Professor Simulator

Professor Simulator is an idle game that runs quietly in the corner of your screen while you work, study, conduct experiments or write papers. You play as a young lecturer starting with a small lab, recruiting students, leading research and publishing papers as you climb the academic ranks.

Recruit and manage students

You interview master’s and PhD students and choose who joins your team. Students have different abilities, personalities and growth potential: some are gifted, some are hardworking, and some may be looking for a chance to slack off. As your rank rises, your lab expands and you can recruit more students.

You can check each student’s condition, ability growth, stress and relationships, then motivate them, improve their research abilities, train them or assign tasks. Students sometimes slack off, so regular check-ins can reduce how often they take it easy. If a student produces little or no research for a long time, you can deny their graduation.

Lead research

You guide students through projects that build innovation, workload and writing quality. When the results are ready, you write papers and submit them to journals. Higher-quality work has a greater chance of acceptance by a high-impact journal, but submission outcomes remain unpredictable. Revisions, rejections and publications all contribute to your academic influence.

Develop your lab

You can buy and upgrade equipment to improve research efficiency. Instruments, everyday facilities and decorations affect research outputs such as innovation, workload and writing quality. Entertainment and daily-life facilities can help relieve students’ stress and keep their depression index from rising too high.

As an advisor, you can also set lab rules. In the full version, these include stipend levels, authorship rules and graduation requirements, letting you make the lab more lenient or strict. You can also decide whether office romance is allowed.

Advance your career

There are 9 advisor ranks, beginning with lecturer and including associate professor, professor and higher levels of academic leadership. Promotion expands your lab, student capacity and available projects. You can also earn honorary titles by meeting different conditions, including for producing papers, cultivating students, attending conferences or delaying graduation.

Conferences and other opportunities

You can take students to academic conferences, where communication and presentations can improve research abilities. Conferences may offer growth opportunities, networking gains and special rewards. You can attend with a paper, bring students or go to broaden your horizons.

A mysterious wandering merchant sometimes visits the lab with goods such as research equipment, daily supplies, special projects, outsourcing opportunities, recipes and strange apps. After completing the required research projects, you can unlock joint training, exchanging students with other advisors so they can continue their development in another lab. In the full version, you can also recall graduated master’s students to take part in research again.

Run in the background

Professor Simulator can be minimized to the bottom-right corner of your screen, where it takes up little space. You do not need to keep watching it; your students may publish a paper while you are away, or start slacking off again.