Growing up as a young girl isn’t easy, the problems both big and small, mental and physical seem endless. This coming-of-age dilemma is the basis of a new online game put out by girls’ manga magazine, Ribbon. Although, instead of a schoolgirl you take the role of a school nurse’s assistant charged with helping an onslaught of children unhappy with their smells and suffering nosebleeds in School Nurse’s Office.

Don’t let the cutesy artwork of the game fool you, this is deceptively challenging! At least zombies only want one thing.

Learning to play is as easy as can be. You simply wait at your desk for a girl to walk in. She will tell you her problem like “nosebleed” and you have to help her using one of the 10 items available by clicking and dragging them from the bottom of the screen.

If you give her the correct item then your “Usefullness Gauge” at the top of the screen goes up. If you make a mistake then it goes down. It gets a little tricker though as some of the items aren’t appropriate to give to young girls like perfume or nail polish.

You think that’s easy because you can just avoid those items, but sometimes you have to hand them out. For example, girls who had their perfume confiscated by the teacher earlier in the day may come in to get it back.

Even still this might not sound so hard but after a few seconds when the girls start coming in fast and furious with all types of complaints it can get really confusing.

“I need to borrow something for paper.”
Then why’d you come to the nurse’s office?
“I need something to make my nails pretty.”
Here have some nail poli…
Nurse: “No that’s forbidden!”
Reall..
“I want something to make me smell better.”
Wha..?
“I fell down.”
Here, have a scrunchy.

Honestly I’m not really sure this game puts young women in an empowering light. Nevertheless, it was designed by girls for girls being the winner of Ribbon magazine’s Game Idea Wanted contest last November.

Also, if you happen to be studying Japanese, this game is a pretty good training exercise as the requests can come at you really fast and you don’t have much time to react.

***Try the Game!***
Only available in Japanese

Original Story by Usagi Yumeno
Source: Shueisha Ribbon

▼ “Lend me something to use on paper.”

▼ “I want something to pick me up.”

▼ “My hair got all messy.” “I want to polish my nails.”

▼ “Are you really a school nurse’s assistant? Usefulness: 0 points”