Pocket Academy

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

.

Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 55 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, while Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income.

When Pocket Academy was released on mobile devices in the US in 2012, with ports to Nintendo Switch in 2019, PlayStation 4 in 2020, PC in 2022, and Xbox One in 2023, it went for the latter of those two templates, being a game about plotting out the layout of rooms, facilities, and landscaping for a school, as well as selecting classes to improve your students’ abilities and challenges to show your students have reached milestones in their development.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals presented in an isometric view, paired with repetitive chiptune music and sound effects. Apart from the annoying music, everything about this presentation is really endearing, although of course by this point anyone playing Kairosoft’s games will have gotten used to this visual style.

As I mentioned in my review of Hot Springs Story, one of the major omissions of the prior game, Game Dev Story, was the inability to design the game’s workspace. And once again in Pocket Academy, things have been flipped around – you’re entirely focused on plotting out where you will install facilities and build the different rooms of your resort, but now you’re limited by an inability to set salaries and admission fees, and at least initially to hire and fire staff.

As per usual with Kairosoft, Pocket Academy isn’t entirely clear on how things work, with a pretty mediocre tutorial. This is particularly frustrating here, because the way things work in this game is… odd. You can attract more students to your school by improving facilities, and you can raise the tuition indirectly by improving your school’s scholastic reputation. To do this, you must raise your students’ stats by using resources you acquire over time to teach special classes to raise your students’ stats, and then when you think you’re ready, select one student to take on a subject-specific challenge. If they pass, your school’s reputation in that subject is raised.

It seems odd that your entire school’s reputation can be based on one student’s performance on one test, even if you can re-take these challenges as often as you want (if you have the cash to enter). However, it’s frustrating to work toward even this odd goal as the aforementioned resources you need come in irregular intervals, and there’s not any clear way to ensure you can gain a resource you’ll need.

What’s more, while having more attractive facilities clearly helps, this game isn’t clear about the strategy behind their placement, apart from that they need to have walking paths to get from one to another, and the vague indication that proximity matters, though it’s not clear just how close things need to be to take advantage of that proximity. In some cases, it’s not clear what some facilities contribute at all. On top of how confusing this game’s mechanics are, it’s just overall really slow-paced, with it taking seemingly forever to gather the resources you need to do what you want.

Overall, Pocket Academy has some interesting ideas, but it’s really held back by unclear mechanics, a terrible tutorial, and an abysmally slow pace. It’s not the worst Management Simulation out there, but it definitely feels like it could have done with more refinement.

tl;dr – Pocket Academy is a Management Simulation where players manage a school’s facilities and classes. Its approach to its topic matter is interesting, but the lack of clear game mechanics, a poor tutorial, and slow pacing all keep the game held back. Perhaps there’ll be better luck next semester.

Grade: C

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}