to see the Student Council investigate. And, of course, if your case suggestions have some possibility of causing the school to GAIN reputation, you could be giving yourself a bonus in the long run!

Re: New Case Suggestions

#2 by somestrangecircus - May 28 2015

Maybe one where a girl is sneaking a boy in from the outside. I mean, like Mallory said, they can't all be gay. This seems like it would more be a variant of some already existing case, though.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#3 by LateWhiteRabbit - May 28 2015

What about a case where the council has to investigate whether or not a senior and a freshman are "just friends" or in a potentially illegal and scandalous relationship, and shut it down or eliminate gossip about it if not true? You already have a similar template from Elsa doing damage control for herself. Can't imagine those rich donor and ambassador fathers would be too happy about news of their little girl's les-yay status with a legal adult getting out, or vice-versa. And of course, it would be scandalous to the school as well.

For another one, and this might be too close to the drug cases (or could be used as a variant), or maybe even obsolete in this day and age of the Internet, but maybe a case where the girls are passing around and selling and receiving erotic material? In my school growing up, there was a whole underground market for erotic material starting at about the 5th-6th grade and moving up. In the all-boys settings I've been in, it's been rampant, but again, this was 20+ years ago and dealt with actual photographs and magazines. Maybe someone who attended an all-girls setting can chime in if the same applies there. Maybe the school has a particularly aggressive firewall?

And I don't have any specific ideas at the moment, but it would be fun to have more cases where a rival school is up to trouble on campus, like when the council had to guard the statue before the big game.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#4 by hanako - May 28 2015

If there was a black market selling such things on my campus, I missed it, but that's entirely possible. The only time I ever heard about erotic pictures at school was during some of the senior-prank shenanigans, one of which supposedly involved pages torn out of Playgirl being posted all over lockers and in the bathrooms. Supposedly, I say, because when I heard about it I also heard that they'd all been taken down very quickly by the teachers and almost no one had actually seen them.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#5 by grommile - May 28 2015

LateWhiteRabbit:

For another one, and this might be too close to the drug cases (or could be used as a variant), or maybe even obsolete in this day and age of the Internet, but maybe a case where the girls are passing around and selling and receiving erotic material?

Seems like it has some resonance with a certain variant of "Cell Phone Madness".

Re: New Case Suggestions

#6 by LateWhiteRabbit - May 28 2015

hanako:

If there was a black market selling such things on my campus, I missed it, but that's entirely possible. The only time I ever heard about erotic pictures at school was during some of the senior-prank shenanigans, one of which supposedly involved pages torn out of Playgirl being posted all over lockers and in the bathrooms. Supposedly, I say, because when I heard about it I also heard that they'd all been taken down very quickly by the teachers and almost no one had actually seen them.

I'm having a feeling its probably more of "boy" thing, than a "girl" thing. We had "dealers" that sold stuff (presumably nicked from their fathers) and transported around in false-paneled Trapper Keepers (now I'm pinning down the date on the era, aren't I? ). They parted with pages for a few dollars apiece, or whole magazines for substantially more allowance money. In the most clever methods involved, they would sell thick ink pens, that when unscrewed would reveal a page neatly folded around the ink reservoir. They would even take orders for specific genre material if you where patient. I, uh, know all about this from a "friend" of course. It isn't like I skipped buying lunch once a week throughout junior high or anything ....

And I'll slink away now that I've skeeved everyone out with the knowledge that 10-11 year old boys run (or ran) underground "erotic material" businesses for lunch money.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#7 by silentheartsong - May 29 2015

A case where girls are sneaking into classrooms and having sex. Maybe even orgies.

You KNOW it would happen.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#8 by LateWhiteRabbit - May 29 2015

silentheartsong:

A case where girls are sneaking into classrooms and having sex. Maybe even orgies.

You KNOW it would happen.

Hanako is going to think we're all perverts at this rate. (Is there a variant of the Nude Picture Cell Phone case where the girl in the picture DOESN'T know about it, or willingly spread the picture herself as 'art'? Because in every game I've played, each time I question the girl in the photo she is 100% all the time cool with it, like "Yeah. Totes me. Sexy aren't I? Gonna be a model." and not "OMG. This is awful. They snapped that while I was in the shower! I'm so embarrassed." Just wondering. Seems weird if the girl is always an exhibitionist.)

I am curious on what the school's stance on all the les-yay subtext going around is. Like Mallory says at one point, it seems to pretty out in the open, to the point where she is offended when they start whispering that she's gay, and it seems her impression is one of "they're one to talk!".

Perhaps it is all meant to be "Romantic Two Girl Friendships" or "Class S" relationships in the Japanese parlance? But then, Thais does seem to used to girls making romantic gestures towards her sister, and her sister certainly seems to have a reputation as a womanizer and heart breaker.

Oooh. Maybe you could have some more Red Mask cases, where you perhaps help collect blackmail information on prominent students for future use by the Society?

Or a secret school 'fight club". Girls start showing up with bruises to class - is it an accident - did they walk into a door frame? Or are they going to break the first two rules of "fight club" when you Harass them? Plenty of opportunity for Stalking and Suspending ring leaders! Isolated cat fight, or organized fight? Willing participant, or bullied into it?

Re: New Case Suggestions

#9 by Darksilverhawk - May 29 2015

What if some sort of student-run news organization, official or otherwise, got a hold of some potentially scandalous pictures/information and were preparing to publish them, and much like in the cell phone or artist cases you'd need to determine what the information is and stop it from going to print if necessary? (And maybe sometimes they could be preparing a secret report that actually reflects quite positively on the school and earns reputation?)

I've also been thinking about some sort of student black market, but can't think of anything that would be scandalous for them to be trading that isn't already covered in Just Say No. My schools always had something that was technically against the rules that students would trade under the table, but they were always pretty mundane things, at least to my knowledge.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#10 by Franka - May 29 2015

Trying to mine my own boarding school experiences for something that was potentially scandalous, but not too dark for this game...

Something involving arson, accidental or otherwise (seems like a vandal variant). There would always be somebody a li-ittle too fond of flames, whether burning themselves with matches or cigarettes, or looking for the right bush to set alight. One person filled their mouth with gasoline and tried to spit fire. We called her "Freda Krueger" for months afterwards...

Shared showers was a horrible place to be, a playground for bullies and the greatest place to cultivate your low self esteem. If we’d had smart phones back then... brrrr...

We had a school hockey fight where my entire team eschewed school uniforms and showed up wearing heavy metal T-shirts (Shock to the System?). I was also wearing my psychedelic neon green sneakers with smiley faces. That was hilarious, but fairly unpopular with the school staff.

Mirroring what others are saying, a girl, two doors down from me, snuck boys into her room pretty much every weekend (a new one every week too). They mostly were recruits from the military barracks outside town.

People "vanishing" during school/class outings were a fairly common occurrence. They’d turn up in strange places too. At one time the missing were seriously dumb enough to have taken a wrong turn and ended up on a farm, begging for help... there was a search party and everything. I’m not too proud to say that I got lost once too, during a "survival trip", but at least I found my own way back.

Training for this "survival trip" (which was an annual thing) was sometimes taken a little too seriously. I got into a fight with someone for laughing at them when running into them on the school grounds, dressed in military fatigues and hiding behind bushes. That reminds me, one person would also dress up as a ninja and hide around school and spy on people. That might have been somewhat scandalous if discovered (well, more like childish, but in another place maybe).

There was this one girl who pretty much wanted to be choked. She’d fool others into these "games" where they’d squeeze her chest until she passed out. A little dark for a Secret Society, but hey, real life.

Speaking of real life, I’ll bypass the suicide, rape and all that, stuff that did happen, but is further on the dark side than what this game does.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#11 by grommile - May 29 2015

Franka:

Something involving arson, accidental or otherwise (seems like a vandal variant). There would always be somebody a li-ittle too fond of flames, whether burning themselves with matches or cigarettes, or looking for the right bush to set alight.

Isn't there already an incendiary variant of the vandal case? (I can't tell, I usually end up expelling the girl with a stash of lighter fuel because I've never been able to punish her effectively.)

Re: New Case Suggestions

#12 by hanako - May 29 2015

There is an arson variant, yes.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#13 by Franka - May 29 2015

I thought that might be the case, but I couldn't remember.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#14 by Franka - Jun 2 2015

Are there any cases involving some sort of blackmail?

Re: New Case Suggestions

#15 by ElsabethK - Jun 18 2015

I have a few ideas for new cases.
-Unusually high internet usage. Some possible results are students using video chat to call home, legal streaming shows, online gaming, something to do with research for class, or the student doing adult video calls to get more money
-Students are putting on a play or musical. The council needs to make sure that it is appropriate. Maybe they need to check to make sure it is a certain version of the play, that it is the play they are saying it is or prevent sabotage?
-Paranoid student. Student is daughter of someone important like an ambassador, business owner, or maybe minor overseas royality? Student becomes convinced that someone is out to get them. Some results could be to convince the student that nothing is wrong or find out who is out to get them before it happens. I'm totally thinking of Elodie with this suggestion.
-Student's medication goes missing. It could end with the student misplacing it, the student trading/selling it or another student taking it for recreational use/selling.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#16 by wendymarlowe - Jul 11 2015

An actual thing that happened when my parents were in college: an enterprising student started an anonymous service where, for a price, you could pay to have a professor pied by a streaker. (I get the impression that streakers were the 70s equivalent of planking . . .) Administration took a lot of time trying to track down the "don" of the pie mafia. Dad found out much later that it was a friend of his who was a divinity student at the time

Re: New Case Suggestions

#17 by hanako - Jul 11 2015

hehehe pie mafia

Re: New Case Suggestions

#18 by 4Dam-Ghost-Nappa - Sep 2 2015

A Scenario where the Student Council holds a Talent Competition and has to screen out bad acts and provide some form of security for the event so someone doesn't sabotage the event either before or during someone's performance.

There's also student publications. Allowing them to write and publish whatever they want will undoubtedly drag down the school's reputation but squeezing too tight on censorship will destroy your Council's Karma. You could also get into a power struggle with student publications.

I think you could also incorporate both
1) council member loyalty missions where instead of earning or losing Karma and Reputation, you could gain or lose loyalty with one of your council members
2) Non-plot essential mission arcs. I think the best way to describe this as consecutive related cases: Like the plot missions, there is continuity between them, but they aren't related to the larger stories. Some of the characters between the cases will be the same, some of the locations may be the same. I think this in particular would allow for playthroughs to feel drastically different from each other and provide more mission variety.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#19 by Darksilverhawk - Sep 10 2015

Piggy backing off of 4Dam-Ghost-Nappa a bit and inspired by reading Mallory's picnic conversation just now (and promising her more events later in the year that never quite materialize), I would like to see a few cases that are more like council-sponsored activities than straight up mysteries. We have the lemonade stand, but I would like to see things that are less like the various event guarding missions and more proactive. Maybe you could send a girl out to help organize fundraising for a school dance, hold a secret santa-like event where you have to screen the in-coming presents for pranks, or have a booth at a school or town fair.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#20 by hanako - Sep 20 2015

Managed to sell enough Steam copies so far that I am at least thinking about case additions!

I'd also like to find more uses for some of the location cards that don't come up as often. Obvious boarding school stories tend to lead to an over-reliance on classrooms and bedrooms. Currently plotting more things to do in the library.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#21 by somestrangecircus - Sep 20 2015

...sex in the library. It's the only answer.

(I dunno, lots of schools seem to have a lewd act in the library story.)

Re: New Case Suggestions

#22 by hanako - Sep 20 2015

True, though I think I'll leave them to cuddle in the stacks undisturbed.

I'm writing up a case about missing books which should fit the library, but there are plenty of other places that don't come up often. The atrium, the patio, the auditorium, the gym...

Re: New Case Suggestions

#23 by bookworm37 - Sep 20 2015

Guarding the auditorium for an upcoming assembly?

Girls smoking on the patio? That seems like one that could fit for bathrooms too, actually.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#24 by Franka - Sep 20 2015

Someone found tied up in the gym (not Vonne). Bullying, recreational activity, or worse?

Clothes missing from the gym. Pranks, thieves, or souvenirs for Miss Talmage?

Loudspeakers in the auditorium used to broadcast political manifestos or fart noises?

Hidden cameras in any location?

somestrangecircus:

...sex in the library. It's the only answer.

I was an assistant librarian at my school... I don't know if it's some of the steamier books inspiring people, but yeah...

Re: New Case Suggestions

#25 by 4Dam-Ghost-Nappa - Sep 21 2015

Rumors of a Food Fight going to break out in the Cafeteria.
Stolen Gym Clothes was something that happened to me personally and drove me up a wall because it meant I had to sit there and look stupid for 40 minutes and because a lot of guys in the locker room laughed behind my back.

"Senior Pranks" were so called at my high school because senior students would sometimes do things as a "So long, suckers!" rite of passage. Common examples involved clogging toilets with unusual implements, TPing an empty room, minor vandalization, tricking substitute teachers by "switching names" in class.

Regardless of what happens in the library, I believe that there should be some minor scene where you interact with a library assistant named Minnie, who was one of your rivals for Student Council President. What do you mean I'm salty about not being President in Magical Diary? Bonus Points if there are some books that Elsa can thumb through that refer to the mythical kingdom of Nova, speculation on the existence of secret magical societies in post-Harry Potter literature, etc.

My own student council was responsible for hosting its own events and fundraisers and I think Elsa herself could be given the choice to give speeches at events like before big sports games or something as a way of gaining Karma or undermining Talmage and/or the Red Mask Society. Bake sales, movie-themed parties (*cough* Vonne *cough*), Scavenger hunts, charity drives,and volunteer services are all ways to gain Karma/Reputation and the player could use them if they have sudden downtime (accidentally completed your missions too early) or as a way to earn back some good publicity in a pinch. You could make a "Host ..." option alongside the Supply Closet and the Training Room.

What if Brian isn't allowed to see Mallory because he's Wildseed?

Re: New Case Suggestions

#26 by Darksilverhawk - Sep 21 2015

Our school had a lot of problems with unauthorized impromptu fundraisers/bake sales in the atrium.

Girls could be sneaking out onto the patio at night on dares to do crazy stuff; running around naked or doing dangerous stunts.

Edit: Ohhhh, what if there's a rumor about a ghost in one of those places? It could be nothing, or it could be students up to no good again!

Re: New Case Suggestions

#27 by MadeiraD - Sep 23 2015

Items for a school performance (such as costumes) go missing, motives could include: jealousy of the girl who got the lead, wanting the costume or prop themselves, anger that one of the performers is neglecting their social relationships, and not wanting to be in the performance/inability to cope with the pressure

Re: New Case Suggestions

#28 by somestrangecircus - Sep 24 2015

Maybe a sweet-hearted girl is stealing food from the kitchen to feed a homeless man who lives by the dumpsters.

Re: New Case Suggestions

#29 by hanako - Jan 5 2016

As many of you know, we did get a few new cases added earlier. (bruises, missing library books, haunted auditoriums)

I'd like to put in a few more soon. I have a few ideas, but if you've come up with more ideas, feel free to throw them in for consideration

Re: New Case Suggestions

#30 by centernova - Feb 11 2016

Huahuahua as an actual real life former Student Government President at an actual real life Boarding School that had to do actual Real Life Discipline let me tell you things that happen there that might be potential cases.

Disclaimer: I am not yet done with the game, so similar cases may exist and I just haven't seen them yet.
Other disclaimer: Most of these stories I present are real and I am continually getting school flashbacks when I play this game.

Dorm Wars. Perhaps too close to vandalism, but I'm not sure. A pair of roommates or a couple of different rooms might team up against other groups. In my experience, there are some great variations that might translate well. We've had people get into wars without their roommates knowing, leaving the innocent roommate to take the fallout. Some are just plain old fun, others were mean-spirited, and yes, there is great potential for scandal... my younger brother actually had all of his bedding dipped in heavy bleach, which probably would have caused sickness or injury if he hadn't realized soon.

Late night sneaking out sessions. Kind of a combo of secret society and the urgent missing girl plots, perhaps? I was directly dealing with a late night Hide and Seek club, a budding Ghosthunter society, and some lovebirds. I was told of kids who would try to run away, only to injure themselves with snakebites or falling off a cliff (we were in the middle of the woods with a lot of caves and drops nearby).

Election rigging. The SGA can't be the only elected student organization, right? The SGA may have to look out for other elections to determine if a landslide vote is rigged (on either side, as some people can't say no even if they want to!) or genuine. Perhaps someone's bribing their classmates to vote for them or promising dangerous favors? Or else, maybe a smear campaign uncovered dirt on a prominent student?

General entertainment pranks. Nothing MEANT to hurt anyone, but rather to make them laugh! More harmful to the staff than students... unless someone gets hurt doing them. I remember once someone managed to hoist ten mattresses up onto the roof of the girl's dorm at my school and everyone thought it was hilarious. Also, a mysterious figure doing parkour on the roofs of the education buildings had them (ok and me too a little) laughing. But there was potential for it to turn real dangerous real fast. On a similar vein, not my story but a friend who went to a different boarding school mentioned literally kidnapping a friend as a birthday prank by having all their friends pick up the girl's entire bed (she was a heavy sleeper) and moving it outdoors. Could have gotten bad real fast if the girl slept naked or something, perhaps.

Perhaps a bit racy, but the itches. As mentioned, my school was in the woods and we had these nasty mites outdoors. If you canoodled in the wrong places, everyone would know it cause your certain bits would be very, very itchy until you went to the infirmary. However, an itch issue could also come from falling in poison ivy, dry skin, dermatillomania (if you're just seeing cuts and scratches maybe) or perhaps a lice outbreak?

Of course, class skipping might also work. Girls might be habitual oversleepers (leading to why? is it drugs or alcohol or any sort of late night partying?), have an excuse for a club and just forgot to show the teacher, legitimately cutting class, or maybe something else?