Schoolhouse

School House is an excellent edutainment title whose concept was very innovative for its time. Although there are over 30 mini-games spanning a wide range of subjects, they all use the same gameplay set-up: two players compete to fill in the blank table with items on their lists that match the given criteria.

To give some examples to make this clearer: in one arithmetic game, you are given a list of equations with one unknown variable you must solve (e.g. X+2=4). Your goal is to type the equations in the order of X’s magnitude, from lowest to highest. So in this case if 2 is the lowest number among all equation answers, you would have to write “X+2=4” to remove it from your list. Then it’s the other player’s turn to type something from his/her list. You would then proceed with writing the next equation whose answer is the next smallest number, and so on until your list is empty. The other player (human or computer) has his/her own list to take care of. The first player to clear the list is the winner.

The ingenuity of School House is that this basic gameplay is applied to a whole range of subjects, from math to history to science. The only thing different is that the criteria is modified to fit each subject matter. For example, in “inventions” game you must type the names of inventions on your list in the order of oldest to newest. The game even has multiple difficulty levels in the form of 3 different opponents, some of whom will make more mistakes than others (therefore giving you more room for mistakes).

School House is a fun program that will keep both kids and adults entertained with its innovative gameplay, with the added bonus of honing typing skills. Lack of graphics is just about the only downside for this excellent underdog. Two thumbs up, way up!

Review By HOTUD