Pocket Academy App Review – Kairosoft + A School = Brilliant!

If you haven’t heard of Kairosoft by now, you’re either really ignorant and uninformed, or you just got an iPod Touch or iPhone yesterday. Either way, if you haven’t, you’re just downright crazy! For those that don’t know, Kairosoft is the king of simulation games with hits such as Game Dev Story, Hot Springs Story and most recently onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-academy/id432080204?mt=8');" target="_blank" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-academy/id432080204?mt=8">Pocket Academy.

This time around, you’ll be managing a school in an attempt to build up its name and have the most prosperous numbers against other schools. Whether it be in the quality of your teachers, the amount of students or how well your various clubs do in competitions, the overall goal in the 11 year game span is to make the most out of your funds and build yourself up from “unknown” to “very well known”.

You’ll start off with two students, one boy and one girl. As time passes, more will join the school depending on how well you appeal to different types of students (jock, nerd, etc.).href="http://www.iphonealley.com/application_reviews/pocket-academy-app-review-kairosoft-a-school-brilliant/attachment/pocket-academy2" rel="attachment wp-att-20331">src="http://www.iphonealley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/pocket-academy2-208x300.jpg" alt="" title="pocket academy2" width="208" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20331" /> Students will join the school as transfer students or as totally new students when the time comes around, and it’s your ultimate job to get them through their three years at your school and into their dream jobs.

The experience is truly very realistic, which is what everyone loves about Kairosoft. You’ll be posed with hiring and leveling up your teachers and managing your funds correctly. Through the various ways to get money, you’ll keep on collecting and must then decide on what to spend that money on. For the first couple of years, getting your school on track is pretty difficult – you’ll keep on going into bankruptcy (negative money) because of the initial unbalanced ratio of teacher’s salaries to student’s tuition payments, which could lead to insufficient facilities and such. However, after that hard period of time the game gets more forgiving and you’ll soon your money will be rocketing upwards.

That’s the bad thing, though. Kairosoft hasn’t included enough to do with that money. The overall amount of things you can do are lacking. Currently, I’m approaching $200,000 with nothing to spend the money on or invest in; the game just gets too easy after some time. But it’s a great time waster for the first few hours!

In terms of variation, though, the game does an awesome job with keeping things fresh. Along with the tons of unique, pixel-ly rendered character sprites, there are always constantly popping up variables and the soundtrack barely gets annoying.

The weekend’s approaching, so if you’re looking for something to keep you occupied for a few hours, a short fling, check out onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-academy/id432080204?mt=8');" target="_blank" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-academy/id432080204?mt=8">Pocket Academy. $3.99 is relatively steep for a game that only stays fresh for a little, but while it lasts it’s great!

onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUXL2asK72s');" target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUXL2asK72s">Video Via the Game Trail:/> width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HUXL2asK72s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>