School Hero takes you to the mean streets of Japanese high school to rescue your girlfriend

• School Hero is a sidescrolling beat ’em up in the classic style
• Take on hordes of enemy students, and beat and brawl your way to victory!
• Play minigames, enjoy challenging difficulty levels and more

High school can be a really stressful experience for virtually everyone involved. But hey, look at it this way, at least you don’t need to punch and pummel your way through hordes of enemy students to save the day, which is exactly what you’re doing in the anime-styled retro brawler School Hero!

School Hero is pretty much what you might expect at a glance. This side-scrolling 2D brawler sees you playing as the titular boy named Hero (how original) as he tries to save his girlfriend from the rival school. Along the way, you’ll beat up everyone from nerds to football players, cheerleaders and everything in between in your quest to rescue her.

Of course, despite being a bit of a retread of by now well-known ground School Hero does at least have a few things going for it. For one there looks to be plenty of variety in terms of levels and enemies, always a plus in the beat ’em up genre, and also a suite of minigames to break up your time spent brawling.

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Yes, School Hero is very much a pastiche of the beat ’em up genre, with a healthy sprinkling of stereotypical animesque scenery and attacks to go alongside it. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and at a glance it looks to have enough in the way of adaptable gameplay and storyline, as well as the aforementioned extras, to keep you playing.

Oh, and there’s controller support too, before you ask.

Want to try something a little more on the brain teaser side of things? Why not take a gander at our review of Lok Digital, the mobile adaptation of the hit puzzle book that lets you learn the language of the titular strange little creatures?