Hello scholars,

We are super excited to share that our next themed update will be called Land Expansion! That's right, this is something that you all have been asking for for a very long time, so we're really happy to finally add it to the game.

A larger school needs a more complex student delivery system, so we'll be adding school buses! Not sure what to do with all that new land? Why not start building some electricity and water generation objects to offset your utilities costs? And when you have electricity to spare, why not sell it back to the grid for a tiny profit?

These updates are a little meatier than our old updates, so we're trying to release them every one and a half months. So with luck, you should be playing this new update by the middle of October! See you then!

Hello Scholars,

Squeaky Wheel's election simulation game Political Animals is now on a weeklong sale , ending on September 17!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/458630/Political_Animals/

If you've ever wondered if you could win an election while keeping your paws clean, now is the time to find out! Political Animals lets you customize your candidate, pick specific staff to suit your campaign strategy, and lets you play across 8 beautifully hand designed maps. Local multiplayer is best so you can shout obscenities at each other as you near election day.

Bundle Discount!

Even if you're not super interested in politics, if you buy this bundle you can actually get Academia : School Simulator AND Political Animals for about 15% cheaper than if you bought Academia on its own, WHAT A DEAL!

Thanks everyone, we'll be back with an update announcement soon!

Hello Scholars!

We’re excited to finally release our first themed update, which we are calling Law and Order! This has been a long time coming, so let's get right to it!



You can now link certain zones to each other, to maximize efficiency! In much larger schools, there was a tendency for the students and staff to wander or get lost in school, leading to them not having enough time to eat or hang out and have fun in the common room. With Zone Linking you can now specify which classrooms will go to specific cafeterias and common rooms, as well as principals’ offices (principals with an “s” you say? More on that later). We’ve also added links from kitchen to cafeteria, so you can more efficiently control your kitchen staff.



In larger schools, students could sometimes take forever to walk to the principals office, losing them precious learning time. And once they’re at the office there was a crowd of students waiting for the principal to scold them!

To address that issue, we’ve added vice principals and Zone Linking for principals’ offices. To better manage your school, you can hire a vice principal, plop him in a specific area of your school, and link certain classrooms to that office.



The lawyer uses the power of legalese to let you get away with...well not murder, but maybe some less ethical things. Hire a lawyer so you can fire your employees at will (no more warnings!) and expel your students as you please. In future updates when we have an events system, the lawyer will be much more interesting.



Gang Members have been spotted near your school! As gang members go, these guys are actually pretty chill, they most want to influence your students to be more delinquent and to join their gang, and while they’re at it they’ll use your clean toilet facilities. Chase them off by hiring and routing some monitors! Larger schools will attract more gang members, so make sure you’ve got all the exits covered!


- Added grant for Cafeteria Zone to Classroom Zone linking
- Added Principal's Office to Classroom zone linking
- Fixed delivery bug when there are no refrigerators
- Fixed zone linking bugs
- Fixed visual bug where time controls are blocked
- Fixed lawyer bugs
- Increased real world seconds to 120 seconds per in-game hour
- Fixed wrong subject icons on the student profile and the overall student population panels
- Fixed bug where smokers are stuck
- Updated Zone Link icons
- Fixed Zone Linking bugs
- Fixed Research bug
- Fixed UI alignment bug
- Implemented Gang Members
- Implemented delinquents can now work
- Implemented Vice Principals
- Updated game texts
- Fixed zone linking bugs

Thanks to everyone who tried out the test and candidate builds and submitted bug reports. As a little Easter Egg, there is a hint in the description about what the next update will be, can you figure it out? It’s something we mentioned more than once!

Hello Scholars,

We're excited to announce the first of our themed updates, which we're calling Law and Order.

This update will add staff like the Vice Principal, who will help the principal handle the workload of scolding students. We will also be adding the lawyer, who gives you access to some mildly unethical ways to make running the school more efficient (hint : did you ever wish you could fire your staff without those pesky warnings?).

Delinquent student labor will be added so that they can be assigned to clean the school, giving you an alternative to detention and counseling, plus some cheap (but wildly inefficient) labor.

Gang members will try to infiltrate your school and try to influence your students to make them delinquents. They're not dangerous, just very rude, and you'll want to route some monitors around key areas to make sure they don't influence your students.

Finally, Zone Linking lets you create order in your school by linking certain zones to each other so that, for example, you can assign students in a classroom only to use specific cafeterias. This will make organizing much larger schools much easier.

We're targeting the end of August for this release (fingers crossed), and we hope you all are looking forward to it!

PS since people have been asking, yes this update is FREE.

Hello Scholars!

We overhauled our production process this month so we don’t have as much features in this month’s update. However we are excited to be sharing a much clearer roadmap very soon so that you know what to expect in the coming months! Until then, here are the updates for this month.



The history subject did not have a special room, so we needed to add one! The AV Room has now been added as the special room for History class. The teachers get to take it easy as the kids watch documentaries on the TV!



You can now adjust visual settings like turning off the zone colors, tooltips, shadows, and adjust
the hue and saturation colors of the game. If there are any specific visual settings you want us to try out, let us know in the comments!



We found out in a Twitter poll that about 50% of you were not aware that teachers could be assigned to specific year levels. To address this, while in the department panel you can now see on the teacher avatars what year level they are assigned to. We will be adding further UX improvements like this in the future.



- Fixed confusing needs increasing indicator
- Changed safety need computation
- improved safety computation (related to delinquents being too impactful)
- Improved unassigned students' AI
- Implemented common area assignment to classroom
- Fixed achievement bug
- Fixed black screen bug
- Fixed delayed student count update when a student dropped out or is expelled
- Fixed loading error related to TV animation
- Added teachers' TV behavior
- Added AV room category and fixed AV room requirements
- Added graphics settings
- Added AV room grants and research
- Fixed bug regarding zone colors
- Fixed black screen error when moving to next school year
- Fixed research lock bug on the Staff Population panel
- Fixed AI bugs

Hello Scholars,

Build 0.3.15 is now live! This month we focused on recuperating after launching Alpha 3 and tending to bugs and balance fixes. But we promise some new features every month, so this build brings Smoking delinquents, Expelling Students, and some sweet UI Updates!

(Reminder : There is no longer a 32-bit version of this build)



There’s a new set of delinquents for your monitors to catch! Torie over here thinks she’s super cool, smoking in the toilet but the principal knows better! (SMOKING IS BAD, GUYS, REMEMBER IT’S BAD)



Ideally we would advise that Torie take counseling for her issues, but if you’re feeling impatient you can go ahead and expel her! There’s a price to pay though, as your school will lose prestige as word spreads that you expel bad students to keep your stats.



The Student Population and Profile UI needed a lick of paint, and now they’re in line with our new designs!



We’ve update the Bank Loans system so that interest rates go higher the larger the amount you loan, and paying off interest in advance updates the daily rate that you pay. FUN!



There was a lot of confusion about how food crates work, we adjusted it so that you get food crates depending on the number of refrigerators you build. Hopefully this will make things easier to manage!


Been a while since we added new sounds! Click on some of the new zones, objects and staff to hear the new SFX.



Previously we made changes to the game so that you would only be able to access higher ranking teachers as you rise up the ranks. Makes sense we thought, since we figured good teachers would only want to work for good schools! We realize that might have messed up the balance, so we’ve made some changes so that upgraded teacher ranks can be researched.


We are aware there are some issues with the balance of the game in terms of juniors failing and food running out, so we’ve made some fixes to adjust for that. More long term fixes coming soon.

Bug Fixes and updates:
- Fixed HireTeacherPanel bug
- Rebalanced character needs
- Fixed workers not working bug
- Fixed bug when closing year-end report
- Rebalanced learning points
- Fixed love interest leaving behind confessing student
- Implemented kitchen-cafeteria assignment
- Fixed accepting transferee students grants bug
- Fixed bullying student bug
- Fixed bug where the negative SFX plays when loading a game or going back to the main menu
- Fixed smoking animation by adding an offset
- Truant notification zooms in on the smoker
- Increased chance for smokers to appear
- Fixed tuition fee is given multiple times bug
- Updated Food Unhapiness text - Fixed saving/loading Admissions values (interested, incoming, etc.) bug
- Improved implementation of ambient and SFXs
- Added zoom effect and lock-on effect on expelled students when notification is pressed
- Added crying animation for expelled students
- Fixed minor Student Profile panel bug
- Refund money for dismantled bush
- Fixed crying expelled student bug
- Fixed User Report Status Overlay bug
- Fixed unassigned students notification bug
- Fixed smoking animation

Hello scholars,

We’re happy to finally be able to release the Alpha 3 version of Academia : School Simulator. It’s been more than a year since Alpha 2 came out, so let’s recap a few of the major updates we made since then!



Since Alpha 2, we added the Music Room, the Science Room, the Basketball Court, and many other new zones.



Kind of a boring sounding update, but this is definitely one of the most important things for a simulation game, since it helps you keep an eye on what’s going on in your school!



We added research to help you run your school better, and achievements for you to shoot for while playing the game!



Students now fall in love or can be rejected, and this affects their motivation!



Mismanaged your school? Hire an accountant and take out a loan!



Our major game mechanic for Alpha 2, the satisfaction mechanic added some much needed tension to the game. If you don’t run your school well and satisfy the students, they may drop out!

Those are only some of the stuff we added since Alpha 2. Feel free to check out our old updates to see what else we’ve been up to.

To prepare for Alpha 3, we wanted to spend most of the month making sure the game was as bug-free as possible (fingers crossed!) But of course we still wanted to add a couple of new things for you all. Check out what we’ve added this month:



You now have a rival school to compete with every year. Try to beat your rival school every year! The effect right now in the game is that it unlocks a couple of achievements, and sometimes your students will leave for the rival school. We will add more to this mechanic in the future.



The Zones, Build, Objects, Logistics, Planning, and Staff Menus have been given a major overhaul. You can now scroll through the menu to look for objects, or simply type for the object you’re looking for in the search bar. We also added a “Frequent” category in the Objects menu where you can find the most commonly used objects.


More achievements for those that love them, and new grants to reward folks that achieve them. What’s not to like?



It’s been brought to our attention that our students don’t have much racial diversity. We’ve added new skintones to the game to address this. Note that this only affects new students, so if you have an old save you will have to wait until the start of the new year.



We’ve improved the fences so that they no longer connect with the walls, and added some new fences for you to choose from!


We have made adjustments to the grants and rewards to make the game a little more balanced.


We balanced the game so that you can only hire higher level teachers as you increase in rank. This is still up for balancing so let us know what you think.


- Rebalanced satisfaction increase and decrease rates
- Fixed black screen when loading other files or going back to the main menu
- Fixed black screen when loading a save file
- Fixed counseling bug when loading a dropped out student
- Fixed multiple students using the same piano
- Fixed dropouts bug when loading a save file
- Fixed basketball bug
- Fixed zone colors visual bug when loading save files
- Showed school ranking first in the year-end evaluation
- Fixed dropouts bug when loading a save file
- Added increasing fun when using the Music Room and the Science Lab
- Improved basketball-related behaviors
- Fixed achievements bug
- Added achievements-related grants
- Fixed year-end evaluation bugs
- Restricted some special characters in school name
- Updated cost for grass
- Fixed error on starting a new game
- Added Rival Schools mechanics
- Fixed water fountain offset
- Fences now don't connect with walls
- Fixed school and rival ranking bug
- Removed clicking sound when starting the game
- Added smooth step to camera focus
- Adjusted texts
- Fixed reports visual bug
- Added delivery zone details
- Added icons and changed colors for Prestige tooltip
- Added new walls and fences
- Fixed staff behavior bugs
- Improved camera behavior in windowed mode
- Added new character faces
- Fixed students getting stuck in plate counter
- Allowed removal of bushes when doors or floors are built over them
- Fixed achievements-related bugs

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to share some news today that may disappoint some of you. We have an update coming to the game soon, which will be our Alpha 3. We wanted to let you know that the Alpha 3 update will be the last one with 32-bit support. I’m sure some of you will be disappointed, so we wanted to be honest and let you know why we are doing this.

32-bit systems have a limit of 2GB memory usage. This means that we’ve been struggling to optimize the game for the past year, and have lost valuable development time in the process. Given the fact that Steam’s own hardware surveys suggest that less than 2 percent of their users are on 32-bit systems, it’s hard to justify that additional time and effort.

This wasn’t an easy decision for us, and we wanted to make sure to support 32-bit at least up until Alpha 3, to guarantee any 32-bit players a more fully featured game than when we launched.

Academia : School Simulator will continue development, and we hope that by the time we release version 1, you’ll have a 64-bit system to enjoy all the new features we will have released by then.

Thanks for all the support, and see you at the next update.

Hello Scholars,

We're back to bring you an sweaty, exercise filled April update!




It's blazing hot this summer (well, it's summer here in the Philippines where we live) so why not build a Swimming Pool that your sophomore students can use for PE? Last one in the pool is a rotten egg!




It's NBA playoff season right now, so it's the perfect time to add a Basketball Court to your school and watch your students shoot some hoops!




This is the major feature we have been working on for quite sometime. Student needs now have to be satisfied, otherwise they will “drop out” or basically leave your school. Open the Reports menu and click on the satisfaction button to see how satisfied your students are.

This adds a layer of challenge to the game that wasn't there before, as you can now lose student if you don't maintain your school well!

NOTE: This is a new mechanic and will need balancing after we observe your feedback. Please let us know how you feel about it in the discussion boards!


To make bug reports easier, we have integrated them into the game. Clicking on the bug report button will now let you submit a bug report in-game with all the necessary logs and save files attached, so no more clicking around to find your save file!




We made some much-needed changes to the Teacher Hiring UI to make it easier to see which teachers are good at what subject. We've also added some arrows to the teacher avatars to more easily move them from the department to the teacher pool and back!


Students will sometimes use staff doors if there are no other nearby entrances/exits. Make sure they have regular doors accessible to them.


Fixed bug where values in Admissions Panel are erratic
Fixed tooltips in Reports Panel
Fixed crashes with big maps
Fixed bug when accepting transferee grants during the build phase
Fixed admissions bug
Fixed location of tooltips in the reports panel
Fixed objects bug when merging zones
Fixed wrong admission student number bug
Fixed zones' ambient sounds
Fixed objects orientation
Fixed in-game bug report bugs
Fixed Satisfaction reports student counts bugs
Fixed wrong dropout reason in Satisfactions reports panel
Fixed Admissions text bug
Fixed formula for getting interested students
Fixed bug with special rooms during zone removal
Fixed department panel bug
Fixed price tooltip bug


Color money in pointer when placing objects to red if player can't afford it
Added some tooltips
Updated Canteen Bench orientation
Zone labels of newly created zones now show up in front of other items
Added tooltip in admissions and admissions button blinking
Updated starting money options
Made pre-generated trees non-blockers to ease confusion
Rebalanced Satisfaction damages
Improved Satisfaction reports panel
Improved worker behaviour
dded Bowel need and behaviour to staff
Adjusted Safety need damages
Updated reports page colors
Changed littering probability
Removed long names to avoid clipping in the new HireTeacherPanel UI
Darkened year-end evaluation's congratulatory panel's background
Updated Satisfaction-related texts
Applied gameover when all students dropout
Changed priorities of character needs
Rebalanced character needs
Optimized workers behavior. Added notification when workers can't reach their tasks
Added year level in special PE zones (Pool, Track, and Court)

Hello Scholars,

We're back to bring you your monthly update!




You can now build an Oval Track for your students to use when doing PE! This is the first of three major Exercise facilities we’re hoping to add to the game in the coming months.




This is a quality of life feature we should have added a long time ago, but only managed to make time for now (sorry, folks!) but we hope you’ll agree that it really makes a huge difference. This update did come with an issue that we explain below.

NOTE: Part of the reason we delayed implementing this is because we had to update the orientation of objects to be consistent across the board. This means that rotation of some objects in existing save files will change. The new rotations might also cause overlap with other existing objects so they may be removed. A common occurence of this is the Teacher's Table. You may need to rebuild such objects. The following are the objects whose orientation were changed:

- Admin Table
- Big Window
- Clinic Bed
- Clock
- College Degree
- Fan
- Hand Sanitizer
- Kitchen Sink
- Motivational Poster
- Sink
- TrashCan
- Window
- Teacher's Table (formerly Office Table)



Your existing save files will still work, but you will probably want to dismantle and place the objects again if they look out of place. The image above shows a hand sanitizer that was affected by this update. This is a one-time change that should not affect future updates.




We added a bowel need satisfy our quota for toilet humor in the game. Students now have a bowel need which requires them to go to a cubicle to relieve themselves. If the student cannot find a toilet cubicle they will find a bush and take a poo there.




Students now have a safety need. Students will feel less safe when there are many delinquent students, they are bullied, or they use a damaged object. To increase the feeling of safety, you can hire more monitors or try to reduce the number of delinquent students by hiring counselors.


In larger schools, the sheer amount of delinquent students creates a bottleneck for your principal as they scold each and every delinquent. This also created other problems with regards to delinquent students failing because they lost so much time out of class everytime they had to be hauled to the principal’s office by a monitor.

To counter this we have given the ability for monitors to scold so they save time from having to drag the student to the principal’s office. For now this is a test feature, and if it works out we will likely make it into a research item.




Another long-requested quality of life feature, you can now assigned hotkeys as you like. Note that the mouse buttons are locked to certain actions.


There is a visual bug where sick students seem to jump out of bed every few seconds. We're aware of this and working on a fix for the next update.


-Basic Facilities Should Be Requirement for Cook
-Zone appears behind bushes and trees
-Wall outline not complete is tutorial
-Motivation bar appears and updates during build phase
-Tutorial continues when starting a new game after quitting the tutorial
-Info toast of the buttons on the settings appears behind UI
-School year calendar interacts with pause/unpause
-Student walking through walls
-Students keep going through staff only doors and get stuck in room
-Game crashes halfway through loading
-Game freezes constantly every 15 to 39 minutes
-Problematic students sometimes race each other in occupying seat in Principal's Office.
-Disable Staff Hire Button in Staff Panel When Staff Not Yet Researched
-Getting stuck on Cloning students when loading an old save file or starting a new game.
-Tooltip for Unresearched Object Shows Missing Text
-Number of Students Set in Admissions Panel Not Being Saved
-My students are glitching through the wall.
-Do Rowdy in special classroom