Hey... It's been a while! Haha... 😳I know I'm not a big fan of when a VN goes a long time without communication so I thought I'd just come here and give y'all some of my thoughts and plans for Aurum Academy!

So first things first; Woo chile making a whole game is a lot harder than I anticipated. In the beginning I tried to kind of rush it thinking, y'know, I can just learn as I go along! But... yeah, still don't know how to code nothin', still in the process of writing the script and figuring out how to get from the beginning to the planned endings, and still not really that confident in my artistic ability to fully commit to anything design-wise.

All that being said it's still really fun and exciting to see something I made and characters that I came up with just existing... I really want to continue this game and even spin-offs (I'M AN IDEA PERSON DON'T JUDGE ME) but even with the simplified choice-less route thing going on it's still kind of outside of the scope of someone with no experience trying to do it alone..

TLDR; We out here strugglin', but Aurum will still be getting updated! Just... Idk don't expect very often. I'm thinking about testing the waters with a much smaller VN to get a feel for whatever the fuck I'm doin' before going full on into Aurum lol

Actual Progress

Currently in the process of trying to give the beginning of the story a little more intrigue and a little better world building because... Do y'all even know what the Ancients are? That's a pretty important thing and I ain't told nobody about them... So yeah next update will probably be a fresh play-through moment.

Also currently redesigning some of the characters to make them more visually interesting! The characters don't really look their age currently and that's mostly because 1) I ain't that good at drawing and 2) These were mostly intended simply to be a base that I could design outfits over; a reference image, if you will.  Buuut making fully animated sprites for every single character would be a pain in the ass so I think they'll probably be staying except for CGs and in 1-on-1 convos like with Mateo in the garden on Day 3. I'm also going to try and downsize on the overall cast if possible (some of the teachers and maybe a couple students, as much as I love all of them 😭)

Speaking of redesigns here's the new ones for Aspin, Timon, and Sibonelo! (Subject to change! More will probably go up on twitter or deviantart later)

Overall I want them to look their age and make them more visually interesting... I still need to get better at little detailings

As for the world of Aurum itself... well, I've been pretty much developing it since 2017 in my mind with a couple of the main characters dating back a bit further so it's kind of like my baby...  I've probably spent too much time world building and coming up with characters and shit and not enough time actually writing down what actually happens IN the plot itself so, yeah, still pushing through that roadblock.

So yeah... overall I just want y'all to play and enjoy the story, characters, and the world so I gotta crack down and put in some more effort

... Basically This is a really long winded way of sayin I ain't got nothin yet but hopefully Alpha 2.0 will be big improvement when it finally comes out (no ETA yet)


OKAY I'VE TALKED ENOUGH NOW SORRY~ Follow my Twitter or Deviantart for some infrequent updates and art like more redesigns and maybe even some CG sneak peeks! Ooh!
I also have a Toyhou.se where I put up most of my (WAY too many) characters so if you're one of the girlies that like spoilers (like I am!) you can read more about the Aurum cast here!

Also full transparency I've mostly been hyper-fixating on making Friday Night Funkin' music and even had an Aurum Academy mod idea at some point! ... Which I would still need to know how to code and animate to make so that's out of the question lmao... But yeah, check out my Soundcloud if you're into that kinda music I guess  (I'm beyond help)