Hijinks High
The Roll Call Update
Cause chaos. Survive the day. Now in third person, on foot or on wheels.
The Roll Call Update
Playable at gamescom →-
You Can Finally Watch Yourself Do It
first day back. already running from someone. don't tell mom. Hijinks High is now a third-person game by default, for every character. You get to watch the kid making the mess, and so does everybody else.
A game about your own physical mess is funnier when there's a body attached to it. Sprinting, sliding, getting knocked flat, riding a wheelchair down a staircase you had no business riding down: all of it reads better from behind.
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Wheelchair Mode
Every space in this school is navigable, and every objective is solvable, from a wheelchair. That is a design rule, not a feature.We build the whole school to that rule. Wheelchair Mode is what happens when we hand it to you as a wager.
It's a mutator the group buys at the lemonade stand before the bus. At the start of the day it lands on one player at random, and nobody knows who until it does. How you move through a room changes completely: which routes exist, what you can reach, how the team gets it done. That goes for all six of you, not only the kid in the chair.
The group buys it, so the group signs up for the consequence, and it raises what the run can pay out. That's the same trade the rest of the game runs on: make it harder on purpose, get paid more for surviving it.
And yes, you can take the stairs instead of the ramp. We'd advise against it.
got the wheels today. the stairs are a suggestion. -
Making It Playable
A game can put a wheelchair on screen and still be unplayable for the people it's nodding at. Representation is the easy half.
So we audited our own game against the industry guidelines and published exactly what came back. Some of it's in the build. Most of it isn't yet.
Find Us at gamescom
Hijinks High is playable, hands-on, in Cologne — on the Indie Arena Booth at Koelnmesse, alongside Infernozilla. Bring five friends or borrow five strangers. Either way, the toilet in the southwest wing isn't surviving the afternoon.
Koelnmesse · Deutz-Mülheimer Straße 111 · 50679 Köln
Hall 10.2 · Stand F044g–E061g
Indie Arena Booth · 26–30 August 2026
Orientation
Hijinks High is a multiplayer roguelike party game where you and your friends get graded on everything you were told not to do as kids. Up to six of you. One school day. That's the game.
You're a kid with no impulse control and a full day to work with. You eat and drink everything you can get your hands on, you get stronger for it, and you turn a normal school day into the worst thing that has ever happened to that building. Every fart, every spill, every explosion is worth points.
The mess you leave behind isn't set dressing. Your puddle is the thing your friend slips in, and it's also the thing that slows down the teacher dragging you to detention.
Get out with your chaos intact and it pays for a harder, more absurd version of tomorrow.
One School Day
Never the same one twice. The bell order is the only thing on this sheet you can count on — which classes you get, what is lying around to throw, what the stand is selling and how hard the school pushes back are all rolled before you walk in. What follows is one day. Somebody else's, and already ruined.
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Before the bell
The Cul-De-Sac
Every run starts on your own street, waiting for your friends. Somebody is already not taking this seriously.
same every run. it's downhill from here
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On the way out
The Lemonade Stand
An illicit stand between you and the bus, selling mutators that change the entire school day. It never puts the same three things on the table twice. This is where someone buys Wheelchair Roulette and the whole group starts yelling, because it's about to land on one of you.
different stock every time. that's the whole point
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First period
rolled
Dodgeball
Six AI kids, one gymnasium, and an extremely thin line between winning the match and knocking your own teammate unconscious. That is what first period was today.
wasn't the gym last run. won't be next run
first p.e. grade today. coach says i have 'a face for catching things.' -
Second period
rolled
Chaos in the Southwest Wing
Caused, specifically, by stuffing items into a toilet until it stops being a toilet. Whatever the school left lying around that run is what goes in.
the hall pass is in the bathroom. so am i. so is a lot of other stuff. -
Third period
rolled
Physics
You open a black hole. You feed it everything you can throw. It goes about as well as that sentence suggests.
physics doesn't come up every day. today it did
we're learning chemistry. i'm learning that i am not great at chemistry. -
And then
Lockdown
Whatever you did that run finally goes too far — today it was the black hole — and the school locks down. The teachers and hall monitors stop trying to send you to detention and start blocking the exits.
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Last bell
Get on the Bus
Only the chaos that makes it onto that bus counts. Everything you leave behind was just a mess you made.
and this part never changes
Features
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Up to 6
Six-Kid Co-Op
No PvP. The score is shared. You get out together or you get caught together. Solo works too, if you want the school to yourself.
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Run-based
One Day, One Run
Roughly 40 to 60 minutes of school day. What you earn unlocks what you can bring next time. What you lose, you lose.
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Mutators
Wager Before the Bus
Buy mutators at the lemonade stand and bend the whole day out of shape. Harder on purpose pays more for surviving it.
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Extraction
Get It On the Bus
Chaos points only count once they physically leave the building with you. Lockdown is the school's last word on the subject.
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Physics
Your Mess Is the Level
Every puddle you leave is real geometry. It trips your friends. It also slows down the teacher hauling you to detention. Use it.
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Resources
Eat, Drink, Regret
Consume everything and get stronger for it. Then manage the nausea, the tummy ache, and yes, the bladder. Accidents are a mechanic.
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Staff
Detention, Then Lockdown
Teachers and hall monitors want you in a chair with your name on it. After the black hole, they want you in the building.
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Comms
Talk Trash, Then Panic
Proximity voice so you hear the scream from the next hallway, and pings for everything you have no time to explain.
Watch the Trailer
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crawled through stuff. broke a toilet. nailed a fart at recess. productive day. -
p.e. update: dodgeball, but with power-ups. someone got multi-ball. nobody is safe. -
tried every fit i own before first bell. principal said 'pick one.' i didn't. -
he didn't see me. he doesn't know about me. yet. -
found a black hole in the science lab. probably fine. will not investigate. (i investigated.)
Screenshots, motion clips, key art, and every asset a creator could ask for — all in the press kit.
Open the Press KitAccessibility
In July 2026 we ran a full accessibility audit of our own game: an engineering pass, measured against the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines, the Game Accessibility Guidelines, the CVAA, and AbleGamers' APX.
It came back with 55 things to fix, and at the time we had almost none of them. We'd rather say that out loud than quietly ship a wheelchair and hope nobody checked.
Left is what's in the build. Right is what isn't.
Already In
In the game right now.
- Subtitles and captions, with a large-caption option
- A reduce-flashes setting, and rate-limiting on the screen flash that spectating used to fire on every camera cut
- Third person as the default view, with first person one keypress away and remembered
- No motion blur and no head-bob, anywhere in the game
- No quick-time events, no timed fail-prompts, no button-mashing
- Objectives are always visual, with off-screen markers
- Button prompts follow your device and swap glyphs when you change input
- A server-authoritative ping system, so a callout never requires a microphone
- Full English and German, switchable at runtime
What We Are Building Toward
The ones that matter most, and none of them are done. We're not putting dates on them.
- Full input remapping, for every action in the game
- Alternatives to every held button and every two-button chord
- Colorblind-safe team identity, double-coded with shapes as well as color
- A preset-phrase quick-chat wheel, so players who can't or won't use a mic still have a voice in the run
- The school PA as on-screen text; right now it's our main narration channel and it's audio-only
- Directional indicators for sound you need to react to, and visible alerts when a teacher has spotted you
- UI and text scaling, and a readable-font option
- Menu narration for screen-reader users
- A comfort toggle for the grosser visual effects
- Assist options, once we have a fairness policy we can defend in a co-op game
- A tutorial, which currently doesn't exist at all
No dates, on purpose. We're eight people, and we'd rather ship these properly than ship them on time. If you need something that isn't on either list, tell us: general@sackbird.com.
Ready to Cause Chaos?
A wishlist is the only homework
we'll ever give you.