Grade: A
Real-time strategy sim set in the horrifying universe of public education.
“No Pineapple Left Behind” is a dark satire based around the public education system in the US. The game sets you up as the all-powerful principle of a school. You get the pleasure of personally directing all the school’s affairs. As the principal, you hire the teachers, the assistant principal, set the curriculum, and manage the school throughout the week. At the end of each week, you try and meet the goals laid out. As you go through the game, there are several missions to tackle.
Well, how does this school management work?
Funding for public education is based on performance, which you learn as you manage the school. The better your student’s grades, the more funding you get from the government. If you run out of money, then the school fails, and you lose your job. Ultimately, keeping money in the school’s bank account is the game’s end goal.
In addition to money management, these annoying things are running around your school. They’re called “Students,” and they have these annoying and complicated emotional needs. For example, a kid can get bullied and gain the “teased” condition, which stops their learning. Or, maybe they want to have relationships with other students and make friends. They might even want to use the bathroom (how dare they!).
All of these individualized needs take the classrooms away from memorizing and test practice. Memorizing has the best chance of raising those standardized scores, which is the ultimate goal. Higher scores give you more money, which allows you to stay open and not go bankrupt and pay your teachers. “No Pineapples Left Behind” has a wonderfully elegant solution for the difficulty of modern education. If you dehumanize the children enough through various tactics and tricks in the curriculum, then you can turn these students from children into pineapples.
Pineapples, which have serial numbers and not names, are the perfect students. They are incredible learning machines, have no emotional needs, and are excellent test-takers. Awesome!
“No Pineapple Left Behind” hits you smack in the face with its message. It is not subtle.
Gameplay strategies
Beyond the satire, you will likely find yourself stuck a few times in this game. I’ve compiled a list of a few strategies to help players get through the levels.
- Have the assistant principle stand outside the bathroom and yell at the kids with their mind control lasers and not let them dawdle. Let “No SH%*S for you!” ring out across your schoolgrounds!
- Fire the assistant principle at the end of each day before you pay them and hire a new one the next morning. This saves you a chunk of change every day!
- Put on videos whenever the teacher’s energy is low. That way, you can pay them less. Paying teachers a salary that fully replenishes their energy is way too expensive!
- Liberally use the de-humanizing rays to solve emotional issues. Turn everyone into a pineapple that you can.
A story from the trenches
“No Pineapple Left Behind” will throw a lot of curveballs your way, but this one embodied the satire in the game. On one level, we were trying desperately to keep our student David Robinson from getting bullied. This anti-bullying crusade was core to our mission goals. To help out David, we had to monitor him carefully and employ the expensive anti-bullying lasers constantly. Beyond the expense, it also took a lot of energy from the teachers, so it was double-expensive!
It is unfortunate but realistic that if a kid gets teased by one person, they are more likely to get bullied by others. This group pile-on dynamic made its way into the game. When our poor David Robinson receives the “teased” condition, you start down a slippery slope, and almost immediately, everyone is teasing them.
David successfully made it through the first two school days after constant watchful micromanagement by our heroic principal, but what a bother! Enough was enough. We switched to the alternative strategy of focusing our dehumanization efforts on David Robinson. Soon, little David became a pineapple. Pineapples don’t care if they are teased, and the transformation replaced David Robinson’s name with his pineapple serial number. Problem solved!
Almost any resource challenge in this game can be solved by dehumanizing the students. Minimizing children and maximizing pineapples make all of the other resource balancing problems manageable. Again, not subtle!
Wrap-up impressions
All in all, “No Pineapples Left Behind” was an excellent satire. There was no way to “win” the game by balancing things out and still keeping the kids as kids. That was the point. The education system is rigged, is focused on the wrong things, and the game designer posits that our current education system cares more about test scores than developing individuals.
Whether or not the education system is broken in real life, that’s up for debate. However, what is certain is that “No Pineapple Left Behind” presents the issue in a new and unique way. My kudos to the game designer, Seth Altern (a former teacher), for the memorable experience.
Want to see more? Explore all itch.io bundle for racial equality and justice game reviews.