Academia: School Simulator

Academia: School Simulator is a school management simulation game that lets you design, construct and manage a high school. It shares some similarities with Prison Architect, but here you run a school instead of a prison.

Gameplay

You watch students enter the school newly and go through the various phases of high school. They pass exams, fail exams, make friends, become lovers etc. Your principal deals with things like student insubordination, PTA strikes, staff strikes and more. Natural disasters occur, and you have to choose how to respond.

You hire teachers, cooks, medical personnel and janitors, and you find various ways to keep your staff motivated so they don’t resign. You must take your time while hiring teachers because each teacher has their teaching style and specialization. As the game progresses, you have to specialize in the Arts, Sciences, Sports or Agriculture. You design your school emblem, flag and uniform.

You must also keep an eye on your finances. Things like the amount of coffee available in the staff room or the quality of lunch you give your students will affect your finances. Give your student poor lunches instead of a healthy diet, and you find that your school is worse for it. Hire too many janitors and your finances will quickly get drained. Hire too few janitors and students will leave your school for being too dirty. It’s all a delicate, balancing act.

You must find a way to keep students, staff and parents happy. If students leave your school, you’ll lose revenue. If good staff leave your school, your school ratings will drop. You monitor students’ fun level, energy level, food level, hygiene level, bladder level, bowel level and safety level. You reduce delinquents in your school to keep students safe. You build recreational rooms and facilities for science, art, music and computer to keep students happy. You must plan facility layouts adequately within your schools with each layout having a consequence. Keep your students motivated by giving them bonuses when they deserve it. Scold them too much and they get demotivated. Don’t scold them and they may turn out to be truants. If students fall ill, they miss classes. If students fall in love and get accepted by their crush, their motivation level increases. If they get rejected, they lose motivation.

Keep your class size manageable or your students won’t learn as fast as they should. The ideal class size is 25. Keeping the class size lower than this will give you a bonus. But, the smaller the class size, the more classes you have to construct.

If your students are failing too much, you need to examine their results and see the subjects that they are failing the most. Then, you hire new teachers and make other necessary adjustments needed for them to pass the subjects. Good teachers will cost more and drain your finances faster.

Modding

There are no modding feature yet. But the developers have promised to add modding capabilities to the game as it develops further.

Pros

• Enjoyable school simulator/managerial game
• A lot of things count in this simulator
• New content added regularly

Cons

• You’ll encounter bugs while playing