School Tycoon Review

I'll try to be as professional as possible.

Concept
Score: B-
The idea behind School Tycoon is that you are in charge of producing a successful yet fun learning facility for the young minds of wherever-it-is-you-are. You can choose what they learn, where they learn, what they eat, and how they play. The better your students perform, the better your school is. The more fun your school is, the more popular it will become, the more students you reason. And the cycle goes on.

Overall, an interesting idea, but not very compelling to most.

Gameplay
Score: C
Gameplay is relatively simple. You either pick a scenario and try to get the objective or you go into sandbox mode and do whatever you want. I'm not a fan of the scenario portions of any tycoon or SIM game, mostly because they are pretty tried-and-true learning games to help you out in the sandbox mode. They aren't required, but they are helpful.

The actual gameplay itself is very simple. Simply point and click what you want where. Nothing flashy, yet not overly complicated.

The only bad thing about it is that there will always be something blocking your view at all time. Be careful where you put things like statues and trees, or else you won't be able to see that pile of trash that needs cleaning. There is no transparency option that I could find, so you'll end up having to rotate a lot to find that stray area.

I also don't like the fact that while the buildings are like Tetris pieces, there is no grid marking system. That would make placement a little bit easier.

While you are only restricted to three types of land area, the space is more than enough for your school. Keep in mind that you will not crowd and use up the entire space. Schools are meant to be schools, not a metropolis.

The high point is the fact that you can actually move buildings around to make space for others, which saves you cash as oppose to bulldozing and then rebuilding. Too bad you can't move the teachers with them. Speaking of which, the teachers, as well as most of your other staff members, are all pretty atomic. They will do their jobs based on their randomly-generated stats with little-to-no commands from the player. In fact, they have been known to expel students for you that don't follow the rules, and once you build a detention building, they will send those rowdy punks there as well.

Once you do have a successful school going, you can create your own student and follow him or her on their school day, if you're into that kind of voyeurism.

Overall, the gameplay is well balance and has everything that any Tycoon game should have.

Sound
Score: C-
Some of the sounds are actually interesting, particularly the ambient noises, but other than that, your teachers and your students will sound as if they came from The Sims. The only exception is they know how to talk real words! Other than that, expect a lot of birds chirping, waves crashing onto the beach, and the occasional beeping horn during rush hour.

Graphics
Score: B+
The graphics in this game are really something to look at and better than most of the tycoon titles I own. Instead of being locked in a 2-D position, you can rotate around in a 3-D environment in real time with what is going on in your school. You can also be like God and oversee the entire campus from far away or zoom in on an individual student as if studying them through a microscope. You will experience some kind of frame lag, but most of it is minor.

Bugs
There aren't any really bad bugs in the game. Things look to be rather smooth for the most part. You will notices that students and teachers will tend to walk through building walls and each other, but that's to be expected since most of the animation budget was spent on the people and not on the swinging doors.

Things That Bother Me
Okay, this is where I'm going to rant, but it's part of the review.

The idea is that you are in charge of a high school. There are high school classes such as math and social studies and basic art. There are even high school stereotypes like the jock and the nerds and the bullies that have nothing better to do than to life irons and the occasional nerd. The part that bothers me is that once you get a good layout going, your school looks more like a university campus than a high school. Maybe I'm wrong and there is a high school out there that looks somewhat like this, but I am not aware of any high school having it's own Burger King on campus instead of a cafeteria.

Another thing that is strange to me is how you get money. Apparently, with every new student that enrolls, you get some kind of cash. If this isn't a college you're running, than the only other conclusion I can come up with is that you are running a private school. While excusable, it is rather odd since most private schools control how much tuition is. You can't in the game. The set price appears to be about $50 a student, give or take.

Stranger still is the upgrade system. In order to get better buildings, you need to start with basic ones. This make sense with some like the Janitor's Building, but to unlock some of the other's does not make sense. I mean, why do I have to construct a Port-O-Potty just to get access to the Nurses Office and the Detention Building? Does someone need to put a cherry bomb in the pile of crap injuring some helpless potty-goer so that both buildings have some kind of purpose? While I'm thinking about it, why do you have to start with a Port-o-John as your student's bathroom?! Don't you think they are worth at least proper lavatory facilities from the start?! The trouble with the national school systems these days.

Overall Score: C+
There are some quirky things about the game that I don't understand, but it is easy to get into as well as good time waster. The fact that it is $20 also helps. It's worth the cash, which is rare for tycoon games. Now if only I could just produce a school that won't go bankrupt. Where's the damn government funding when I need it?