Developer: Pathea Games
Publisher: PM Studios
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Let’s School – Review
Ah, school. Whether you’re still attending classes or have left the school benches behind you, school has been a significant part of all of our lives. Who hasn’t dreamt of what they’d do if they were in charge? Well, thanks to Pathea Games, you don’t have to wonder anymore. Their school management sim Let’s School, actually launched mid-last year, and it has been sitting on top of our backlog like a piece of homework we kept postponing. We’re done procrastinating now, however, and are finally taking a look at what Let’s School has in store for us. Does the game deserve an A+ or should it be sent to detention?
Story
Given that Let’s School is a management sim first and foremost, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the story is mostly irrelevant beyond the initial premise. In a subtle nod to farming sims like Stardew Valley, Let’s School starts with a letter. This time it’s not from a deceased grandparent that leaves you a farm, but from the principal of your old school. After your graduation, said school has fallen into disrepair. With the principal retiring, it’s up to you to restore the school to its former glory. Granted, the reason that the school is in its current state may be because of the principal’s poor management skills in the first place, given that his first course of action is to hand over the keys to a random former student, rather than rely on any official instances. Fortunately, your goal is to turn your former school into an educational utopia, rather than abuse the power that was just handed to you, right? ….Right?
Graphics
Pathea Games is behind the excellent farming/life sims My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock, and we were half expecting Let’s School to be similar to those titles aesthetically. As it turned out, Let’s School is very different in appearance, however, with character designs that are definitely more manga-inspired than the My Time At series. In-game character models are relatively simple but given Let’s School’s lack of focus on characters that’s not a real issue. You’ll be looking at menus and interfaces most of the time anyway. That said, there is a degree of customization here too, as you’re able to select uniform colors, design a logo, and even create your own principal avatar.
Sound
Audio is without a doubt the weakest part of Let’s School. The in-game music is dull and repetitive. Meanwhile, the absence of voice acting makes it so that your school can feel eerily empty at times, even if there are plenty of students on screen. The ambient sound effects are fine, but can’t carry the rest of the soundscape. We weren’t expecting Let’s School’s audio to take front and center stage, of course, but if there’s one aspect of the game that we’d want to see changed, it’s this.
Gameplay
Simulation games typically either opt for hyper-realistic recreations of real-life professions like Train Life or wacky what-if scenarios a la Park Beyond. Let’s School definitely falls in the latter category, and as such definitely isn’t the most challenging management sim out there. However, the upside to the game’s light-hearted approach is that it’s very accessible, so even those without oodles of genre experience will find running their own school easy as a breeze. The goal is of course to turn the derelict school grounds into a successful educational institute. To do this, you’ll need to do everything from building, expanding, and upgrading your infrastructure to hiring your faculty and even setting up a class schedule so that each of your students can follow their required curriculum. At the end of each in-game week, your students then take an exam, and depending on their results, you’ll reap in all sorts of rewards. It’s a bit of a counterintuitive approach as the game gets progressively easier with better performance, but then again, this probably does reflect the way school subsidies work in real life as well.
Perhaps the most important aspect of managing your own school is infrastructure, even more so than faculty. You can cram your students in a closet with a single light bulb, but you’ll notice that more comfortable classrooms do wonders for the concentration, and subsequently the exam results of those budding young minds. Let’s School’s building system is intuitive and easy to use, and you’re even able to save classrooms you designed so you can easily set up multiple. You’re not limited to classrooms either, as your students will need to be able to eat, chill out, and go to the bathroom, and your campus needs the right facilities to handle hundreds of people. Admittedly, you do get a ton of freedom and have a myriad of options to turn the school into a surrealistic dreamscape instead of what schools typically look like. Building is where Let’s School players can show their most creative side, and it’s probably the best part of the gameplay.
The actual education part of Let’s School is a somewhat dull affair by comparison. You’ll need to make sure you have plenty of teachers, and that their job performance is adequate. If not, you’ll need to train them, but this is an expensive process, and early on your budget is very limited. Later in the game, monetary constraints feel like less of an issue, but the bigger your school becomes, the more difficult it becomes to set up a weekly lesson plan. There is an auto-scheduling option available for this, but it doesn’t feel all that efficient compared to meticulously optimizing everything. It’s that optimization that is the key to success too: you can even put extra effort into individual students so that they ace their exams, netting you even more budget. Your responsibilities don’t end with students passing their exams either. Occasionally you’ll have to deal with the PTA or set up extracurricular activities and after-school clubs. Random events, like insect invasions on campus, also add variety to what would otherwise be a one-note affair.
Don’t let the cartoonish appearance of Let’s School fool you into thinking this is a kid’s game, or even an easy one for that matter. Even the tutorial only covers the very basics, and it’s possible that you’ll make some early game designs that are so difficult to rectify that you’re better off just starting over. With each attempt, however, you gain better knowhow of what makes the game tick. For how challenging the game is, Let’s School never feels unfair. Instead, any difficulties and hardships you encounter feel like the direct consequences of your own actions, and a do-over lets you take things in a different direction and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Management sims typically aren’t built around trial and error, so this approach made Let’s School feel fresh and unique.
At $19.99/€18.99, Let’s School offers plenty of bang for your buck, offering both a lengthy campaign and a sandbox mode, so it would be an easy recommendation if it wasn’t for one final thought about the game’s control scheme. While Let’s School feels like a competent management sim as a whole, this aspect does leave some things to be desired. Let’s School doesn’t offer controller support, so you’re limited to mouse and keyboard. That’s not necessarily a major problem, but we do recommend going into the game’s settings and tweaking the standard controls before playing. Moving your mouse to the edge of the screen doesn’t let your camera automatically scroll over your campus, for example. Once you’ve customized the game’s control scheme to your liking, it’s relatively smooth sailing.
Conclusion
While there is room for improvement here and there, we’re still giving Let’s School a passing grade. The game may not be the most in-depth management sim out there, and you’ll need to tweak the default control scheme, but there is a lot of fun to be had here. The core gameplay is accessible but Let’s School offers up plenty of challenges for even genre veterans, and creative builders can really customize their school to their heart’s content…provided they have the required in-game budget. Fortunately, the real-life price of entry feels very affordable, so if the game seems up your alley, there isn’t a lot to lose by giving Let’s School a try.
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