The Tennis Academy

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• Announcements·5 Jul 2026Official

  2000 Wishlists! 🤯

  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 in Boston, but I've managed to work on a couple of things lately that have been really cool. The first is a short Demo Mode that I intend to show at local events. It's got a Character Select screen reminiscent of fighting games where you can choose your opponent and partner, and then it takes you directly into a tennis match with the characters you chose. There's no story or RPG elements, it's strictly a tennis match, so I can get early feedback on what's working and not working, as well as spot more bugs. Here's an early version of the character selection:\Mostly this has been really nice for me to stay motivated with a long-term goal this year. As a solo developer, and someone who is not beholden to any external deadlines from a publisher etc, having achievable goals throughout the year are so important in order to keep staying focused and happy to work on a long-term project like this. Being able to put out a finished thing that I can see people playing for the first time really really helps me stay excited and helps me figure out what I'm doing right or wrong.I've had a couple of req...
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• Announcements·6 Jun 2026Official

  Featured in the 2026 Access-Ability Summer Showcase!

  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 everyone, take a look!You can also find Audio Described and Sign Language versions on Laura Kate Dale's Youtube.Here's the Accessibility Trailer for the Tennis Academy that premiered at the end of the event:I have to thank Laura again for her dedication to accessibility in games and putting on this showcase every year, and for the honor of having my game join a very good roster of games. And thank you to SightlessKombat for the very kind introduction to the game, I was blown away and almost cried!!And I'm grateful to all of you that are here now! It took 2 years on Steam to get to 600 wishlists, and in 2 days we've more than doubled that amount, that's incredible. I'll do my best to make a game you'll enjoy! I covered some of the planned accessibility features already in the Accessibility Trailer, but I'd like to take a moment to give you a full rundown of all the features I have on my to-do list.Planned Accessibility Features:About half of these are already implemented, but here's a full list of what's planned.Blind / Colorblind / Low Vision:Text-to-Speech in menus and dialogueVirtual Can...
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• Announcements·24 Mar 2026Official

  No Gen AI Will Be Used In This Game

  Hi! I’d 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:I’ve 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 that’s okay! I’m open to hearing it. But this is an opinion I’ve 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 haven’t 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 electricity needed. The training data is unethically stolen from artists. Many artists have pointed out their work was used to train machine learning without consent. Anyone can easily train an AI on an artist’s work and ask it to recreate images in the style.It’s harming the job market. CEOs are deciding they can get away with laying off and not hiring junior positions and replacing workers with AI. Customer service roles are almost entirely handled by AI now unless you ask to speak to a human. It’s making people dumber. Students are asking ChatGPT how to ask a question during class. Essays are generated. Bosses are sending employees generated emails rather than thinking about how to respond. Sure, humans have always been lazy, but it’s allowing people to get away with not using their brains at all.It’s gotten very annoying. It’s everywhere. Every website asks if you want to generate a post. Do you want to have AI recommend you something. An ad to use the new AI app for your smart fridge to decide what to eat. Leave me alone.There are a few positives, such as glasses for blind people that use A...
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• Announcements·31 Oct 2025Official

  New Single Just Dropped! "Dueling Racquets" Now On Spotify!

  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 to be great.You can check out his work, here: https://www.pieroramirezmusic.com/And PLEASE check out his game out now, NO HAPPY DAYS! Only $1!Ok Cool. Is the Game Done Yet?Game progress is going well!! I believe I am on track to finish the systems by the end of this year, and start working on Content(tm) and a demo next year. Stay tuned!Follow me on Bsky for more progress updates and videos: https://bsky.app/profile/rawbherb.bsky.socialAnd join the Tennis Academy discord! https://discord.gg/76chERbdzR
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• Announcements·22 Aug 2025Official

  A Novel... But Visual 🤔

  Yo ✌️I'm happy to report that the game finally feels like a real Visual Novel 😍 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 systems by December and move on to creating a playable demo for yall. 💖Alright later !
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