Hey everyone, we’re super excited to announce that we’re releasing Academia : School Simulator Alpha 2! We’ve made quite a few updates to the game since we launched Early Access, and we feel like we’ve hit a milestone point in the development of the game. But first, here’s what we’ve been working on since the last update:
Subject Departments
Previously, teachers were assigned to a single class and taught all of the subjects. This was always meant to be temporary, and with this update you can assign teachers to a specific department that best suits them, and they will travel from class to class to teach. Teachers can now also be assigned to teach through all year levels, or stick to just teaching on year level, giving you more control.
Scheduling
Scheduling has been a major request since launch, and we’re happy to finally share it with you. Scheduling was more difficult than we had anticipated, and we had to make some hard design decisions about what made sense for the game. We didn’t want scheduling to be a chore, so a lot of it has been automated to give you the best scheduling outcome.
However schedule customization is obviously important, so you now have the ability to control when each year level takes its breaks (lunch and recess). This way you can be more efficient about the use of your kitchens and canteens. You can also control how often teachers will shift between subjects, so you have control over how often teachers teach and take breaks.
Trash management
Trash used to never be a problem. Your one trash dumpster could absorb an infinite amount of trash bags before needing to be emptied out come trash time. This was never intentional, so now we’ve made it so that trash dumpsters only accept a limited amount of trash bags. Keep an eye out on your garbage area, because if you don’t you may end up with a huge trash problem!
New UI
We’ve made a major overhaul to our UI. Player experience with our previous UI was not the best, and we believe this updated UI is much better, with less strain on the eyes.
Added Sound Effects
We want the game to be as immersive as possible, and adding ambient sound effects helps with that. Scroll over classrooms to hear student chatter and toilets to hear them flush. Some objects now also have sound effects as well, click on them to see what they sound like!
Adjusted Teacher Subject Knowledge
We’ve changed the balance of the teachers so that they are much more specialized in one subject that they used to be, meaning you have to be more careful when picking out your teachers.
New Title Screen
It’s surprising what such a small change can make. Everytime I see our new title screen it makes me smile, and I hope you all share the feeling!
Customized School Settings
We updated our custom logo screen to make it more understandable, and have added the first of many customizeable school settings so that you can tweak the game to suit your playstyle. Choose from a coed, all girls school or all boys school. Decide how much money to start with. Do you want your students to be devils or saints? How often do you want to cope with sick students? It’s all up to you!
Now out for Mac!
We’ve gotten numerous requests for a Mac version, and it’s finally here! Fingers crossed there aren’t too many bugs!
Mass Cancel
A quality of life request that has been in our ears since launch! We're sorry it took so long, but you can now right click and drag to cancel a whole bunch of unbuilt stuff.
Cloud Saves
It’s one of those things that doesn’t seem important (until it is). We now have cloud saving so you can switch from playing the game on your desktop to your laptop anytime.
Art Room
We've added a new zone called the art room! students will use the art room in their free time for now, but eventually hey will start using it during their art classes. Our next zone will likely by the science lab,m so stay tuned for that!
Numerous Balance Changes and Bug Fixes
Game development is a never ending battle against bugs and balancing, especially in Early Access! This update has been trickier than the previous one because of all the changes that we’ve made.
That’s it for this update, but for those who have been holding off since we launched the game, Here are some of the major additions since launch:
Student Delinquency – students now exhibit a range of bad behaviors including bullying and rowdiness in class.
School Monitors – catches delinquent students
Guidance Counselors – counsel delinquent students
Principal – Disciplines delinquent students and sends them to detention or counseling
Detention Room – Delinquent students go to detention after class
New Walls, Floors, and Decorative items
New School Seal icons
Faculty Lounge – Teachers now have a place to chill and drink coffee
Prestige and School Ranking – can you make it to number 1 in the school rankings?
Zone Merging – make your zones any shape you want!
Janitor and Monitor Routing – Lay down routes to make your staff more efficient
IMPORTANT
This is a major update so your old save WILL NOT WORK. If you still want to play your old save you can use the outdated branch.
To access the Outdated Branch :
1) Go to your game library and right click on Academia School Simulator
2) In the pop up window, find and click on Properties.
3) In the properties window, click on the Betas Tab
4) Under Enter beta access code to unlock private betas type :
academiaoutdated
5) Click on "check code"
6) Under "Select the beta you would like to opt into" click on the dropdown
menu and click on "outdated"
7) You should now have access to the outdated build