'No Pineapple Left Behind' skewers the American education system
As Rockstar Games' Bully proved, grade school makes for a pretty interesting (if painfully underused) setting for video games, which is why I'm intrigued by No PIneapple Left Behind. In it, you're a principal lording over pineapples, making sure they do amazingly well on standardized tests because that's what begets more funding for your school. Problem is, a number of factors run the risk of turning your pineapples back into children -- and you can't have that because pineapples excel at taking tests and things like rote memorization rather than actually learning.
The inherent problem with children is that they're human and have distractions or interests besides school, and what's more, they're a risk at transforming the rest of the pineapples into kids like them. In case you couldn't tell, the game's jabbing pretty hard at the No Child Left Behind Act signed into law in 2002 that ties school funding to test scores. It's in a closed alpha stage right now (read: very early), with an open alpha hopefully happening this spring, according to Motherboard. Oh, and the game's actually the product of a teacher. Makes a lot more sense now, doesn't it?
