My Time at Portia devs’ management sim Let’s School has a demo and release date
School’s in for the summer.
Let’s School, the whimsical headteacher sim from My Time at Portia devs Pathea, will be out next month.
The school sim - which effectively blends the charming, colourful style of Portia and upcoming sequel My Time at Sandrock with the bird’s-eye view of something like Two Point Campus - sticks players in the shoes of a principal needing to manage their former academic institution and revamp the rundown school.
That includes constructing school buildings - from classrooms to cafeterias - and renovating the school grounds, managing school clubs and extracurricular activities, and deciding what your curriculum looks like. Pathea mentions that you’ll eventually be able to build “wonders”, Civ-style, so use your imagination as to what that looks like in a school setting.
You’ll even be able to decide things like punishment, offering students a laidback education or maintaining a tighter grip - with the ability to send teachers hunting for truant students or the need to crack down on prohibited items snuck into school. How you treat students will have an effect on their mood and performance though, determining their future life path - if you felt like having an existential crisis about your own time at school today.
You can also design the school’s uniform, among an apparent host of customisation options and passive effects as the result of your choices - such as kids wearing glasses, gaining weight or going to the bathroom in unexpected places.
Let’s School apparently started as a prototype by a single member of the Pathea team, before catching the attention of the rest of the studio and resulting in several of the Portia devs moving over to see the passion project to a full release.
If that’s whet your appetite for a bit of school management, Let’s School has a demo as part of Steam Next Fest you can go and grab now. Progress from the demo will carry over to the complete game when it releases on July 27th - just in time for the school holidays.