I was incredibly naive when I used to believe that just $1,000 would be enough for our entire team to fully devote their time to the development of Academy34. HA! Sure, we were able to spend more time on the game, but that was not nearly enough. Maybe $1,000 spread out over our team might’ve sufficed if everyone moved in with their parents and followed a strict diet. You get the idea.

The moral of the story is — making games requires a lot of time and money. Even if it's just a visual novel.

So now, while writing our future goals, I will try to be more realistic, and most importantly – honest.

We are very serious about the development of not the most serious game. We love our work, and therefore we try to give it as much of ourselves as possible. We want to be proud of the result. And we have a lot of ideas on how to achieve these results. But first…

We demand a helicopter and $5 million in cash.

Too much? Sigh. Then $5,000 will do.

Jokes aside, this money would be enough to pay a fair wage for the work of all our existing team members, hosting our website, software licenses, translation services and even a little food money for our moderator. At the same time, we should be able to maintain regular (ideally monthly) updates. So yeah, this is our next goal. It doesn’t have a reward, but after reaching this mark, we (and you) can rest assured that the development of the game will continue steadily.

Unfortunately, even that amount of money won’t be enough to offer our entire team a full-time job, but we will certainly be able afford to take additional days off of our day jobs to work on the game. And this is already huge progress!

Enough of this boring stuff, let’s talk about content! Obviously, since we only need $5,000 to maintain the project, all the excess money will be spent on its improvement. We will be able to further expand our team, which means that updates will be packed to the brim with content. The scenes will become animated. The art quality will increase. Maybe even... drum roll... background music will be added! But all that does cost money. Damn you, capitalism!

One of the biggest problems in our game right now: The lack of that hot, juicy, desired adult content until all the updates for the selected character are finally released. That’s because we put a lot of emphasis on the story and the believability of the characters. Well, as much as that’s possible in a game of this genre. That’s why our heroes don’t jump into your bed the moment they meet you. First you have to build a relationship with them, listen to their story... and all that. This is how every route goes. And it’s actually happening right now. Mei has already received two updates, but there are still no full-fledged scenes with her. It's unforgivable!

So to fix this, once we hit the $7,500 goal, we will expand our team enough to be able to work on two storylines at once. And while the story of one character is just beginning to develop, someone else will already be extremely interested in what you hide under these pants of yours. Thus, the flow of scenes will always be stable and you will no longer have to deal with the frustration of bringing a fresh pack of napkins into the room in vain.

But still, you can’t surprise anyone with static pictures. Therefore, after $10,000, we will go full cinematic! Or at least animation. To be honest, ten grand is a very modest figure in order to afford an experienced animator. No, we, of course, can train our existing artists, but ... you don't want to wait so long. It would be more realistic to say that we need $12,000, but I’m full of optimism. You can take a screenshot of this part of the text, because I will definitely regret saying all that.

Also, at that point, we’ll begin to seriously consider a new type of employment for our key team members. I mean a full-time job. Yes, as it turns out, we need about ten times more money than what we fantasized two years ago. That’s brutal.

This goal is not our last, but we are not yet ready to look so far into the future. Though I would like to believe that all of this will come much earlier than we think, and soon we will be able to discuss what other game universes need an nsfw adaptations.

Thank you for coming to our TED talk. Stay tuned for more news this week!