Academia : School Simulator
I am a huge fan of Rimworld, I really enjoyed Prison Architect and plus, I’m a teacher. So I was pretty excited about this game.
I’m giving it a hesitant thumbs up on the premise that it will deliver on its promises as it progresses through EA. It’s very bare bones at the moment but I’m hopeful that it will live up to its potential as its exactly the kind of game that I would love if it were much, much bigger.
As a teacher, I do have some feedback on the academic side of things for the developers:
– Real player with 163.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Base Building Games.
TL;DR
It’s fine, but not worth $20 because it has very little replay value.
Overview
Academia: School Simulator is a game. It’s challenging to call it a good game, but it certainly isn’t a bad one. I originally purchased this game after seeing it on youtube and being interesting in a school sandbox game, in which I could do a variety of things from build the best school, to making a living hellscape. Academia: School Simulator, did not meet those expectations.
Story
I don’t truly demand story in every game I play, but I feel like this could use a little… anything? I dunno even just a: Gramps left me his inheritance and I was told to spend it on his dying wish: building a school. Whatever, moving on.
– Real player with 98.7 hrs in game
Beetle Uprising
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Very cute.
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Very relaxing.
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The evolution system is realistic.
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You can feel the power growing.
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Kind of dislike the fact that we must kill our own beetles.
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Don’t be too boldy. It is a relaxing game. Not a “Conquer as quick as possible” game.
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You end up with a mess on the floor.
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Decorations are useless and lack of potential.
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Kind of annoying how the inventories work. Lack of organization. Annoying to navigate.
Conclusion :
I am really not sure if this game is supposed to be beautiful or efficient…
– Real player with 22.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Real Time Tactics Games.
While at this time it is still in early access, this title has a lot going for it even with some of the drawbacks.
Its a nice little management game with some real time tactics for the combat, that grows in depth once you start playing around with the genetics to improve your combat abilities. You go from simply looking at your highest stat numbers and trying to combine them, into looking at the genetic tree of your particular units then breeding based off that to improve on your entire gene pool, which does lead into one aspect of the game that needs some work in my opinion at this stage as you spend a lot of time just sat there, combining genes then throwing the inferior beetles into a blender to make room for the next set.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
Blueprint Tycoon
Blueprint Tycoon uses the production management systems you might find in games like Factorio or Stronghold and dials it up to 11 with the addition of a SpaceChem-style puzzle of instructions that has to be completed in each building in order to produce resources. You are required to engage in both the building placement and building ratio exercises that will be familiar from the initially-mentioned games (or from Big Pharma, which has been described to me as a ‘building placement puzzle game’), while also striving to upgrade your production technology, making sure your buildings are operating in a logically efficient manner, and so on.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Casual Games.
I got the chance to test the game. I’m happy I applied and got to see a great game in the making.
Love the idea, wanted to participate in the testing the moment I heard about the new game from Endless Loops Studios.
There’s a lot of work needed here but this game is in Early Access. There is time.
From what I’ve seen the Developer listens to the people testing it right now, takes advices and suggestions implements them.
Active both on forum and with the updates.
Now the game.
It may seem hard to understand but you get used to it fast thanks to the tutorial.
– Real player with 12.1 hrs in game
Mercury Fallen
This is a fun little game in early development. Start by awakening in a small ruins underground on an alien planet. Dig out rooms and gather resources to build the base that was supposed to be awaiting you, but something went wrong. But you do get a few friends to help and a little spidery robot. More survivors and robots can be found burried outside your base. The only food at this time is potatoes, that can be made into mashed potatoes (This must be heaven for the Irish), but more crops and items are planned. Water pipes and electrical is not very intuitive, but a little trial and error will teach you all you need to know. After a game week you will have all the tech tree filled and have built all there is to build, but with an elevator to the surface and more content planned, this game has a ton of potential. This game is hours of fun, but not days of fun. Only buy now if you are willing to get it cheap and wait for more content to follow. I had 2 crashes and a bug where a survivor became stuck until I reloaded. Compared to other early releases this is pretty minor. As more content is added I am sure most people will find this very enjoyable. I recommend this game.
– Real player with 1003.3 hrs in game
The game is in the early stage of EA which means it is not a full game yet and bugs, crashes and lag can happen.
That said, in the 30+ hours i played, the game has crashed once and never had any lag issues even on the highest possible settings.
So is there anything to do already?
For the stage MF is in yes.
It has the basic items to build your base and with research you can add new rooms, equipement and other options.
You can refine the raw materials from mining and farming and use those to make building materials, food, bots or refine them into next tier materials. Besides the production of bots you can also clone colonists.
– Real player with 158.8 hrs in game
First Feudal
The game is cool but it has alot of polishing and quality of life improvements to go.
-Your dudes just seem to quit hunting and cooking despite the avaliable resources and tools. you’re just strolling along and suddenly you have no food. You got the tools. the animals, no food, your dude’s just standing around. there’s no explanation. I’ve been having to manually do all the hunting.
-Need to have more options for work. some dudes I strictly want doing things, once those positions are filled I just want to place orders, I don’t care who does it.
– Real player with 112.4 hrs in game
I’ve been playing this game non-stop for a while so i can make a review, so here it is.
Things i like:
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Has a great sound track
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Has a great art style
In general its a fun game to play, not just to pass the the time, its a game where you can put a lot of hours into and still have a lot to do.The AI is great, i haven’t experienced many bugs with them besides a couple of times which ill mention later. Its a very re-playable game, with every new world being unique from the last, which makes you rethink strategies to survive on that map.
– Real player with 94.5 hrs in game
Lords and Villeins
Little bit of background: I own about 50 management/colony sim/city builder games. I love the genre but a lot of the games are very similar so it can get boring. I bought this game impulsively not expecting a lot but once I started playing I fell in love with its unique mechanics and game play system.
Pros:
Unique art style
Hardworking, responsive, and dedicated devs
Positive Community
Frequent updates and bug fixes
Solid base game for EA
Ability to change speed of the game
Great tutorial that isn’t annoying or makes you feel dumb, allows you to naturally learn the game while giving hints
– Real player with 86.7 hrs in game
I’ll preface this by saying I’ve never bought an early access game before. I’ve read plenty of horror story reviews about people who have bought a game and the Devs just up and quit on it, or worse, Devs that continue to charge for a game they’ve knowingly abandoned. I’m very guarded about paying for something that isn’t finished, with a promise that it will be, someday. That said, this looked like the perfect game for me, and I can see this Dev team is actively reading reviews, they use critiques constructively, and they’re putting out regular updates, so I decided I’d take a chance on this one.
– Real player with 82.5 hrs in game
Monsters Mall
(Early Access Review; as an early access release, you may experience bugs, content, interface, and optimization changes. If you are not excited to play the title in its current state & help to support the title to full release by reporting bugs and requesting additional content, you may want to wait for further development)
Welcome to Monsters Mall, a delightful new monster-themed management game. Even in the world of ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night, there are needs to fulfill, just as with humans. To satisfy all their monster desires you will be opening and operating a Mall just for otherworldly creatures. Start by attracting ghostly visitors to your shops. Collecting plasma spheres each day, you will upgrade the graveyard to unlock new creatures of the night, as well as stores. Spend your plasma wisely. As your stores turn a profit; you will be unlocking new areas to place your businesses. There are also areas to place various items, such as ice cream parlors, signs to hurry customers along and even crystals that generate plasma, with more to come. Watch for brilliantly-lit customers of various hues, who will drop additional plasma to use for unlocks. A fun casual fantasy clicker with many hours of gameplay already in place and updates coming.
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
Great and simple management/idle game with cute graphics, nice music and catchy mechanic.
I wasnt very fond at first, but after round 6 I really got the hang of it and when I saw it I was already in round 21.
Definetly gonna play until unlock all the monsters and stores.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
The Final Earth 2
Build a great city in this vertical city builder in space! Gather resources, then build and research your way to a better future! Grow your city from an exploration ship to a huge metropolis, full of advanced technology. What will you build?
The Final Earth 2 offers a relaxing, creative city building experience with exploration elements and an optional story. There’s always something new to build and discover!
Features
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Build a huge city with thousands of inhabitants, all fully simulated!
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Over sixty different buildings to discover!
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Great, fully original music by Stijn Cappetijn!
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Discover the story in scenarios, or go wild in Free Play or Creative mode.
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Gather, manage and balance various resources
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There might even be a secret society…
Build What You Want!
With many different buildings, you can design the city you want. Will it be a green hippie paradise full of gardens, a huge party, or one big factory? Will your colony be a single, enormous building or will you spread it out over hundreds of worlds? Does your transport consist of efficient teleporters or a chaotic mess of landing pads? It’s all your choice!
Plus, there will be modding support to give you even more freedom!
Sit Back and Enjoy Your City!
After you’ve built a huge city, sit back and see it in action for a while. It’s like watching an ant colony! You can also follow any citizen to make this even more fun. Find the person with the craziest commute, or discover hidden details like a stargazer.
Story
It’s 2142, and earth is a wasteland because of devastating climate change. You built a space ship, but now your food is running out. Fortunately, you see a world just in time. It is a bit small, but certainly better than nothing. You build some farms and houses, and fulfill the basic needs of your citizens. Then, it’s time to build the true city of the future! Research advanced technology and make your city grow to a huge metropolis. When your tiny world gets too small, fly to other worlds with space ships, or even build teleporters.
After the Collapse
I have been playing this game for just over a week, and have already put in 40+ hours. I believe that Anarkis Gaming has got a great game her, and they continue to improve it as it is still Early Access. I have always been a fan of Base Building games, and the “Post Apocalypse” part of the genre is fun for sure! My first few times playing I didn’t last more than a day or 2 as I was still learning how to balance workload of the survivors. I will say that the best way to do things is small pieces at a time. Do not build multiple rooms/buildings/items at once as your survivors will be overwhelmed and not be able to complete anything. Overall, I love this game so far, and hope they continue to build on the great base they already have. I’ll finish my review with Pros and Cons.
– Real player with 188.8 hrs in game
An innovative base builder with people and expeditionary management. This review is based on Early Access 0.8.3 and for me it plays like a fairly smooth beta, rather than an Alpha build. Quite stable, with no real issues now, and quite a reasonable amount of content to play with.
The developers are quite active and responsive, critical for any EA title. I have no concerns about this one getting to full release which I can’t say about all my EA games unfortunately. There is already several game modes and scenarios which makes great for replay value. The GUI was easy to adopt, and the variety of options for creating games I was very pleased with. There’s a lot of things you can adjust to your liking, and that level of customisation at this point is outstanding,
– Real player with 110.8 hrs in game
Depraved
pros
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love the weather cycle
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great attention to small details
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better than average graphics
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great foundation to build on with improvements
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bandits/native american interaction is a nice aspect
cons
-terrible economic system at all levels (easy medium hard)
at hard you pretty much can only build one way or you will fail
at medium you can waiver a little but not much
at easy not much different from medium
if you want to build only a logging town and never advance your populations status then you have no worries
– Real player with 165.4 hrs in game
Bottom Line Up Front: This game will be amazing when it’s finished.
Pros:
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It’s a very cool concept of starting a town in the wild west.
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The Devs. have come up with a great backbone for the buildings and resources you will need to be successful.
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Replay-ability once complete will be a GINORMOUS 10/10.
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It’s not an easy game to master in the beginning. You really need to think a few steps ahead before building anything. This makes it so much more fun when you are successful in your choices.
– Real player with 43.1 hrs in game