[News] Pushing boundaries of what we are capable of...

If we did learn something in the past few years, it's the fact that we, as a team, are capable of making things bigger than your simple quick wank type of games. Not that there's anything wrong with those, we're just suffering from a severe case of "wanting to make something super amazing". And turns out, we very much can!

Upcoming story update is the first step towards this grandiose goal. 

Let's start from something eye-catchy, so you won't get bored of reading this too quickly.

What you see above is the new standard of quality we're setting for our game. And it applies to everything: Backgrounds, scenes, music, interface. Which also means we'd have to overhaul so much...

But that's the price we pay for starting to work on this game with little to no prior experience in the industry. On the bright side, this is also the beginning of our preparations for the full release. 

So, what exactly should you expect in this BIG update?

First and foremost, new story, but that goes without saying. It might not be the "yet another biggest narrative update", but nonetheless it's sizable enough. Any bigger, and our writer would be strangled by a programmer, since there's too much to do outside of just adding dialogues and scenes.

Then goes the real star of this update - new shop mechanic, and the Altar you see on the pictures is exactly that. From now on, that's your go-to place to get new skins and accessories to customize characters. How exactly does it work? Well, we know it might sound bad, but hear us out! It's... basically a loot box, or how EA loves to call it - a surprise mechanic. Obviously, no micro-transactions or anything like that, that's not even gonna be an option. All purchased with in-game currency you earn just by playing and exploring around the campus. Our reasoning behind this approach is the fact, that with a generic shop, people would most likely buy one or two things they find interesting and never touch it again, unless we populate the shop with more of the similar items to those they already picked. With randomized drops, you would have an incentive to actually check out things you got, since you already own them anyway. 

That being said, all of that is subject to change and we will adjust new shop according to our player's feedback. 

Apart from offering you skins and accessories to customize the look of characters, Altar will also be upgradable. Upgrades will raise the amount of special currency you get from using it, unlock new events around the campus, and also give you access to some special, secret spicy content. X-Ray is getting some love too. 

Still, that's not all. Another big change coming to in-game Gallery, focusing on design, features, and user's comfort. Gallery in its current state is rather barebones. It gets the job done, but otherwise it's poorly organized, has a lot of unutilized space, doesn't include any way to sort it, previews in many cases are rather unhelpful, etc. All of those points are getting addressed in the upcoming update, along with a big new feature, that we will be discussing next.

Customization. Not skins, a full on dress-up game. There's no way we will be able to release enough skins to satisfy everyone, so instead we're giving you the opportunity to craft the perfect look for the characters of your choice. For that you will be provided a full range of different options, starting from hair styles, piercing and makeup, all the way to full-body tattoos, unique clothing options and more. The list of available accessories and clothing will constantly expand, allowing you to experiment with the way characters look during scenes, and, in future, even in dialogues. Though the last one is kinda a long way ahead. 

As you can imagine, update of this scale might be a little too much for us to handle first try. It will have bugs for sure, prices in the new shop might be too high, as well as the cost of upgrading the Altar, customization will probably cause some issues in it's first iteration, etc. That's why, for the first time ever, we will have a proper testing phase. For the first few weeks the update will only be accessible to our testers ($10+ tiers), not because we are greedy, but because we don't want to release unfinished product, and working with a limited amount of testers is way easier. Decision of subscribing and downloading the work-in-progress build will be your own, and we want you to understand that all of those problems are to be expected. Still, we greatly appreciate the help of anyone who decides to join the testing phase, for not only will it help us to make sure the game is working as intended, but also support the development process, which has been getting more and more expensive for us in the recent months. 

All this is our first step towards making Academy34 into a proper game, that can offer at least a somewhat unique experience and variety of features that will justify all the time and effort we put into it, as well as the asking price for the full game once it's done.

We also want to clarify, that by "finishing" this game we don't mean fleshing it out and forgetting it exists. More like "being satisfied with the foundation, upon which we will expand as long as there are people interested in the project". We don't want to simply milk this game for the sake of it, we want to be proud with the end result.

Thank you for your continuous support!

Love,
Young & Naughty team.