Hello Scholars,
Aren’t these Academia Challenge coins cool? Well I certainly think so. But we’ll talk more about those later.
We’re currently busy fighting a horde of bugs and making last minute improvements to Academia : School Simulator for our version 1 launch. Academia will have its version 1 launch on January 28. This means we will have been at work on Academia for 4 years at this point. Especially given the crazy year that 2020 was, this feels like a lifetime. To see how the game has grown since over the years, check out these videos:
New Game Devlog Pre-Alpha 1 Feb 13, 2017
Academia : School Simulator Dev Blog 6 Sep 1, 2017
Academia : School Simulator Dev Blog 9 Mar 9, 2018
Academia : School Simulator Dev Blog 13 (Alpha 3 Release) Jun 14, 2019
Academia : School Simulator Dev Blog 14 (Alpha 4 Release) May 7, 2020
We hope you enjoyed that little trip down memory lane, but now it’s time to discuss what’s next.
What’s Next?
As mentioned before, the Version 1 update will be coming with new Events, Scenarios, Achievements, and Grants to keep you all occupied and entertained.
We are also planning on adding localizations for many languages so that more people can enjoy playing the game.
However, the launch of Version 1 does mean the end of any major updates to the game. That means any suggestion made from this point on will likely not make it into Version 1. We will mostly be focused on more bugfixing and UI updates to improve the game experience. We may also add some visual updates. We also hope to add additional modding options so that folks can make more and better additions to the game.
This is a tough call, but we had to make a decision on when to stop developing the game, and ultimately the team decided this was a good stopping point.
We may add on to the game via DLC, but that will probably not come anytime soon. We’re also hoping to do a console port. We know that some of you will be disappointed with this news, but we hope that the 4 years of hard work our small team has put into the game will entertain you for many more hours to come.
What about Those Coins?
Glad you asked. I had those limited edition Challenge coins made to commemorate the Early Access launch of Academia : School Simulator. Challenge coins are a cool way to commemorate things that can’t be touched like digital games, and these coins have made their way into the hands of our game developer friends as a way to thank them for their support and friendship.
And now we’d love to share them with some of our players. We won’t be able to see you at conventions anymore, but we can still mail these coins out to you! We’ll be mailing 20 of these coins to our players, free of charge, as a thank you for all the support for the past four years.
If you’re interested in getting a coin, simply fill up this google form. Contest lasts until the game launches, and we will be getting in touch with the 20 winners individually.