Gaming Oddities: Skool Daze

School is hardly the most entertaining setting for a video game, especially considering that many children (a major demographic for gamers) are less than enthusiastic about going. Despite that, one game called Skool Daze set out to do what few other games tried to do at the time, making an admirable attempt, albeit not a complete success.

Skool Daze (yes, that is how the title is spelled), is a 1984 video game for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8 Bit and Oric Computers; I will mainly focus on the Spectrum version. It takes place in what seems to be a British all-boys school, and stars a student named Eric. Eric's goal is to steal his report card from the school safe(updated to a computer in later versions) and replace the grades on it without getting caught.

Doing that is easier said than done, however, since it involves completing the following steps.

1. Hit all the shields around the school with Eric's "catapult" (i.e. slingshot). This process most often involves knocking teachers to the ground with the slingshot and bouncing a projectile off their heads, so it turns 90 degrees upward and hits the shield above them.
2. Hit each of the teachers with your slingshot to get them to give their digit to the combination. In Mr. Creak's case, you must write the year of his birth on the blackboard, a date that changes in every game. For example, it might be the Battle of Lexington, which would make Mr. Creak almost 210 years old as of the game's release date.
3. Write the safe combination on the board. There are four digits and the headmaster's digit always comes first, so there are six possible combinations  (1234, 1243, 1324, 1342, 1423, 1432).
4. Retrieve the keycard from the safe.
5. Repeat Step 1 again, this time to turn the shields off and cover up your tracks.

As you can see, Step 1 comes off as overly complicated and tedious, and to make matters worse, it's repeated as Step 5, so they comprise the majority of the game.

The goal becomes even more difficult when you consider that you have to follow the rules.

• Report to all classes and stay seated for the entire lesson.
• Don't jump up in the air.
• Don't sit on the floor. The teachers don't care if someone else knocked you to the ground.
• Don't hit anyone or fire your slingshots.
• Don't get caught writing on the boards (which, as stated above, is required for Steps 2 and 3).
• Occasionally, randomly occurring events, like Einstein threatening to tattle on you, may result in you getting lines. Unfortunately, unless I am mistaken, there's no reward for successfully clearing these.

Getting caught violating any of these rules will result in you getting a few hundred "lines"- as in writing "I will not (break this rule)" on the blackboard. In the case of cutting class you'll be penalized the first time the teacher catches you, and every few seconds until you get to where you're supposed to be and take a seat. If you get 10,000 lines, you will be sent home to write them, at which point the game will end. The game will also end if you catch mumps in another randomly occurring event. Technically speaking, the game only ends when a teacher walks up to you to send you home, but once you reach 10,000 lines,  you can't do much to delay the inevitable.

The line system is a novel one, but there are a few problems with it. The first is that the game can be rather unforgiving, even more so than a regular school. Some classes may not have enough seats for all the students, resulting in an almost Musical Chairs-esque scenario in which one student is forced to stand(a real teacher would notice the problem and arrange for another chair to be brought in). There is also no way to remove any lines, even by writing on the blackboards; most other games with health systems recognize that players will inevitably take damage and give them health powerups to keep them in the game. Lastly, as I mentioned before, there seem to be no benefits to successfully completing the randomly occurring events, which makes them all risk and no reward.

As you can imagine, completing Skool Daze is a difficult and somewhat tedious process, but it can be fun to play around. You can go around writing various things on the blackboards, shooting teachers and classmates with your slingshot, and causing all sorts of mischief. Alternatively, you can diligently attend class and see how long you last.

The school itself is a surprisingly realistic one for a game of its time. Students follow their daily schedules, heading to class, lunch and other destinations around the school, while teachers teach their classes and enforce the rules. Strangely enough, most of the periods seem to be entirely random, and it's possible to go through multiple lunches or playtimes in a single session without going home at any point.

In conclusion, Skool Daze was a bit ahead of its time, since games hadn't yet evolved enough to allow for a comprehensive school simulation. Despite that, it's worth a play, but again, I recommend playing around over seriously trying to complete the game.