Ghoul School can be considered one of the earliest trailblazers of the "Metroidvania" genre. You are dropped right into the game after the title screen (the story can be found in the manual) and are given quite a bit of freedom when exploring the school. You'll find the occasional dead end and roadblocks that can be conquered later by acquiring a powerup. You start out with a pretty shitty weapon, a bat. Its close range and you'll quickly encounter monsters that fire projectiles or are too low to the ground to hit, like the monkeys that throw wrenches or the little annoying eyeball fucks that will follow you all throughout a room. You can hide in lockers, but I found this almost pointless since enemies that follow will just circle around the locker you're hiding in, or some will just stand and wait right in front of it. Why not just jump over them, right? Well, your jump is pretty shit as well; you simply do not get enough momentum to make it over any of the larger enemies; not even standing on tables and shelves will help you much. I swear there are some jumps you can't make without taking damage. Even when you get the spring shoes, which gives you a bigger jump, damage seems unavoidable.

There's no map of any kind, so getting lost is a given, especially since a lot of the rooms and hallways look very similar. The game does indicate which room you're in on the top left, so that's nice at least. It's in these rooms you enter where you'll find upgrades to your arsenal, like the Deweytron gun, which fires straight, or the Digestaray, which will finally allow you to deal with all those pesky ground bound enemies. I mentioned the spring shoes earlier, but there's also suction cup shoes, which makes you stick to the ceiling. You just need to actually be able to reach the ceiling with your pitiful jump while wearing these to attach to it, so they're used very rarely. You'll probably be scrounging for recovery items quite frequently, which are apples. You can't hold onto any of these, so if you currently don't need one, make sure you remember where it was! You might even find the elusive golden apple, which halves the damage you receive (I wish I had found this).

Find power-ups, get lost, find your way to the literal heart of the ghoul-infested school, and defeat the big bad to rescue the cheerleader you were planning to ask out for the school's Halloween dance. The titular Ghoul School then reverts back to its original state, the "Cool School". The game is kind of shit; your jump sucks and the hit detection can be questionable at times, but despite this, I found this game quite charming, and the OST is memorable enough. It's not on the same level as Monster Party (I'll get to this one later this month), but it's pretty close to that vibe. Worth checking out if you're interested in early "Metroidvanias" or want an interesting curiosity for the spooky month of October.