[Note that I played the BBC port of this game, taken from the same BASIC listings] 'School of Death' was an old type-in listings game (remember those?!) from 1984, intended for the Oric-1, but it's BASIC code allowed it to be unofficially ported for the BBC. The plot involves you being sent back by your mum after school to collect treasures (...nothing odd about that!) and several puzzles you will have to complete whilst there.
It is an interesting setting (I've always been a sucker for text adventures that break away from the well-trodden paths.
The parser and vocabulary understanding are about as basic as you might expect from an old type-in listings adventure. It recognises most instructions and objects from the first two or three letters.
This itself can lead to a problem, as the game includes both a cassette tape, and a tape recorder, as items - and referring to either simply as.
Hard to fully gauge from an old magazine listing adventure, and one that is so buggy. But the game does have a very interesting setting, and a surprisingly large number of rooms, though most of which sadly serve little real purpose. With those many rooms, items, and signs that there might have been more to do there, I can't help but wonder/feel that this originally was intended as a far bigger game. As a result, the overall atmosphere has a bit of that old-school feel.
Scattered around the game are a couple sudden deaths, some of which maybe don't come as totally unexpected (such as when you try to help the old lady being beaten up by the thugs), others are literally more of the sudden death variety, such as when you go to pick up a (ultimately unnecessary) generator that zaps and kills you.
Some reasonable puzzles to be found (again, considering the type-in game nature of it), nothing that a little exploring and deduction won't eventually solve (though the school and it's corridors can be a little maze-like, so you might want to make or refer to a map). Though whilst there are undoubtedly a few red herring items, as mentioned above, a number of rooms and items included did hint at a bigger-planned game with puzzles that weren't implemented (items found in the cookery room suggesting you might have to make something, for example, and a boiler room that hints at a puzzle never implimented).
My overall score is pretty much down to the bugs within the game that, in some cases, can leave it impossible to finish (Another bug comes when falling from the top of a rope in the gymnasium, when restarting it screws the available directions up and needs a solid reboot).
Which is frustrating, as the setting is interesting and feels like it could have been much more. As mentioned, the many extraneous rooms and items strongly hint at a wider range of puzzles that were never implemented.
The original Oric-3 version is reportedly extremely bug-ridden, and I'm assuming these same bugs carried over to the BBC port (By the way, the only difference I have observed is that from the first screen, the BBC version has a chip shop that you can enter, which isn't present on the original, dunno where that sprang from).
Fun from a nostalgic old-school type-in adventure point of view, and the game is completable if you follow the correct moves, but being so bug ridden is at most a niche curiosity than anything particularly worth visiting... which is actually a bit of a shame.