Recent reviews by Tealphine

When it's good, it's a very fun game. But the moderation is horrendous. Not exactly fun when you're fired just for being a woman or having a darker skin tone. Unfortunately I can't recommend until this issue is improved.

As cute as this game is with its adorable graphics, charming music and funny narrator, it's all over-shadowed by how insanely slooowwwww the game is. The resources just aren't very balanced. Though my city population was growing huge, I couldn't manage to get enough of the resources I really needed (coal especially) because your producers don't produce enough. I'll have 800 wood and 0 coal because each coal burner burns only 2 wood at a time yet each coal produced is snatched up the moment it's completed. Building multiples of the buildings didn't help much either. "Just how many farms do I need?" I found myself wondering as I built the 11th vegetable farm. I made it quite far but realised I was just waiting and waiting and waiting for anything to get done.

The hero part wasn't well implemented. The hero awkwardly stands there until you command it to go to one of the locations on the map. It doesn't even go to its house while waiting. Training the military was reliant on producing weapons which required, you guessed it, coal, the resource you produce the least of.

I enjoyed building and decorating my town though I wish there were more decorations and leisure buildings, and again, you're left waiting a while to build things. I didn't even want to build the palace which required 100 of multiple resources. I also found that there just isn't a whole lot to the game as pleasing as it looks so I can't really recommend it over all. I think it got tedious quite quickly.

Incredibly fun and unique concept. Still in its early stages so you will encounter some bugs but the dev team are active and responsive. For a game that's only been out half a year, it has a myriad of content to keep you entertained. Completely worth it.

The story is awful. The second half just destroys everything they built up in the first. For that alone I won't recommend this game.

Short but really awesome. Everything from the cool 90s graphics to the sound effects and details was absolutely awesome. I didn't want to stop and finished in one sitting. Hoping we see more content added on perhaps but it's definitely well worth the price. Petition to give the guy back his $2!

This game is similar to Life Quest which was a game I loved. You take turns choosing actions to increase your money, healthy happiness and education. You have a limited amount of time each day which is affected by factors like method of travel or debuffs from the cards delivered at the beginning of your turn. Unlike Life Quest, though, this game is pretty bare bones. There just isn't enough content. I've played twice with friends and we've seen everything there is to offer. There's only one job path to make the most money meaning there's no real need to pursue the other areas unless you just feel like it. It's very standard gameplay that doesn't differ per play making it boring quickly. Jobs require certain clothes yet you wear a uniform at the job so that feels like a useless mechanic. Plus clothes are only for the jobs and there's no other reason to buy them nor is there much variety. The cards at the beginning of your turn are almost always exclusively just you losing money randomly. You never randomly gain any money, only lose it.

Overall, it's fun the first time but the entire game could benefit from adding way more. I don't feel like it's worth £10.99 at all. More variety, more clothes, more options and locations and then it'd be more worth the price.

Played with 5 friends and we all got incredibly bored very quickly. It seems like it's a good premise but far too grindy for us and it's just not fun at all.

This game is very fun, I've been playing for a while though I only just got it on Steam. If you like Among Us then yes, you will like this game. It's a similar premise but with more to it with more roles and more players though you aren't running around a map. I would suggest you play with a group of friends, though, as the community is pretty bad, they can easily ruin the experience. But if you find a good set of people to play with then it's really fun.

Academia School Simulator is off to a good start. I've found it quite fun and put in many hours but I do agree there is quite a bit lacking in the game. There's also a lot of infuriating game mechanics that almost ruin the game for me and are making it hard to want to continue playing the game in its current state.

Starting off with the positives. I like the customisation you get for your school and how you can decorate. It is very similar to Prison Architect as mentioned. The game has run very well for me and the graphics are cute.

Now on to the negatives. Oh boy.
Sometimes I feel like I'm playing School Janitor Simulator instead as the hygiene mechanic in the game is beyond broken. This is my biggest grief with the game. Dirt gets everywhere even when I set the level to 'Tidy' and your janitors have a hard time keeping up with the amount of dirt being produced. The students then complain the school is too filthy and drop out which lowers your income. You hire more janitors which also lowers your income but the school is still too filthy. This creates an endless loop of students dropping and you losing more and more money. This makes playing scenarios immensely frustrating because it makes it way more difficult than it needs to be and you're way too likely to fail due to just not having enough funds and not being able to bring it back. Unpaved dirt also tanking your overall cleanliness school is really stupid also. It's...the ground...why are we counting the grass and ground as dirty?! The janitors also act poorly in their AI. They clump together on the routes instead of spreading out and with janitor priority they ALL go instead of just the ones without a route as stated in the tooltip. Basically, you end up researching Janitor Priority as fast as possible then spending all your time telling the Janitors where to clean. Not what I signed up for.

Next is the grading system. Not sure if it's just buggy but I definitely find it ridiculous. With level 1 teachers, even if at the end of the school year your students grade levels are all in the green they will still overwhelmingly fail. It forces you to get level 2 teachers which tank your income fast. Heck, even with level 2 teachers you still get a weirdly high number of students who fail. But if you don't get a good grade you don't get enough students interested so you don't get much tuition money. This again starts a nose dive to failure. It's not that I don't want a challenge, it's that it's too difficult to come back from having a drop like that and it just ends up in failing or starting the save over. The other hand is that it gets way too easy.

Next the random events are a nuisance and don't have much variety. It's pretty much 'spend money you don't have or 90% chance to lose stuff'. Pay $3000 for only 10 prestige? No way. I find myself just skipping them and taking the -5 prestige penalty instead because it's simply not worth it. You may get the good event where you can just get some money ($1000) or prestige (100) but I don't get those much. They're also very repetitive.

Then you realise that there isn't really all that much to the game. You really don't need to build more than just basic classrooms if you don't want to unless you want the grant money or the scenario tells you to. You get better teachers, build the school bigger and that's it. The various sporting rooms are per class group which I don't think should be a thing (why only seniors for basketball or only juniors for swimming?). The game is in early access and I do think it has a good amount of beautification options right now so I'm not bothered on getting more for now but there does need to be a lot more gameplay elements to it. How about the option to put on our own events? Plan the graduation ceremony? (As of right now students just disappear in to the cosmos when they graduate). More random events that do something other than spending money to still lose some staff or students. What if the school inspector was more than just a random event pop up? Plenty of ideas.

Overall, my conclusion is they have a good beginning here and I have enjoyed the time I have played but I would recommend anyone who is looking to purchase to wait until they put more into this game and fix the glaring issues because you'll get bored very quickly. I'm mainly treating this game as an idle game at this point. I look forward to what the developers do in the future and hope it can make me return but for now I cannot recommend it.

I have played this game previously on a friend's console and have now bought to play on my PC. I absolutely love this game. The characters are likeable and funny. I'm someone who prefers easy games and the easy mode is enough for me, you can pick a harder mode so those who fancy more of a challenge have that choice. Sometimes you will miss things if you don't look or follow a guide, I learned to look everywhere and check everything. The story is great and it runs well. Really recommend if you like a good story.