Academia: School Simulator (Early Access) Review

Academia: School Simulator is a school building and management simulator. The game has just been released into Steam Early Access and is still currently in its first build. This means that at time of writing there are no new features to mention. The game is in active development and as a result, the Early Access review may be updated in the future.

Note: If this game looks very familiar it’s because the artist who worked on Prison Architect is also working on this project.

The game starts off in an empty plot of land where the player is able to construct their school. Unlike Prison Architect, there’s no need to build a foundation for the structures. You can just build walls immediately to jump straight into placing the zones for the different rooms.

After constructing a room, the player needs to place a “Zone” down to make that room into a certain type. To make the room an active zone, the player needs to place different objects around the room to fulfil the criteria.

Thankfully, the game starts in what could be called a ‘building stage’ where the player has a set amount of money to build their school. Assuming the player doesn’t accept any grants at this point that is. Once the player is happy with the size of the school they just need to click the “Start School Year” button.

During the school year, the player can still continue to build their school so there are no restrictions here. The restrictions come from the fact there’s still very little in the game right now. So once you’ve built the basic buildings, there’s nothing to really do but expand the school further to get more students.

While there’s very little in the game right now, the developer is being very open with the development. They’ve published their to-do list for the game which reveals quite a bit about what’s coming in the future.

At this point, Academia: School Simulator is worth purchasing if you’re someone who loves this genre and want to help support the developer. Otherwise, there’s not enough content in the game to warrant the price at this point. You’ll find that there’s only around 1-2 hours amount of content.

If you’re looking for a more ‘finished’ game then you’ll need to look elsewhere before coming back to Academia: School Simulator for at least a few more months.