The game includes one entire school year (the developers are currently working on a sequel with the second year), but it doesn't give any concrete goals beyond “pass all your classes”, so the player is free to do pretty much whatever they want. The fun of Academagia comes from a combination of exploring role-playing options and interacting with the world, learning how to navigate all the systems to accomplish whatever goals the player sets for themselves.

There are a huge number of skills (over 300!), and training them up will often unlock new actions. By the end of the game they can have dozens of choices of how to spend every time slot. They can train their familiar, study illegal magic, go shopping, befriend (or bully) other students, cast spells, go on adventures, explore the school grounds and town, and more.

The writing and the freedom players have is the strong point here. One of my favourite adventures involved improving the school's terrible cafeteria food. My character burgled prize recipes, incited a riot in the cafeteria, blackmailed the head chef, put on a fancy dinner party for the school faculty, and finally managed to get a new menu implemented. At the end I was feeling a genuine sense of accomplishment.

Academagia does have some flaws – since it was put together by a fairly small team, they didn't have the resources to make sure all the different systems were balanced and useful. For example, shopping for items is a pain since characters can only visit a single store per action, rather than being able to browse among all the stores at once.

However, if you can look past or work through some imbalances in the gameplay, you'll be rewarded with an immensely rich, expansive game and the ability to guide your young wizard from a novice to an expert magician.