As most of you know, the Collegiates games were being developed in the free time of the team. Nobody was on salary, and there was always the threat that something would come up, or people wouldn't have enough time, etc., and the game would have to be cancelled. Unfortunately that circumstance has circumstanced and we are left with no recourse but to cancel the game. It is a sad moment for all of us, as this project has been a rewarding and educational experience for us all.

At this time we must consider refunds, but the pre-order money has been largely invested in the game itself, paying for hosting, engines, advertising, and other odds and ends we needed to keep the project alive. As we have raised roughly $1000 in pre-orders, full refunds to each individual donator is not possible for us without a significant personal investment that none of us can afford (if we could, we wouldn't need to cancel the game, you see).

So, in an effort to appease those of you who would like a refund, we're offering commission coupons to all individuals who pre-ordered the Collegiates games, for the full value of your donation. These coupons will be handled as follows:

Each person who has purchased the game has given us an e-mail address; we will send the coupons via e-mail to each account on the list. When you receive your coupon, you will have a choice of three artists to redeem them with:  pharoahqueen,  mrmongoose, and  gmerriment. Each will accept the coupon. Each has their own terms for the coupons, so make sure you ask the artist to what the coupon entitles the holder. In addition, there have been 39 accounts opened with Squishy Frog Studios for the Collegiates games, so each artist will be accepting 13 coupons, to be redeemed on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have a specific artist you'd like to redeem your coupon with, you must act quickly to ensure they can do so.

We thank you all so much for your support, and we hope that this doesn't mean the end of our endeavors to bring you quality furry games. Until next time~

UPDATE: We've sent out the coupons. If you pre-ordered the game, please check the AlertPay e-mail you provided us for the coupon information. If for whatever reason it isn't working, please contact  gmerriment via note or e-mail (gmerriment@gmail.com) and he'll take care of the issue forthwith.

Be sure to drop by Mr. Merriwether's newest submission here for a sample of some music he's been working on for a little platformer we've got in development. Enjoy!

 apollomerriwether

If you notice anything weird going on with the website, we're currently working on it and making some changes. Bear with us and try back in a few minutes if something goes awry. If it's still screwy after an hour or so, let us know what the problem is.

If you're using any version of Internet Explorer at all, I'm terribly sorry. Get a better browser.

I've been getting a lot of notes, comments, and e-mails that have led me to think that you all are terribly mistaken about the nature of these games we're producing. They are absolutely not interactive smut rags.

These games are not about sex (though getting laid does play a very important role)—in fact, should you choose, you can go through the entire game without ever once having sex. The goal of the game isn't necessarily to get laid.

The Collegiates games are social interaction engines. They present you with five opportunities to explore relationships with people of varying archetypes and personalities. They carefully monitor your interactions with those people within a limited timeframe, and each interaction has an effect on all those following. There is sex—because this game explores adult themes too—but some opportunities for interaction will never happen if you are promiscuous, or even if you aren't a virgin by the end of the game. At least one character is totally inaccessible for any kind of activity, sexual or otherwise, unless you are completely, blisteringly unpopular. Learning about those interactions will require paying attention to what people say about themselves and each other.

In other words, if you're just trying to get laid, you're going to miss half of the game.

There's sex in the game for the same reason there is violence in first-person shooters: the game functions perfectly well without it. I could just as easily say, "you had sex", and the game would work without the pictures. But, as a culture, Furries like them some nookie. So I figure, give it to them and move on. The game will still be here when they're done fapping. There is, however, a downside to this fan-service: some of you may forget that there's a game under the porn.

I'm positive that a great many of you have a huge hard-on for these games and I'm not dumb—a large portion of the dialogue and story in Collegiates are centered around reminding you that there's more to the characters than sex, so that on repeated playthroughs you might try exploring less... erotically. Each of the twelve characters (the two main characters and ten interactive NPCs) has a personality, backstory, and plenty of possibilities to explore. I hope you all will make the most of it.

As of just now there are only 8 pre-order cameo spots left. When they're gone, you'll still be able to procure a more high-profile cameo by donating (see the donation incentives on our website for more information).

Hurry up and get your order in! There are still some orders pending payment. If you ordered and you haven't received an e-mail from us requesting payment, or you didn't realize you'd have to open an AlertPay account when you ordered and would rather not, please contact us either here or via e-mail (squishyfrogstudios@gmail.com) and we'll sort it out.

Introducing the newest member of our team and new lead programmer,  skitzycat. We're sure his experience in the field will help us to bring you better games faster! Give him your praise!

And make it double!

After a slight miscalculation on my part, I realized that we had several more pre-order cameo positions than I thought. I had been marking off spots for people who donated, even though they had a different type of cameo.

So, as of right now, there are 13 pre-order cameos left—although there are several pre-orders awaiting payment right now. They've started going like hotcakes, so if you were waiting 'til the last minute... this is it! This is the last minute!

We're pleased to welcome talented artist  Acisej to our development team. She'll be working on an as-yet unannounced 2D platformer. Welcome aboard!

ROUND 1

FIGHT!!

Okay! Now that the websites account system has been programmed and is awaiting approval from the AlertPay staff, I can turn my entire attention (well, 90% of my attention—I still have to take orders) on the demos.

Our objective with the demos is to give you a taste of the gameplay—so there will be two of the five characters to interact with, and three of the eventual myriad locations will be available to explore.

The demos, however, will be a fairly different experience than the full game, mostly because you will be able to interact in a more focused way with the two characters. In any version of the game, how you interact with one character will change how you interact with the rest of them. But in the demos, there are only two characters, so there are less outside influences to impact your course of action. As a result, getting the desired outcome will be far easier in the demos than in the final game.

But that's okay, because it is after all, just a taste.

We have temporarily disabled the AlertPay shopping cart system, mostly because it's causing a lot of confusion for our customers and generally being useless (thank you so much, AlertPay). Until we get this sorted out, we are putting an alternate system in place.

Complete instructions are on the site, but the essence of it is: you open an AlertPay account and you click "Make Payment" and we send a money request to your AlertPay account. It requires an AlertPay account, but it is at least will let you pay.

Thank you all for your patience with us while we fend off bureaucracy.

I feel like being awesome today, so I'm giving our 200th watcher,  anima42 a free copy of their choice of Forever State or Never U provided they reply to this journal in the next 24 hours! Anima, let us know which you want!

Thanks everybody for your support TTvTT

If you find that you are having issues using the store's payment system, contact us by whatever means you feel comfortable with and let us know the nature of your problem.

Most notably is the issue where payments using the store will not allow you to pay with a credit card. If you have or open an AlertPay account, you should be able to make the payment with the card attached to your account by using the "AlertPay Balance" option (even though it shows a $0 balance). If this still doesn't work, you can manually send payment to squishyfrogstudios[at]gmail.com until we get verification resolved.

Thanks for your support!

Skwi (read: the lead designer (read: me)) is now available to chat on IM. I like to chat with our fans so don't be bashful.

I don't RP though. Sorry. Happily mated. :}

Our official website is up! Go take a look and be sure to spread the word!

http://squishyfrogstudios.com/

Hooraaaaay!

We still have to get the site verified by AlertPay, so you'll still need an AlertPay account to order the games, but now they're a little more intuitive. Right? Right? Any suggestions are welcome!

If you're here because you saw our ad, you can pre-order the game by following the instructions here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1932822/

Our goal is to get enough money to get a years' hosting so that you don't have to follow stupid instructions, you can just click the BUY ME button and order the game. The 25 initial pre-orders should take care of that, which is why we're offering the cameos to get the ball rolling!

Don't wait—now that the ad is up, things should start taking off! Order today!

Just to keep you guys in the loop, we have a couple more things planned for you whilst we develop Collegiates.

Working on a little space shooter called Gyrobreed. We plan to release it on Newgrounds, and it will be free to play there. We'll post a link to it when it's done, and maybe even a short demo version here to make the announcement (and entice you to visit the full game on Newgrounds). It won't be heavily furry—but the characters in the story will be lovable furry folks. Huzzah!

We're also considering investing in a Minecraft SMP server for furries. It would be a fully administrated server with backups, ops, etc. to keep the peace. It would be an RP-heavy server, with factions, guilds, etc... so if you're the mining type, you'd be in the Miners' guild, if you prefer to craft things you'd be in the Artisans' Guild, if you are the foresty-elf type you'd be in the Lumberjacks' Guild, etc. We would all work together to make a grand central city and then you'd be free to explore and make your own place—if you so desired. If you'd be interested, please let us know—we'd love to be able to bring together the community in such a way but hosting a game server is a bit expensive. We could probably arrange a low subscription fee in the realm of $5 a month ($30 for 6 months play time); but of course all that would come down to how much interest the idea would draw (and whether such a thing would be all right by Mojang Specifications).

To the future!

UPDATE: Our website is up! Go to --> http://squishyfrogstudios.com <-- You'll be able to order the game from the Store page! You do still need to set up an AlertPay account until our site verification is complete.

With the engine functional and art coming in, it's time to start the preorders. Remember that the first 25 preorders will receive a small cameo in the game. We also appreciate donations (your money helps fund the games' development), and will reward any donations of more than $10 (above the cost of the game) with a much larger cameo, like a secondary character (roommate, teacher, etc).

We will be using money earned from preorders to set up web hosting that can support the bandwidth requirements of game hosting (it's expensive, which is why we don't currently have a site).

WHAT DOES A PREORDER GET ME?
When you preorder a Squishy Frog Studios game, you get a guaranteed finished product first and foremost. You will get a SquishyFrogStudios account, which you will use to access your unique key that unlocks the final game. Your SFS account will also give you access to alpha and beta versions of the game to test (and report bugs). Finally, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping an up-and-coming studio produce quality games for you to play.

Here are a few reasons you should use AlertPay (even and especially if you already have a PayPal account):

1) AlertPay does not use moral value judgements in determining "acceptable content". Their EULA is based entirely on the legal status of the material you are selling/buying. PayPal does not allow you to buy/sell digital adult products using their service—AletPay does, making it the furry's digital money service of choice. (Note: AlertPay did temporarily drop FurAffinity due to cub pornography; it's important to note that child pornography of any nature is in very shaky legal ground and therefore it was in both AlertPay and FA's best interest to drop it)

2) PayPal abuses its power. Whatever side you take on the WikiLeaks situation, it is hardly a reason for PayPal to suddenly freeze the site's assets, especially since no legal action has been taken by the government against WikiLeaks and therefore nothing illegal was actually perpetrated by the company. It was a blatant ass-covering (or perhaps even a vicious strike); do you really want your money in the hands of that kind of company?

Follow us on froggered

It is my pleasure to introduce  hobartstarr to our lineup of developers. He showed up on our doorstep just as we were ready to chuck Java out the window and offered his programming expertise. He has extensive experience in adult games and we look forward bringing that expertise to our games.

We've established a payment form, and it will be AlertPay. We highly recommend AlertPay over PayPal, and suggest that if you use PayPal to purchase adult material, or especially if you sell it, that you switch as quickly as possible.

PayPal is an excellent service but its user agreement is unusually moralistic for a business, putting very strict limitations on what can and can't be sold using their services. The most notable is that most adult material cannot be sold using PayPal, and if they feel it necessary, they can audit your account and even strip you of it—which includes freezing your PayPal balance (which means you can't get your money).

It isn't just adult materials, either: firearms, for example, are prohibited.

AlertPay's user agreement is more sensible. They do charge a fifty cent fee to withdraw your money via bank transfer, but of course your bank charges you to use certain ATMs so who cares? The only exorbitant fees are for credit card withdrawals, and who seriously uses PayPal/AlertPay as a credit card?

Anyway, the whole point is to let you know we are nearing the preorder time and are ready to accept payment.

EDIT: It is not necessary to open an AlertPay account to purchase the games—we can accept standard credit cards. This is something of a PSA to encourage users to switch to a more professional electronic funds company.

Hey there furry fans! We're looking to get hosting for our site and first major projects, Never U™ and Forever State™. The sooner we have hosting, the sooner we can start alpha testing—which means the sooner you can play the game.

So here's the scoop: pretty soon we'll be posting some screenshots and teasers to give you an idea of what's to come. When that happens, we'll be offering the games at a special pre-order price to the first 25 comers: $10 for one game or $15 for both games (save $5!).

For their help in getting us off the ground, these 25 pre-orders will each have their character featured in an easter-egg cameo in the game.

So make sure you're watching for the beginning of the sales! We'll continue to take pre-orders after the first 25 (up to 2000), but only the first 25 will receive the cameo so don't miss it!