Community College Hero: Trial by Fire Demo

College is the place most people find their calling in life, although this usually concerns future career paths, and very rarely what to do with your superpowers. In hindsight, college would probably be a lot more exciting if classes taught you how to teleport and become invisible, rather than advanced calculus. Thankfully, you can pretend that’s the case with the help of a video game.

Community College Hero: Trial by Fire is a text-based role-playing game in which you get to pretend that you’re a superhero, but not before learning how to be one. The game can be better described as a “choose your own adventure” flick, because almost every major event and choice is left up to you. Starting with your name and the nature of your powers, all the way to how your character behaves in certain situations, everything can be changed.

The plot is actually quite original and engaging from the first few minutes. You are a young boy/girl who enrolls in a community college designed for people with special abilities, in order to become a crime fighter. A part of the story concerns your training at the said college, while the other part revolves around the fight against a powerful supervillain group known as the Diabolical Dozen.

Since role-play is a pretty important gameplay component, the game keeps track of your choices in order to affect your stats. Your personality is obviously influenced by your decisions and the things you say, but finances are also important if you want to make it as a college student far away from home. In essence, these stats reflect in the plot as well, which means that the experience changes for every playthrough, at least if you decide to do things differently.

The entire thing blends wonderfully over the course of the story, and there are many exciting events that truly make you feel like a superhero. The sheer size of the story in regards to word number is staggering as well, so there’s always going to be something you haven’t read in previous playthroughs. On the other hand, you need to come to terms with the lack of a visual element.

All things considered, Community College Hero: Trial by Fire hit the jackpot story-wise. It’s a blast to try out various character combinations, not to mention the actual plot that adjusts according to your decisions as well. Thus, as long as you are up for a bit of reading, this is definitely something worth looking into.