let’s go to school: A Game of Nightmarish Bureaucracy and Unrealistic Simulations

Simulation games can be either an idyllic reinterpretation of real life or an unfailingly accurate representation of reality, for better or for worse. let’s go to school combines both in a game that encapsulates the nightmarish bureaucracy of being a principal at an Asian private school without the rewards that come with a career in education. While it’s fun and the ideas are solid, coding and tuning issues can make this school totally uncool. (Yes, it hurt me to make that joke.)

let’s go to school is a rags to riches story in which you slip in as the principal of a run-down school. Their goal is, of course, to make it the best educational institution in the region. You can customize things from student uniforms to crests, and also build your own school from the ground up. Most of your rooms will look the same, but with no signage, you don’t have to worry about giving your students too much space. The potential of creating a spartan school that only focuses on accommodating as many students, teachers and resources as possible is very high as a result. In this way, it comes pretty close to reality.

They can accept students from different districts, each with their own ambitions and characteristics. For example, the children at Theater Boulevard are more prone to arguments and bullying. Meanwhile, kids from the affluent suburbs have a trait of being bad at everything that makes them slow in class. But because their parents are rich, it is beneficial to enroll them in school so that you can earn more money. The more districts you unlock, the more students will want to get in at once. Organizing classes and schedules so everyone learns what they need to get into school can be a headache, but that’s honestly the best part let’s go to school.

I would like to emphasize that it is not best that the children go to the school of their choice. It’s in micromanagement and min-maxing. Yes, it’s great to see the kids succeed. Yes, it feels good to train a bad teacher into a more useful one. But it’s hard to feel a bond with anyone, including your own player character. The only time you really have Interacting with students means they are being naughty and you send someone to take care of them. I know you’re supposed to be the principal and not the teacher. Even in real life, I don’t think most principals or principals are that close to the students. But it makes the little “cute” mechanics like giving speeches or taking graduation photos feel more like chores than a touching or meaningful moment.

Screenshot von Siliconera

If there’s one thing that really breaks the game for me, it’s the coding and the bugs. There are a few issues, for example the game doesn’t recognize that you’ve fired a teacher until you save, return to the main menu, and then reopen your save. In-game tuning and RNG can be terrible. I spent a whole year in the game and even looked for a humanities teacher. I literally couldn’t find anyone, which caused my kids’ grades to drop. Some lines are still in Chinese, which is fine with me because I can read them. But it makes the game seem incomplete. However, the most glaring issue for me is that the game automatically ages my entire classroom instead of either promoting my students to the next grade up or letting me organize all of them myself.

Let me explain what I mean. I organized my school so that all first graders are on the first floor, second graders on the second, and third graders on the third. But every time the game advances my kids by a year, they stay in the same classroom. So all the new second years will still be on the first floor and all the new first years will be on the third floor as they take over the old third year classrooms. This really bothers me because it messes up the layout of my school. The game of automatically naming my classes is also irritating, because depending on where I am at in determining the students’ classes, I might end up with a class 2-8, even though I don’t have that many classrooms in sophomore year have.

I’m not exactly the control freak type in these games. I’m playing with Free Will. Die Sims, For example. So I’m fine with a degree of agency in terms of what I’m the God for. But the lack of agency when it comes to basic things like naming my classrooms has had me pulling my hair out every new semester. The way I’ve organized my school seems like a really stereotypical way. Therefore, it is inconceivable to me that a simulation game designed to let me experience life as a principal could not replicate one of the most fundamental functions of a school.

While let’s go to school is a lot of fun and has a lot of nice ideas, but the implementation can sometimes be a bit bumpy. It definitely feels more for people who want to play Business Simulator instead of a more practical model. While easy to learn, it can get monotonous pretty quickly even after you’ve unlocked new mechanics e.g. B. talk to other schools or explore the regions around you. There Are Victory conditions to work towards. However, you can also take it passively, as all three are strongly linked to the way the game naturally encourages you to play. let’s go to school doesn’t feel like a game to enjoy for hours, but you’ll definitely have a lot of fun in the early stages. In that sense, it feels more like a student than a principal.

let’s go to school is available for Windows PCs via steam.