While it may seem like sometimes I can have a little fun ripping horrible games a new one, it’s a slim reward for feeling every excruciating minute wasted on them while looking at the clock and trying to determine when you can finally pronounce them DOA. I’ll wholly admit that the sometimes very unusual work sim subgenre tends to be one of my consistent targets, but being honest I’d argue that has less to do with any bias I have and more with it being a target-rich environment. This latest entrant to the arena really takes the cake though for being mind-bogglingly horrible. It may not be the most broken game that I’ve played in this space, but it is definitely the most stunningly deficient.

While I would normally try to open with things that the game does well, in this case I’ll admit it’s a struggle to come up with anything. Given that it’s a high school simulator, I suppose I can credit it for having a building, various classrooms, and a smattering of students milling about and engaging in activities or talking with one another. As the tag for the review notes though, as a human being who long ago attended a high school, and even worked as a chaperone for years with my daughter and her fellow band members while she was in high school, so much of the things they do say just struck me as completely bizarre. Throw in voice delivery that’s as laughably bad as most of the dialogue, and you’re consistently reminded of the mess you’re witnessing.

I suppose I could complain that those aspects of the game took me out of the experience, but it honestly may have been doing me a favor since so many other elements were so distractingly ill-conceived and implemented. The dual stick controls are needlessly awkward and touchy, making simple tasks like going to a doorway and walking down the hall more difficult than they ever should be. Needing to regularly switch between the joysticks and the D-Pad to complete tasks without being given any direction at all quickly got to be annoying as well, often making even the simplest of tasks aggravating. Vague and incomplete objectives often lead to time wasted. You’ll hear dialogue not just from rooms you aren’t in but on different floors as well, and then to top it off even with low-quality geometry and assets there are still rampant issues with pop-in and other visual anomalies. This simply shouldn’t be available in the eShop in this state and should be avoided.