Surviving High School

Surviving Highschool is a teen game app that’s like Stardom: The A-List where you participate in a story-line and the decisions you make determine how popular you are.

Initially I downloaded Surviving High School Paid, because I like to avoid advertising and find the overall gaming experience is usually better with the paid versions. One thing to note with this version is that it was designed for the iPhone or iPod Touch, so if you’re playing it on an iPad you’ll have to select 2x to get it to fill the screen. The app comes loaded with two episodes: Football Star and The New Girl. Since I’m not interested in playing as a guy, I chose The New Girl.

In Surviving High School: The New Girl, you move in with your Aunt Cathy and cousin Sam and are the new girl in High School. Your cousin Sam isn’t too happy to have you around and you end up competing against each other for a spot on the Cheerleading team. Tap your way through the dialog and make some decisions like whether or not to be nice, what classes to attend and who to call. There’s a word find game that takes some getting used to, but you have a chance to get better at it every time you return to gym class. Once the game (or episode) is over, you can download the latest episode for free or do an in-app purchase and buy other episodes.

Before I try to download another episode, I decided to try Surviving High School HD, but the only episode on that was Football Star. It kind of confused me at first since the other version of this app let me choose if I was going to be a guy or a girl. Anyway. So I muscled through it and played the Football Star. The graphics of course looked a lot better since it’s HD, however, when it was in puzzle mode for the word find puzzle or for the football puzzle, it would appear sideways while everything else on the screen would be right-side up so I had to do the puzzles with my head tilted to the side.

I’m giving Surviving Highschool a lower rating than Stardom: The A-List because there is less decision making and gameplay coupled with a lot more clicking just to read the next screen. Though less gameplay and more clicking might be a positive for the teen girls who just want to be popular and flirt with boys.