- 2000 Wishlists! š¤Æ - 5 July 2026
The Tennis Academy has hit 2000 Wishlists!What a milestone!Thank you all so much for supporting my vision of this game. I'll be honest I was shocked it even got to 100 lol, it means a lot that anyone is interested in what I'm creating. My hope is to make something not only fun and cool and gay, but also something that can help, comfort, and inspire people. I want to make something like the games I played while growing up that helped me through rough times and made me into the person I am today.The game is still very early in development, so thank you for waiting! I'll try to make it worth the wait :)Currently Working onHere's the part where I usually go over what I've been up to.Progress lately has been admittedly slower than I'd like - it's been a busy year so far with moving to a new apartment, the AccessAbility trailer, and I've been hard at work helping with this year's GodotCon inā¦
- Featured in the 2026 Access-Ability Summer Showcase! - 6 June 2026
Hi all and welcome!Short Introduction for the new people:Hey, I'm Rawb! I'm a queer indie dev from Pittsburgh. I've been an artist my whole life, making comics, animation, and videogames. I've got some of my older work on my website here: http://rawbherb.art With that out of the way...The 2026 Access-Ability Summer ShowcaseThe Tennis Academy had the honor of being featured in the Access-Ability Summer Showcase 2026! It's a yearly livestreamed event that highlights accessible games, and I talked a bit about my plans to make The Tennis Academy completely accessible to blind players. I highly recommend checking out the event if you haven't, there's some great games in here, including 3 that are published by the folks at my old job, Whitethorn Games, and plenty of blind-accessible games. If you're a disabled gamer looking for recommendations, or interested in how we can make games for everyā¦
- No Gen AI Will Be Used In This Game - 24 March 2026
Hi! Iād like to post this now for people to refer to throughout development. These are standards I think should be upheld by all game developers from solo, indie, to AAA.Here's my stance on Generative AI:Iāve done my own research over the past few years to come to these opinions. You may not agree, or have seen research suggesting otherwise, and thatās okay! Iām open to hearing it. But this is an opinion Iāve formed by talking to fellow artists and developers, following news, listening to experts, and being surrounded by the inescapable influx of AI in our society lately. I acknowledge I could be wrong, but my opinions havenāt changed on this topic much in the last few years ever since generative AI started booming.Generative AI is harming our environment. Forests and farms are being bought out to be demolished and replaced with data centers because of the massive amounts of electricityā¦
- New Single Just Dropped! "Dueling Racquets" Now On Spotify! - 31 October 2025
New Single: "Dueling Racquets"!Sweet news for music enjoyers everywhere! The Tennis Academy's battle theme, "Dueling Racquets", has been released as a single! This is a fun track inspired by 90's anime and JRPGs, meant to put you in the mood of a fantasy battle... but with tennis!Here's where you can find it:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6fsk61iE1Z1JyQAw12lwHm?si=f218623ac0e34b33Youtube: Meet the Composer: Piero Ramirez!He's the next Toby Fox, the next Matoi Sakuraba, it's PIERO! We met through the Seattle indie game developer scene - Piero's a fellow indie dev, so he knows the struggle. As a musician, he's got a wide range and a ton of talent. He's been enthusiastic to work on TenAcad and really understands the intent behind each piece and constantly surprises me. We've worked on a few tracks of the OST together, and I am really excited to see it come together, it's going toā¦
- A Novel... But Visual š¤ - 22 August 2025
Yo āļøI'm happy to report that the game finally feels like a real Visual Novel š I've been busy adding UI, animations, sound, and VFX to the dialogue to allow me to make more engaging scenes. I mean, just look at the difference:But that's not all! I've also been hard at work on all of the game's menus, and I'm nearly done! I was feeling particularly inspired to work on UI after giving my talk at Godotcon, which you can view here:After having spent so much time thinking about UI, I was able to truly harness the energy of the UI Gods, and thereafter coded a whole slew of menus for the game:and with that, I think the gameplay systems are like... 80% coded?? I still need to add a few more things, like in-match items and stats, shopping, accessibility options etc, but this game is really close to being ready to move into the content phase. I'm so ready. My hope/dream/PLAN is to wrap up the sā¦
- Godotcon Boston 2025 was a blast! - 21 May 2025
Hi gamers! My last update was in March, and it's now the end of May - what was I doing those two months? Here's a short update! Godotcon Boston I recently went to Godotcon Boston, Godot's first ever conference in the US. It was full of tons of indie developers who had a similar passion for the Godot game engine and indie game development in general. This was one of the most fun moments of my entire 5 years as an indie gamedev; I had a fantastic time meeting and talking to so many cool devs. I learned a ton, got great advice, had good food, and made great connections. My throat was actually sore because of how much I was talking to people over the 3 days! I can't wait to go back next year š„° Here's a great video by StayAtHomeDev (who I met there and is super nice!) recapping his experience at the conference: I volunteered to help out Nicholas O. from Essay Games with his workshop on Narrā¦
- 365 Wishlists // 1 Year on Steam!!! - 22 March 2025
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 definā¦
- 200 Wishlists Hit! - 18 October 2024
We've officially hit 200 wishlists! Wow! Here's some Celebratory Yaoi! I barely expected 2 of you to want my gay tennis game let alone 200 of you. It means a lot! Doubles Matches in the Works! I posted this over on Twitter and Bluesky, but I've been working on Doubles matches! This was something I put off for like a year because it was so daunting. I had to go through the entire match and CPU code and add cases for doubles matches. Not to mention the UI challenges - I fit the doubles partners into the score UI, and I'm not working on redesigning the HP bars to nicely fit all the players. Nevertheless, it works! Sort of. You can play a doubles match, but it's kind of janky right now. I'm going to move on to coding more systems, but I'll keep coming back to the matches to try to polish the gameplay as best as I can. Thank you!
- A Tiny Devlog - 19 August 2024
^ Nate, the protagonist of this game :3 Hi gaymers and gamers, Soo I thought it'd be nice to do a little devlog of sorts, in case anybody actually reads these on Steam. If not, then I'm just talking into a void, which is okay too I guess? I'm no stranger to talking to myself LOL. So yeah, here's a couple of cool things happening recently: 6 Month Development Sprint I just finished a 6 month long sprint where I worked on my game any chance I could get. It felt great, and I made so much progress. A ton of systems got done or nearly done, like the tennis matches themselves, boss battles, dialogue, and some RPG mechanics. I posted a lot of this over on the Tiktok and Twitter, so if you're curious you can check it out! It's definitely felt more and more like a real GAME and it feels really cool to make it come to life. I'll talk more about the progress in a Youtube video I'm making (see nextā¦
