Fundamental Paper Education
review and description
by Dsibe top

Fundamental Paper Education (FPE) is a 3D survival horror game made by an indie developer going by the name Gooble. It's a fan game seemingly inspired by the popular Miss Watcher & Huggy Wuggy characters and universe.

The premise is that you play as a student trapped in a demented school environment filled with deadly adversaries like the terrifying teacher Miss Bloomie. Your goal is to survive a series of tests and challenges she puts you through. The atmosphere is tense and unsettling, capturing that creepy PBS Kids vibe.

From a technical perspective, FPE is made in Unreal Engine with simple low-poly 3D graphics. This allows it to run on a wide range of systems, though some users have reported performance issues. The current public build is labeled as an early alpha, so bugs and unfinished elements are to be expected.

The core gameplay loop revolves around sneaking, hiding, and solving basic puzzles to progress. Movement is in first-person and the controls are straightforward. You'll need to carefully peek around corners, sprint between safe zones, and take advantage of lockers to hide when alerted. Miss Bloomie is relentless and will instantly fail you if caught.

What stands out most about FPE are the clever enemy designs and encounter scenarios. Miss Bloomie in particular is incredibly unnerving with her distorted appearance and movement patterns. But other threats like the bullies add nice variety too. The tension of being hunted and piecing together what to do next based on environmental clues is really well achieved for such an amateur project.

While still very rough around the edges, FPE shows a ton of promise for a fangame made by one person. The atmosphere, enemy design, and level of challenge all come together to create a genuinely suspenseful and engaging horror experience reminiscent of indie games like Hello Puppets. With some further optimization, bug fixing, and more fleshed out gameplay, it could easily become a standout example of the genre.

The developer Gooble has been actively updating FPE based on player feedback. A major update titled "Miss Bloomie and Bullies" is in the works that will seemingly add more content focused on those characters. There is currently no price tag as it's offered as a free download, though players can optionally "pay what you want" to support further development.

Overall, despite its jank, lack of polish, and barebones exterior, Fundamental Paper Education delivers a remarkable amount of dread and thrills. Any fan of psychological horror, especially the Watcher/Huggy universe, would likely find a lot to love about this unique fangame in its current free state. If you can look past the shortcomings, it provides an engrossing challenge rarely seen in games of this scale. It's absolutely worth keeping an eye on to see how this underground project evolves over time.