Thank you!!
Thank you so much to everyone who's supported this silly little endeavor so far!
It's hard to believe it's been 1 year since I've made the Steam page for THE TENNIS ACADEMY. The game has made SO much progress since then. I'm working on an extensive devlog video for you all to document all of these changes, but it's easy to say the game has majorly evolved in the past year.
As of today, the game has 365 Wishlists! I'm quite happy with that number in the first year, because the game is still in such an early state, so I think it's a good sign that it's able to build a small foundation way before it's ready for any serious marketing. Thank you to all of my friends/family who have supported the game, the discord fam, and anyone who's seen the game online and decided to wishlist. I really appreciate it!
It's not an easy feat by any means to solo-develop a large scale RPG. I definitely wouldn't advise anyone to try doing it as your full-time job unless you've got some serious sugar daddy bucks. Luckily I've gotten settled into a full time job that is pretty stable (assuming our federal government doesn't destroy all of our funding teehee) and I'm able to dedicate a lot of my free time to The Tennis Academy as a hobby.
Some Updates
I've been working pretty hard on the game for 6 straight months since October, and it's come a long way. I'll talk more in detail in the devlog video, but we've got so many features done, menus functional, matches are in a good place, and RPG elements are working. I've done so much that I need a little break from going full steam ahead!
So I've taken a break from the grind of gameplay systems recently and I've been having fun just making art. The cover art for this page is a scene between Nate and Servie that might happen in-game. Here's a couple of other artsy things I worked on this month:
I've been having a fun time decorating the overworld. This 2D street scene has a parallax cloud effect that turned out pretty nice.
The Player Dorm got a makeover, and now has some pretty drastic lighting differences depending on the time of day! I'm going to spend a lot of hours here browsing memes...
What's next?
I'll have more to update in the devlog video, but my goal for this year is to get to the Production Point for this game. What's that? It's the moment when all of the game's systems are coded, and I can switch to mainly creating Content. I'm a lot closer to this goal than I've ever been! The systems that still need coded are:
- Shopping (Halfway done)
- Items - Consumables, gifts, and room decorations
- Courses (Halfway done)
- Romance & Doubles Partner passive bonuses
- Stats in-match such as Speed, Power, etc (Halfway done)
- Menus - Stats, Tenergy, Calendar
- Dialogue - Log, Skip, VFX/Emotes/Text Effects
this is such a small list compared to when I started! I feel really confident in my ability to get everything done.
Working on the game has been a nice distraction from... The Horrors lol. Remember to focus your energy not on the Horrors but on the Joys! I hope you all have a very nice day - if you want to stay up to date on the game, you can:
- Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/76chERbdzR
- Subscribe on Youtube and look out for the Devlog: https://www.youtube.com/@tennisacadrpg
- Wishlist if you haven't, and tell a friend to wishlist :)
Alright, bye!