No Pineapple Left Behind

I'll start by saying that I work in K12. So this game hits pretty close to home for me. But personal feelings aside, the game is a pretty scathing critique of the American Education Industry. Anyone who has gone to an American Public School since No Child Left Behind should give this game a glance. I'm not really one for management-style games. But I found this one to be pretty engaging. I kind of dreaded each next school, and what wicked thing I was going to have to do to move up the chain: Firing Teachers because I've suddenly decided I'm paying them too much? Turning complex and interesting humans into dumb pineapples to take tests and churn out that sweet sweet profit? Nothing was off limits to keep my "students" Achieving! It awoke a kind of carnal hunger. "You're not resting well Miss Mendoza? FIRED. You're out sick today Mr. So-and-so? FIRED. Didn't create enough pineapples Ms. Whatever? Hit the road." I rewarded bad behavior. I stunted growth. It was sickening. Everything was Zero Tolerance. I supposed if I had a critique, it would be that I'm not crazy about all of the clicking. But that's with every Management Sim, which I said earlier I'm usually not crazy about. Always so 'clicky.'

The most recent game from an openly lefty studio--whichever way that might influence you. It's critique is somewhat basic, but sound. Teachers have limited energy; energy spent helping individual students is less energy they have to teach well and produce good grades. Less good grades means less funding for you. Therefore, turning your charges into mindless fruit is objectively good. It makes it easy to see just how easy it is to forget the human aspect of things when your are so driven to just focus on the numbers. Things that are not easily quantifiable are not important. As for the gameplay, it is essentially a puzzle game rather than a simulator. You will spend time guessing and testing different approaches for different levels until you figure out the right key. You'll be tight on money, time, or grades and you'll need to hit upon just the right thing to do in order to complete the level. (Should I train my teachers up, fire them each round, spend experience on new lessons or new abilities, etc.) It's more Sudoku than SimCity. Therefore I think only those who enjoy puzzle games will find it fun. For the rest of us it is something more than fun, it is important.

I'm just writing a review based off of youtube alone. Honestly really, I didn't need to buy this game because I already understood what I believe the message is. I think this game is great based off the the gameplay I watched because I didn't really have an excellent experience in school. I have always, and will always be interested in learning things that I am passionate about. School tends to be remembered as the type of place you go to learn, but unfortunately does not end up being what it is supposed to be. Instead of learning anything way too useful beyond basic math and reading and writing, it becomes an exercise in tedium, basically you are forced to memorize useless facts that you will forget in a very short amount of time, facts that have no cohesiveness and no strong inter-relation with each other, and then repeat and parrot those facts as answers to a test. More time is spent testing than time spent teaching and learning, and the teachers are not even allowed to teach. They are given a packet, and if they deviate from the packet, they can get in trouble. Students are (and I believe this is the message of this game if I am not mistaken) molded into soulless drones, incapable of critical thought or any form of ability to think freely. Children, our next generation seem to be trained by schools to learn to hate the idea of learning, so that they are forever psychologically injured for the rest of their lives, and with the next generation mentally poisoned, our future poisoned as well. To me, in my personal opinion, this game has NO POLITICAL BIAS in any direction in ANY WAY. The message appears to be very plain and simple: Humans are doing school all wrong, and our kids are paying the price. This game, even just from watching gameplay, DEEPLY touched my heart. It is a somewhat funny game, but the jokes hit a deeper more true note in my opinion. This game and what it talks about are something that I feel everyone should try to understand the profundity of.

Not worth your time. Do not waste your money.