Jock Studio One Year Update!

Fellow Olympians, on this day exactly one year ago, we launched the Jock Studio Kickstarter Campaign – BLits’ first-ever Kickstarter, and the amount of love, support, and excitement we received was overwhelming: to recap, in less than an hour, we met our initial funding goal, followed by blowing that number away and reaching a previously unheard-of amount of funding for a Yaoi / BL Visual Novel, all thanks to you, the fans!

Since then, our team has been working extremely hard to bring Jock Studio to life, including all of the new and amazing features that we’re sure will make it the best BL game on the market! With all that being said, we thought for today’s update, it’d be best to show our progress so far in each department, and then break them down individually, with new teasers and previews in between!

To start, we’ll break down each individual department and what’s been done, so please check out the individual sections below!

Department 1 – Physical Merchandise

First up, one of our priorities immediately after the Jock Studio Kickstarter Campaign has been the development of all physical merchandise items! We wanted to be sure that we could properly showcase all items that our customers have purchased to allow them to make informed decisions and complete our merchandise development prior to our originally marketed date of June 2025. We are happy to say that, as of this update, our Physical Merchandise for Jock Studio has been over 95% completed, with only the physical box for shipment remaining to be designed, and is already moving into the Manufacturing phase! Check out a round-up of our merch below, and click the picture for a more detailed view of what’s being made:

That’s a lot of exciting merchandise, designed by various members of our team, including Mikkoukun, Magia, Zael, and Peach! With the designs being complete, and our PledgeManager preorders closed as of July 1st, 2024, we are happy to announce that we are now entering the Manufacturing Stage, and will showcase previews of the actual, physical items as they are produced!

In the meantime, we anticipate to hold true to our original date, and all physical merchandise (excluding physical game copy and physical guidebook) will be shipped to eligible customers by June 2025! Stay tuned for more news regarding this with more details in the future!

Department 2 – Story

Next up, one of our most, if not the most important departments, is the story department! Story is always a key and crucial feature in any BLits title, and we want Jock Studio to be no exception. To that end, as you can see above, our story is, as we expected, the slowest moving department, as we want to take our time and ensure that Ace and the Jocks’ stories are all emotional, heartfelt, and filled with everything that the fans want to see!

With that in mind, we do want to give a special shout-out to the fans here: our team is constantly looking at and reading the comments here on our website, Kickstarter, Reddit, Discord and more, and we love seeing all the fan theories and ideas, and sometimes even incorporate them into what’s being working on! Your enthusiasm for Jock Studio is shaping the story in ways you may not even realize!

Now, to dive into a little more detail as to what the above graphic percentages mean, let’s talk about Jock Studio as a whole – the game is divided into several different ‘Arcs’, from Ace discovering and joining Jock Studio, to Spring Break, and End of the Semester, to name just a few! At this time, our team is close to completing two of the arcs concepts and storyboards, with several more arcs concept and storyboards to go! Any scriptwriting will take place after these phases, to ensure the story is tied together properly. Additional writing, such as in-game tutorials, item descriptions and more will be a further area of consideration for the future – we will update progress on this on our next Major Update!

Getting back to the story arcs, we often take the time to develop game mechanics, detailed later in the programming department, or create art assets, from new sprite costumes, to even full scene images, which will take place in the game’s story – check out a teaser of some particularly spicy scenes below:

Looks like things are getting pretty steamy between Ace and the Jocks, and we’re sure that the situation that leads to this sexy event in the story will be exciting for everyone! Don’t worry, though, the Jocks aren’t the only ones who’ll be featured in special scenarios – Ace gets up to plenty of activities, both sexy and mundane, on his own too:

All of these teased scenes will appear in the story, alongside many more to be developed throughout the game! Each one of them includes writing, voice acting, and more, and will all be a part of our story process!

To close out our story discussion, we just want to mention that we’re working on streamlining our process even further, and we hope to improve our speed while not cutting down on the quality at the same time! We’ll be doing more story previews later, so please stay tuned!

Department 3 – Art & Graphics

Next up, possibly the largest department in Jock Studio is the art department, which, as you can see above, consists of tons of different categories! Let’s talk about each one, starting with the sprites!

One of our very first development goals was to create the sprites for Ace, the Jocks, and a few of our side characters, incorporating the new poses and costumes stretch goal which was achieved on Kickstarter and has now been officially completed! Our art team, Zael, Mikkoukun, and Magia, have been working extremely hard, and we’re proud to show off the results of the sprites so far below:

That’s a lot of new sprite poses and costumes – we wanted to showcase some of the new attires in their completed states, such as sleep and gym which have both been previewed before in design phase! Not only that, but you’ll notice that each character has an additional pose and several new arm movements for their existing poses, making the variety in each character vast and unique!

As of this update, sprites are near completion, and only missing additional costumes which will be relevant to each character’s story and made as we progress, as well as a mastery step to ensure all details are correct! Moving on from sprites, let’s look at graphic design!

First showcased in our last development update, graphic design is a category of art that has been worked on by Peach and TheMagicMan, our newest hire, and involves several different features, such as the location and club icons previewed last time. Additionally, graphic design is also all over the campus, featured in various posters, screens, and more throughout the campus! Check out a preview of some of these artworks below:

You can find all of these posters around campus, so keep your eye out when playing for various easter eggs and teasers in the game! We estimate that a large percentage of the graphic design needed in the game has been completed already, and more, such as in-game item art, additional location graphics, club sigils and more, will be worked on and previewed at a later date! Next, let’s talk about comic panels!

Sketched by Zael & Magia, the Comic Panels are short, cute segments that fill-in story scenes with more detailed artwork where a Scene Image is not required. Several were present in the first demo, and the main game will be stuffed with them! Check out a small teaser of just a few of them below:

The above Comic Panels can be unlocked through special scenarios in the game, and if you aren’t careful, you might miss them, so be sure to explore everywhere and find all the images! As mentioned above, there are many more Comic Panels to be made, and as they are developed alongside the story, we expect them to be a work in progress throughout development!

Finally, we want to let everyone know that scene image and Comic Panel previews will be rare during our development updates, as want to avoid spoiling the game as much as possible and keep them a surprise!

Department 4 – Backgrounds

Next, we’ll take a look at a sub-department of the art department – background artwork! We’ve previewed tons of backgrounds throughout our development updates so far, and we are very happy to announce that, as of this update, backgrounds are very far along, as seen in the above percentages!

Our background department, as has been previewed before consists of several in-depth stages, including:

• Concept – Raw sketches and research of each location designed by Zael, Zemyx, Newit, and Sana
• 3D Modeling – Detailed 3D renders based on the raw sketches, designed by Sana and Micman
• Painting – Beautifully painted versions of the 3D Renders, made by Monacodingo and Kyun
• Mastery & Lighting – Background adjustments that bring them all in-line and match them to the same standard, being done by Kyun and Zemyx!
• Crowd Art – Filling the backgrounds with colorful characters to fill them with life, laid out by Micman and Zemyx and hand-illustrated by Magia and Laace!

This process has been heavily streamlined, which can be seen by our solid progress in this department! We want to showcase a round-up of the new painted backgrounds and 3d concepts done so far, so check them out below and imagine yourself inside of Olympus University!

We still have a few more backgrounds to complete, including expanding into the town surrounding Olympus University, but our next, most exciting goal is to assemble all designed buildings into the Campus Map, which we will preview in a later update and can’t wait to show everyone! That’s all for backgrounds for now!

Department 5 – Animation

Our animation department has only recently begun working in March of 2024 – as mentioned above, sex scene animations are coming later in the development when they are created as part of the game’s story. However, in the meantime, our animation department has been given a new and exciting feature to work on – the puppets!

Introduced a few development updates ago, the puppets will be used as a new type of animation for many of Jock Studio’s features, including the workout minigames and more, unannounced features! These animations have a ton of potential, as can be seen in the previews below, created by Zemyx, Monacodingo and Ziel:

As seen above, the Leo, Derek and Bryce puppets are being used in each of their respective minigames as part of the workout phase! Currently, although they are much smoother, these animations are still a work in progress, as the characters obviously still need to be dressed up properly! These animations help to bring the minigames to life, and will feature several other additional animations, such as transitions and more, to be revealed at a later date!

Finally, with these puppet animations providing a new avenue of streamlined animation for Jock Studio, we can safely say that, if all goes well, Jock Studio will become a very ‘versatile’ game, satisfying to everyone’s tastes and popular demand, so please stay tuned for more puppet previews as development continues!

Additionally, we have received many applications for an assistant artist for our puppet department, and are currently reviewing these applications – all further artist applications are closed at this time, thank you to anyone who submitted and you will receive an email once your application has been reviewed!

We’ve also decided that, as part of this venture, we’re going to be seeking an additional puppet animator to join our team – if you have experience with skeletal animations, meshing and rigging, preferably in the spine software, please send us an application at the link below (or, if you have trouble with your application, please send it to us at [email protected]!):

https://www.blitsgames.com/puppet-animator-applications/

Department 6 – Programming

The programming department hit the ground running as soon as Jock Studio’s Kickstarter campaign ended, first with an updated and optimized demo! After that, the department has continued its momentum and worked hard to implement the various different mechanics and minigames that will be present in the game, several of which have been previewed so far! Additionally, since then, we’ve hired a new team member, Jürgen Christl, who is assisting us with programming alongside Sticmac, Zemyx and Micman!

For this update, we showed the workout character select screen before, but now we wanted to showcase the workout minigames themselves – Treadmill, Weights and Machines Minigames! Check out a preview of their gameplay, programmed by Jürgen Christl and Sticmac, below:

Programming Previews provided by Sticmac and Jürgen Christl

When playing these minigames, do your best to achieve a high score, and you’ll receive even more bonus points for the performance stat you’ve chosen to workout! Just be careful not to slip up, as you might lose your bonus!

These minigames are just some of the exciting features that have been added to Jock Studio so far, and we can happily announce that the mechanics are over halfway implemented into the game, and moving at a steady pace! We’ll have more mechanics to showcase later, and additionally, all other programming, such as more minigames, phone apps, story and beta testing, will happen at a later date!

Department 7 – Audio

It’s been a while since we last updated everyone on our audio department, but we’re very happy to announce that the Jock Studio Soundtrack has made amazing progress, and is already headed towards completion! Not only that, but it’s huge – there are over 40 tracks so far, with even more to be created!

These tracks have all been composed by our amazing composers, HMNK, Adlibpiano, and OtoKin, and we wanted to take the opportunity to showcase a few more of the songs they’ve been working on! Last year, we previewed the Side B tracks for each of the main cast, and this time we’re showing Side C tracks – you can listen to a sample of each below:

These emotional tracks perfectly suit the heavier scenes throughout the game and will guarantee there isn’t a dry eye in the house! Additionally, if you’d like to listen to some of the other track teasers we’ve posted before, you can see our soundcloud round up at the link below!

All of these tracks will be available to listen to in-game throughout the story and in the music player, but we will also ensure that it is published on various different music platforms such as spotify, youtube music, and more after the game is released! We’ll also show more track teasersin future development updates!

Finally, we just want to note as well that Voice Acting and SFX will continue to be worked on later, after the story department has progressed further!

Final Word & Updated Release Date

That’s all for our departmental round-up, and we hope that everyone has a clearer idea of where our team is at as far as our progress so far! In case you wanted to see a quick sum-up of our monthly updates, check out the graphic below to see what’s been revealed each month since the Kickstarter campaign:

As you can see above, there’s been a ton of progress made over the past year, but there’s still a ton more to go! Let’s check out how we’re doing on all of our Jock Studio stretch goals, unlocked via our Kickstarter Campaign:

There are a lot of Kickstarter Goals for us to achieve, and we have identified several that will be released as free updates post-launch of the game, as can be seen above! We have decided to do this to ensure that our team can better achieve a practical release date, and to ensure that everyone gets their Jock Studio experience as soon as possible! We’d like to note, however, that these post release decisions are subject to change, and, should time allow, these goals may be moved back into our initial base game release.

Speaking of release dates, we wanted to update everyone – as shown in our development progress report, update timeline, and stretch goal progress, Jock Studio has expanded in many ways from its initial launch goals. Our original release estimate of June 2025 was based on Jock Studio being a simple visual novel, but due to milestones being unlocked and it expanding into a full-blown dating simulator, we will need more time to produce the game at its highest quality possible.

At this time, our team is NOT YET READY TO SET A RELEASE DATE and will update our release window once we feel more confident of the game’s completion, after we’ve entered the beta testing phase. We have made this determination based on the amount of work left to be done on the game, and to ensure that it is at the best quality upon release possible. We promise to keep everyone in the loop and continue to be transparent about development progress through regular monthly updates, as well as key milestone major updates such as this one!

To end this update on a positive note, however, we do have a very exciting announcement – we are planning to release a SECOND DEMO in Late 2024 which will have a ton of new content and mechanics for everyone to try, and best of all, it will be free on launch for anyone to play!

We plan to preview what’s inside of Demo 2.0 on August 10th, 2024, our one-year anniversary of Kickstarter Completion, so please stay tuned for more information about it then!

That’s all for now, Olympians, but we want to thank everyone for a wonderful year of support and development, and we hope that everyone is excited and satisfied by what has been done so far! We promise to continue to be open and transparent throughout the development, and keep everyone in the loop regularly so that they know when they’ll get their own Olympus University experience!

Thank you again to everyone for all your support and love, and please let us know in the comments below what previews you were most excited for, and what else you’re most anticipating in Jock Studio!

We’ll see everyone again on August 10^th, 2024!

Lots of love,

~BLits Games