Let’s School

Let’s School is a contemporary school simulation game where players take on the role of a school administrator, tasked with designing, constructing, and managing all aspects of a modern educational institution. Combining city-building and managerial elements, the game offers a relaxed and accessible experience with a nostalgic handheld console aesthetic, focusing on infrastructure development, staff hiring, and student oversight in a user-friendly package.

Let’s School: A Comprehensive Review of a Promising but Flawed Management Sim

Introduction: The Bell Tolls for a New Genre Contender

In the crowded landscape of management simulations, where players routinely shepherd theme parks, hospitals, and entire cities to prosperity, the school campus has remained a surprisingly underdeveloped niche. Titles like Two Point Campus have brought whimsy and charm to the premise, but the deep, systemic simulation of running an educational institution—with its unique blend of human development, logistics, and community pressure—has largely been left untapped. Enter Let’s School, a 2023 release from Chinese developer Pathea Games, best known for the wholesome life-sim My Time at Portia. With a pitch that promises to let players “revamp and manage your alma mater,” the game arrives with the weight of expectation for a fresh, culturally distinct take on the genre. However, a thorough analysis reveals a title that is both deeply compelling and fundamentally conflicted. It is a game that brilliantly captures the brutal, spreadsheet-driven calculus of institutional management while consistently failing to foster the emotional, human connection that the school setting inherently demands. This review will dissect Let’s School’s ambitious architecture, its uneven execution, and its ultimate place as a solid, if soulless, entry in the simulation canon—a clever business simulator dressed in the borrowed robes of an educational heartwarmer.

Development History & Context: From Portia to the Principal’s Office

Let’s School emerged from the creative crucible of Pathea Games, a studio that carved its niche with the farming-and-relationship sim My Time at Portia and its sequel My Time at Sandrock. According to a developer interview with producer Lanka on GameSpace.com, Let’s School began as a personal passion project for a team member, rooted in nostalgia for their own school days and a love for Asian anime and manga depicting school life—specifically citing series like K-ON! and Nichijou as inspirations. This origin story is crucial: the game’s aesthetic and thematic core are explicitly, deliberately Asian, aiming to blend Chinese and Japanese educational experiences into a single, relatable package for regional players and fans of the medium globally.

The development was not a clean-room experiment. As noted in Wikipedia and gaming press, Pathea shifted members from the Portia team to assist, meaning Let’s School inherits some of that series’ foundational design philosophies: a focus on simulation depth, a generous helping of busywork, and a low-poly, functional visual style. The game was built in Unity with FMOD for audio, tools that facilitate the kind of detailed systemic simulation Pathea aimed for. Its release strategy was methodical: a PC launch via Steam in July 2023, followed by a console port a year later (July 2024) for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms, published in partnership with PM Studios. This timing placed it directly in the shadow of Two Point Campus (2022), a high-profile, critically adored title that had recently set a new standard for the “wacky school sim.” Let’s School thus entered the arena not as a pioneer, but as a challenger to an established king, forced to justify its existence through either depth or distinctive personality—a challenge it only partially meets.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: The Story of a School, Not Its Students

Narratively, Let’s School is almost negligible, which is its first significant failing. The setup, as detailed in the Steam store description and MobyGames overview, is pure MacGuffin: the player, an alumnus, is appointed headmaster of their dilapidated old school after the previous principal steps down. You arrive to find zero students, crumbling buildings, and a single loyal teacher, Ms. Lin. Your goal is to rebuild the institution to greatness.

This premise offers a golden opportunity for a character-driven story about community, education, and legacy. Instead, the narrative is purely functional and externally focused. The “story” consists of a series of disconnected letters from rival schools, bureaucratic notifications, and occasional random events (like a flu outbreak or a mysterious “danger”). The deeper themes of education’s purpose—is it about nurturing individuals, achieving academic excellence, or generating revenue?—are never meaningfully explored. The game’s own critical reception highlights this void. As Jade Sayers of Push Square bluntly stated, the title “misses out on any humanity by treating the school purely as a business,” while Trent Cannon of Nintendo Life called it “a deep, engaging – if a bit soulless – simulator.”

The thematic core, therefore, is not about education but about management. The conflict is between operational viability and ambition, not between pedagogical philosophies or student well-being versus academic rigor. The player’s relationship is with the school’s balance sheet and reputation meter, not with the students as people. This creates a profound dissonance: you manage thousands of simulated students over a career, but the game provides almost no narrative framework or systemic encouragement to see them as anything more than data points—rows in a spreadsheet with traits like “Artistic,” “Athletic,” or “Delinquent.” As the Legacy of Games review observed, “These kids spend years of their lives together… but then you check their stats and find out none of them are even vaguely acquainted with each other. They don’t form cliques, they don’t hang out together much.” The narrative vacuum is thus filled by a transactional, almost cybernetic view of education, which stands in stark contrast to the warm, nostalgic aesthetic the game apes.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: A Dense, Rewarding, but Cumbersome Engine

At its mechanical heart, Let’s School is a dual-loop sim of remarkable density, albeit one hampered by interface and design choices that often obscure its best qualities.

1. The Construction & Design Loop:
This is the game’s most immediately satisfying aspect. Using a free-camera, diagonal-down perspective, players clear debris and construct multi-story buildings from a vast library of facilities (classrooms, labs, art rooms, cafeterias, restrooms, etc.). The system is praised for its accessibility; as the NoobFeed review notes, it’s “incredibly easy to pick up.” Facilities have minimum furniture requirements to function, but players are incentivized to decorate lavishly to boost student morale and school reputation. The “room format” saving feature allows for quick replication of complex designs, a godsend for late-game campus expansion. This loop successfully channels the joy of The Sims or Planet Coaster on a smaller, more utilitarian scale.

2. The Managerial & Academic Loop:
Here lies the game’s true depth and its primary source of frustration. This loop is a multi-layered systems nightmare (in a good way, for masochistic管理 fans) comprising:
* Student Recruitment & Profiles: Students apply from different city districts, each with a “trust” level. Districts have distinct “educational needs” (e.g., one produces science-focused “nerds,” another produces sports-oriented “jocks”). Each student has a hidden “aspiration” dictating the subjects they must pass to be happy and successful. Matching student body composition to your curriculum is the core challenge.
* Curriculum & Scheduling: The weekly timetable is the game’s central, daunting spreadsheet. Players must assign subjects (Math, Literature, Science, Art, PE, etc.) to each class for each day, ensuring every student’s aspiration is met. As the Sequential Planet review notes, this “delicate balancing act becomes more complex as additional subjects and specialized teachers are introduced.” The auto-scheduler is a necessary but imperfect tool.
* Teacher Recruitment & Development: Teachers have stats (subject proficiency, charisma, etc.) and traits. They must be trained at significant cost to teach advanced subjects effectively. Their morale and performance directly impact student outcomes.
* Crisis & Discipline Management: The game simulates student stress, leading to issues like overeating (weight gain), Eyeglass usage (excessive studying), truancy, bullying, and contraband. Players must install facilities like nurse’s offices and implement punishment systems. Random events and rival school actions (like sending poaching letters) constantly threaten stability.
* Economic Pressure: Money is perpetually tight. Starting budgets vanish quickly, forcing loans and precarious budgeting. Income is tied to student tuition (varies by district) and exam performance bonuses. As the Legacy of Games review states, “It largely leaves it up to you to figure out how its systems work… And money is always going to be scarce.”

Flaws in the Systems: The depth is undermined by several issues:
* Opaqueness: The game famously poorly explains key mechanics. The Switch Effect review warns players will face “a lot of text and tutorials,” while Sequential Planet criticizes the “clunky” interface requiring “multiple button presses to perform what should be simple clicks.”
* Lack of Emergent Humanity: Despite simulating thousands of students, the game fails to create believable social dynamics. Students don’t form meaningful relationships or cliques, making them feel like isolated units rather than a community. This directly impacts the thematic emptiness discussed earlier.
* Jank & Bugs: All reviews, especially those for the Switch port, cite technical issues: text clipping in speech bubbles, duplicate pop-up notifications, model clipping, and “placeholder animations.” The Nintendo Life review specifically calls out “visual bugs and some frustrating menu layouts.”
* Repetition: Once a functional school rhythm is established, much of the gameplay devolves into fast-forwarding through weeks, only intervening for crises or exam results. As Siliconera succinctly put it, the “charm doesn’t last long before it becomes a monotonous routine.”

World-Building, Art & Sound: A Charming Aesthetic Masking Technical Roughness

Let’s School’s presentation is its most immediately divisive element, yet also its most conceptually interesting.

Visual Direction: The game employs a low-poly, stylized 3D aesthetic with a color palette that leans into the “handheld console of days past” vibe noted by NoobFeed. Character models are simple, chibi-like figures that animate poorly (twitching, clipping). Environments blend Asian rural school architecture—wooden buildings, traditional roofs—with modern facilities. The intention, per the developer interview, is to evoke a specific, anime-inspired East Asian school nostalgia. For players attuned to that aesthetic, it possesses a distinct, cozy charm that sets it apart from the more generic Western cartoon styles of Two Point Campus. However, as Sequential Planet argues, the style “doesn’t have the charm that similar games have” and “when zoomed in things just look ugly.” The low-poly models lack the expressive detail of higher-budget rivals, and the texture work is frequently described as basic or even ugly up close.

Sound Design: The audio, handled by FMOD, is functional but unremarkable. It features a light, casual soundtrack fitting for a management sim and basic UI sounds. There is no声音 signature or memorable audio motif. It serves its purpose without enhancing the atmosphere.

Atmosphere & World-Building: The world outside the school grounds—the city districts you recruit from—is barely depicted, appearing only as menu icons. The school itself is the entire world, and it feels lived-in only through the numbers on a spreadsheet. The potential for atmosphere—the creak of floorboards in an old building, the chatter of students between classes—is squandered by the lack of dynamic sound events and the sterile, god-view perspective. You feel like an accountant in a beautiful, empty museum, not a headmaster in a bustling institution. This is the ultimate artistic failure: a game about community that feels utterly devoid of life.

Reception & Legacy: A Modest Success with a Niche Future

Let’s School premiered to a “mixed or average” reception, holding a Metascore of 73 on PC and 68 on Switch on Metacritic, and a 66 on OpenCritic with only 47% of critics recommending it. The 6.9 MobyScore places it squarely in the middle of the pack.

Critical Consensus: Reviews are strikingly consistent in their praise and criticism:
* Praised For: Deep, challenging management systems; accessible building mechanics; substantial content (60+ hours); a unique Asian aesthetic; addictive “just one more week” gameplay loop; affordable price point.
* Criticized For: Soulless, transactional treatment of students; poor console controls (especially on Switch); frequent bugs and jank; repetitive mid-to-late game; opaque mechanics; failure to foster emotional connection.

The divide is essentially between those who value systemic depth above all (often PC players, as seen in the higher PC scores) and those who expect a sim to have heart and personality (where console ports stumbled). Gaming.net gave it an 8.5, lauding its “jam-packed sandbox,” while Nintendo Life delivered a 5/10, damning it as a “business simulator dressed up as a school simulator.”

Commercial Performance & Legacy: Exact sales figures are unavailable, but its presence on all major platforms and the release of two paid furniture DLC packs (Magical Castles and Water Towns) indicate Pathea and PM Studios see a viable audience. Its legacy is likely to be that of a cult favorite for hardcore management sim enthusiasts who prioritize systemic complexity over narrative flavor. It will be remembered as the game that dared to make school management brutally, unromantically complex—a “Bullfrog-lite” (as CGMagazine put it) with a distinct East Asian skin but without the whimsical genius of a Theme Hospital or Two Point Campus.

It has not significantly moved the genre forward. Instead, it occupies a niche between the accessible, joke-driven Two Point series and the brutally complex spreadsheets of a Prison Architect. Its influence will be in proving there is an appetite for a more serious, less cartoonish take on institutional management, perhaps paving the way for others to explore similar themes with more polish and heart.

Conclusion: The Grade is a Solid B-, But It’s an Empty A+

Let’s School is a paradox. It is a game whose mechanics I admire immensely for their audacious complexity and whose addictive “one more semester” loop kept me up late strategizing class schedules and battling rival schools. The feeling of stabilizing a chaotic campus, turning a deficit into a surplus, and watching your carefully planned timetable yield a 100% pass rate is a powerful simulation drug. In this respect, it is a resounding success—a deep, challenging, and fascinating management puzzle box.

Yet, as a school simulator, it fails its most important subject. It generates hundreds of unique students but gives me no reason to care about a single one. It simulates education as a cold transaction of inputs (teachers, facilities, time) and outputs (exam scores, tuition, reputation). The warmth, the mischief, the friendships, the small triumphs of learning—the very essence of why the school setting is so potent—are absent. The beautiful, nostalgic art style becomes ironic, decorating a corporation, not a community. The bugs, the clunky controls on non-PC platforms, and the repetitive endgame only exacerbate this feeling of emptiness.

Therefore, my definitive verdict is this: Buy Let’s School if you are a management sim connoisseur who thirsts for systemic depth and enjoys optimizing Byzantine schedules. You will find 80+ hours of engaging, brain-burning gameplay. Avoid it if you want the charming, character-driven experience of Two Point Campus or the life-sim warmth of Pathea’s own My Time at Portia. It is not that game. It is a colder, harder, more cynical simulation.

In video game history, Let’s School will not be remembered as a classic. It will be remembered as a significant, flawed, and fascinating case study—a game that proved you could build a compelling management sim around a school, but also starkly demonstrated that the “school” part is more than just a theme; it’s the soul. Without that soul, even the most brilliant spreadsheet is just a ledger. Let’s School has a brilliant ledger, but its halls are haunted only by ghosts of numbers, not children. It earns a passing grade for mechanics, but fails the final exam on heart.