Royale High is a school-themed roleplay/hangout and dress-up Roblox game owned by callmehbob (holder) and LauncelotHandsome.
It was originally titled Fairies and Mermaids Winx High School, and intended as a Winx Club fan roleplay game, up until November 2017, when the game was renamed and reworked to be more than a fan game.
Gameplay[]
Players are intended to dress up, roleplay or chat with other players, and complete various gameplay activities to level up and gain more diamonds to purchase new items. Players are given a teleportation staff to navigate the game, along with a phone to communicate with friends and keep track of timers.
Royale High's main in-game currency is Diamonds, which is earned through gameplay, or may also be purchased with Robux. There are sometimes limited currencies used in specific seasonal events.
Royale High is split into multiple realms that have different purposes. All of them can be used to chat with other players or roleplay, and some have the sole intent of roleplaying.
To move, players can hold ⇧ Shift (PC) or toggle the sprint button to run faster. Double jumping will enable or disable flying in most realms. At the right side of the screen, a menu with buttons for the player's phone, customization (Dress Up), animations, the in-game shop, and realm teleportation can be accessed at any time. The menu also contains the player's current level and experience to their next level, an on/off toggle for music, and the YouTube Settings, a menu for hiding certain UI elements or adding filters for the ease of video creators or in-game photographers. Certain realms add additional buttons to the menu, and the menu can be hidden at any time.
Customization[]
Players can customize their character with being able to choose clothing, hair, faces, skirts, shoes, wings, and accessories to wear. While some of these are free at all times, many items are either obtained through limited-time events or must be purchased either with diamonds or Robux.
A large amount of the content in the customization menu, including 2D clothing, custom faces, hair textures, and item patterns (fabric designs), are contributed by players in the Royale High community through various submission opportunities and forms hosted by the developers on Twitter. The 2D clothing section also aims to directly support classic clothing designers on Roblox, allowing a direct way to purchase the original shirt and/or pants on the Roblox website.
While customizing, players can also opt to edit their Profile, also known as the Journal, where they can add certain text entries to answer questions or fill out prompts. With certain game passes, players can also recolor their journal or add stickers. Other players can view a player's journal by clicking on their character, which also includes certain interaction buttons.
Trading[]
Players that are level 75 or higher may access the Intergalactic Trading Hub realm to trade customization items and diamonds with other players. There are certain items that cannot be traded. There is a 40 item limit to how many items can be traded at once.
Realms[]
Realms are separate places in the overall Royale High game that players can teleport between for different gameplay activities or areas to roleplay.
Royale High's starter place varies and changes depending on the update. Sometimes the starter place is set to a certain realm if there is a seasonal event or update in the realm. Otherwise, it is typically set to the Arrival Screen, a "main menu" for the game that provides all realm teleportations, direct Teleportations to timers, access to the phone menu, a level leaderboard, and a changelog.
There are three school-based realms, where players can complete classes and activities for diamond and experience rewards and participate in scheduled school days;
- Campus 3 - the latest campus with updated classes, dorms, lockers, and other activities. It is very large and has over ten sub-realms attached to it.
- Campus 2 - an updated version of Campus 1 with a different map but many of the same classes and activities.
- Campus 1 - the oldest school with slightly different classes, intended for players with lower-end devices.
- Enchantix High (removed) - the latest version of Royale High as it was under Fairies and Mermaids Winx High School, with a heavy focus on Winx Club themed classes, dorms, and activities. It was removed at the release of Campus 3 due to copyright issues with Winx Club.
Certain realms house time-gated interactives for players, but otherwise are meant for roleplaying;
- Luxury High-Rise Apartments - a roleplaying realm with interactive objects and party hosting, where each player gets their own apartment instance. Players can sit down at their computer for a daily log-in bonus of diamonds with increased diamonds for log-in streaks, or sleep in bed to regain their energy and gain XP.
- Earth - the "human realm" with the Town wheel that can be spun daily for prizes. It is also the only way to access the Moonlight Square realm. The Designer Boutique, a teleportation hub to partnered clothing stores to support classic clothing designers, is also located here.
- Divinia Park - a large park area with interactive elements, often used for events. Players can make a wish upon the Fountain of Dreams for every 2 hours for rewards such as diamonds, experience, or the extremely rare halo accessories.
Other realms have additional gameplay elements;
- Sunset Island - a tropical island with numerous roleplay elements, free accessory chests, and a fashion pageant event. Players cannot fly in this realm.
- Battle a la Royale - a PvP minigame to gain experience, where 2 teams shoot other players with arrows to incapacitate them.
- Moonlight Square - a city realm only accessible through Earth, with elements to interactively browse randomized clothing stores to encourage purchasing clothing to wear around Roblox and support Roblox clothing designers.
- Intergalactic Trading Hub - a realm only accessible to players level 75 or higher, being the only realm that players are able to trade with other players. Players cannot fly in this realm.
- Diamond Beach - An additional realm added in July 2021 where players can roleplay, do quests for items that are not on sale in the shop, find accessory chests, and buy ROBLOX catalog clothing by entering some certain shops around the map. There is also a teleport that goes to another game named "Monstercat's Lost Civilization" and if players completed the quest in that game they would receive a Royale High accessory alongside a ROBLOX Avatar accessory.
Other realms only exist for roleplay or interacting with other players;
- Beach House - a beach-side mansion with additional provided tools such as tents, beach chairs, pool toys, and various areas to prepare food and drink items.
- Fantasia Getaway Resort (removed) - a hotel with assignable rooms to players and certain additional items for roleplay. Players cannot fly in this realm. It was removed at the release of Campus 3 due to being made of mostly Roblox catalogue items.
There is also an additional realm, In Loving Memory of Lizzy Winkle, which is in a separate experience from Royale High. The realm is meant as a tribute to Lizzy_Winkle, a member of Royale High's fan community with multiple wings & items added in-game, who passed away on November 29, 2019. It can be accessed in the "Earth" realm in Royale High by interacting with the memorial tree, though the player will only be able to join if they had played Royale High prior to the realm being created.
Royale High also once had an older realm named Diamond Beach, a name applying to various instances of a realm of a private beach cove that was used for testing or as a lobby. There was also the Divinia realm, a small island where the Fountain and the Designer Boutique were originally located, introduced on February 1, 2019, and interchanged with Earth as the lobby until it has since been fully inaccessible since August 31, 2019. A new realm introduced on July 4, 2021, was named "Diamond Beach" but has been completely reworked compared to the original Diamond Beach.
Some additional realms are made available or replace other realms during events.
Roblox events[]
Royale High was featured in the Egg Hunt 2020: Agents of Egg event, which rewarded the Eggchanted egg for completing the quest inside Battle a la Royale.
Reception[]
Despite being one of the most popular games (beating Jailbreak and MeepCity on occasion), it has received mixed reactions. Since it primarily targets a female audience, male players tend to criticize the game more often as there is not much to appeal to them in comparison.
Incidents and controversies[]
Copyright concerns and stolen assets[]
Royale High was originally a Winx Club fan game, and its original school realm, Enchantix High, was directly inspired by Winx Club and used Winx Club assets. However, it has taken steps in recent years to remove direct monetized items related to or directly using items from Winx Club, including gameplay elements and wing designs. In December 2019 and January 2020, Royale High developer KateKa22 hosted the "Elements Wings Contest" to gather new element designs for wings to replace Royale High's massive amount of copyrighted wing designs in its shop, including designs taken or ripped from Winx Club and Perfect World. Over 70 new designs from 60 different artists replaced the old designs. Enchantix High, including all its Winx Club assets, remained in game until August 2023.
Multiple hair styles still in-game are ripped from The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 (or mods/"custom content" for these games). Some accessories also appear to be ripped from various free accessory and part packs made for MikuMikuDance character models. However, these appear to be sourced from the toolbox, originally from mass stolen asset ripping uploads made to Roblox when mesh uploading was first enabled.
Influencer badge removals[]
Royale High has numerous badges meant to be granted by notable figures in the Royale High community ("influencers"), including popular artists, YouTubers, and other content creators. These are forms of "you met" badges, which can be granted by the player to nearby players when prompted.
Due to various community incidents with certain players associated with these badges, such as harassment and inappropriate behavior from some influencers. the game has had to disable or sometimes entirely remove badges for these players.
Around January 9, 2023, Royale High deactivated numerous influencer badges without informing or contacting any of the content creators the badges were for. Many of these creators only learned about their badges being removed through other players mentioning the badges were deactivated. The reason for these removals was due to the influencers affected being inactive or no longer making content related to Royale High. The developers received backlash due to poor communication and not making any efforts to contact anyone. At the same time, some of the affected influencers who made public posts about how they were not contacted were harassed by some Royale High players for complaining about the lack of communication despite not having made content for the game in a long time.
Lunar New Year event inaccuracies[]
During Royale High's Valentines 2021 event in Divinia Park (started on February 12, 2021), the game also included a section of the park dedicated to celebrating the Lunar New Year due to its date (February 12) falling near Valentine's Day in 2021, called the Lunar New Year Celebration Area. The area intended to represent multiple cultures that celebrated (or were presumed to celebrate) Lunar New Year. However, food stalls were providing numerous items unrelated to the Lunar New year. Some stalls focused on Japanese dishes such as taiyaki ice cream and ramen, while Japan does not directly celebrate Lunar New Year. Bubble tea was also included, despite its lack of relation to Chinese New Year. Additionally, the buildings were heavily based on Japanese shrines. This displeased some players, who made posts on Twitter that were shared in the Royale High community explaining some issues with the event. Royale High developers had contacted someone to inquire on accurate practices, but some errors occurred in the communication.[1] Some of the developers inquired for improvement suggestions[2] and overhauled the Lunar New Year Celebration Area to be more accurate and respectful, however, the changes were never added to the game before the event ended. These parts of the events were fixed to some extent with the support of players in the community in 2022.
Crown Academy lawsuit and community conflict[]
Ice7 shared on Twitter on July 21, 2020, that he had filed a lawsuit towards Star Status two weeks prior on the basing claim that their upcoming game, Crown Academy, had supposedly used stolen Royale High code and assets in its production from a previous Royale High developer that was purportedly now working for Star Status.[3] In his post, he provided links to legal documents that included screenshots of alleged reused code, assets, and text from Royale High.[4] Star Status later filed a counter-suit against Ice7, confirmed by PixelatedCandy, the owner of Star Status.[5]
Although the screenshots were not confirmed to be real, their release triggered a very volatile response from the Royale High community. Upon the opening of Crown Academy's public access beta, it looked different from the screenshots presented on the legal document and did not contain any visibly stolen assets. However, some Royale High fans still believed the game was stealing, and demanded certain items such as select skirts and shoes were removed or changed. Despite that these assets were not actually stolen from Royale High, nor their concepts created by Royale High originally (though some being somewhat visually similar due to the same references being used), some of these items were reworked and updated after the release of the public access beta.
As determined and filed on April 6, 2022, the prior mentioned lawsuit came to some result. The court determined that Crown Academy did not use any Royale High assets or code, nor did they instruct any code or assets to be stolen, therefore waiving them of the copyright claim.[6][7] However, Ice7 states he still has existing claims in relation to the case on April 14, 2022, and that PixelatedCandy lost the opposing case against Ice7 for defamation, though documents relating to this have not been publicized, unlike the verdict on the plaintiffs' claims.[8]
Crown Academy temporarily filtered various forms and abbreviations of "Royale High" from its in-game chat for a few weeks after its public beta release on August 21, 2020, to limit its players being harassed, as certain players were joining only to attack other players for playing a "copy" of Royale High. Many Royale High players also joined Crown Academy simply to be able to leave a dislike on the experience, which resulted in a low approval rating on Crown Academy, usually ranging between 60% to 70%, still persisting years after its release.
In February 2021, CHROMASTASIA (QueenChroma), an artist that had been independently contracted by one of Royale High's 3D modelers to conceptualize the "Winter Guardian" item set for Royale High, had brought up that Crown Academy had released an item called the "Winter Guardian Cape" / "Blizzard Guardian Cape" around the same time that Royale High had released their Winter Guardian set. This was discussed personally with the Crown Academy developers and the name of Crown Academy's item was changed to the "Everwinter Cape", though the initial similar naming appears to have been a coincidence.[9][10]
Hijacking[]
On May 15, 2021, while callmehbob and LauncelotHandsome were on vacation, callmehbob's account was hijacked presumably by sim swapping. During this time, Royale High's main place map (Divinia Park at the time) was maliciously updated to ignore all game scripts, and instead teleported players to a Among Us-themed tycoon game. The game was later deleted, and therefore the teleport failed, leaving players on an out-of-bounds spawn until the game was later reverted by Roblox. callmehbob's account was semi-restored at the aftermath of the Incident until she gets logged into her account.
Royale High developer calinpj04 informed players on Twitter that their data was externally saved and would be reverted. (Tweet removed)[11]
Cultural/LGBTQ+/Other Offensive Issues[]
In Royale High there were many issues relating to cultures, LGBTQ+ and other offensive things that the Royale High community wanted to get removed before the month of February in 2022, such as BPOC hairstyles being offensively named, Day of the Dead items appearing in the Halloween section, controversial Sunset Island pageant themes (such as Genderbend, Southern Belle/Gentleman, Ugliest Outfit Ever, and Ancient Egypt), incorrect orientation of LGBTQ+ flags in Diamond Beach and offensively named LGBTQ+ color hairstyles (as well as other unmentioned offensive things) were all present in the game and many players on Twitter in these respective communities (as well as those who weren't apart of said communities but wanted change) started a hashtag known as #ownupbarbie, which was for people to point out the issues of the game. On February 22, 2022, callmehbob had fixed some of the cultural issues, and mentioned that there will be more to be fixed in the future.
Merchandise[]
Roblox Toys[]
The game has 8 associated Roblox Toys with it.
The first two toys, "Enchantress" and "callmehbob" also reward items inside Royale High. This is checked with if the player owns their associated reward accessories, Enchantress Tress or Callmehostentatiouslyslyempressed respectively, and joins Royale High. Owning the "Enchantress Tress" Roblox accessory rewards the badge "☪ The Enchantress ☪", the "Mood Changing Necklace" in-game accessory, and 2500 diamonds in-game. Owning the "Callmehostentatiouslyslyempressed" Roblox accessory rewards the badge "You found callmehbob!", the "callmehbob Diamond Ring" in-game accessory, and 3000 diamonds in-game.
Jazwares partnership[]
On September 20 2023, Jazwares announced a partnership with Royale High for a fashion doll toy line, along with various other types of products including apparel and home decor.[12]
Around November 2023, this partnership was criticized by the Royale High community in response to Jazwares making statements in support of and donating towards Israel organizations supporting the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.[13]
Credits[]
All known major contributors to Royale High.
- callmehbob - Owner, lead creative director
- LauncelotHandsome - Owner, lead manager
- Ice7 - Programmer
- Ironclaw33 - Programmer
- Calinpj04 - Programmer
- Sukimeki - 3D modeler
- OceanOrbs - 3D modeler
- ReddieTheTeddy - 3D modeler
- Beeism - 3D modeler, builder
- JamJooJoo - 3D modeler, builder
- Vioncii - 3D modeler, builder
- D5no - Builder
- harht - Builder
- Kittzilla - In-game asset manager (2D clothing), clothing designer
- ixchoco - Artist
Royale High additionally utilizes a large amount of community-contributed content, permitted featured content, or licensed assets by numerous independent creators, of which are credited in-game.
Former contributors[]
These users are no longer a part of Royale High's staff team.
- notBeaPlays - Community manager
- Kateka22 - In-game asset manager (custom faces & fabrics), writer
- Closet_Skeleton - Artist
References[]
- ↑ https://twitter.com/reddietheteddy/status/1360820788534800390
- ↑ https://twitter.com/jamjamjoo/status/1360805686947512320
- ↑ https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srb6ep
- ↑ https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/35171381/Ndlamba_et_al_v_Trice_et_al
- ↑ https://twitter.com/PixelatedCandy/status/1296919305414746113
- ↑ https://twitter.com/PixelatedCandy/status/1513992391887314955
- ↑ Verdict of plaintiffs' claims: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flmd.379039/gov.uscourts.flmd.379039.200.0.pdf
- ↑ https://twitter.com/DDOG_007/status/1514470925445513219
- ↑ https://twitter.com/QueenChroma/status/1364309839267000321
- ↑ https://twitter.com/QueenChroma/status/1364303932797894660
- ↑ https://twitter.com/rhainonme/status/139345325456707584
- ↑ https://jazwares.com/newsroom/jazwares-named-master-toy-licensee-for-hit-metaverse-game-royale-high
- ↑ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jazwares_workplace-pledge-to-fight-antisemitism-activity-7119778084387438592-ZN_o