This isn’t the update we’d hoped to write, but alas, we’ve reached the end of the campaign without reaching our goal.

We’re still holding our heads high! So many of you put your faith in us, and expressed your enthusiasm for the project, and we’re extremely humbled and grateful for your support!

We’re proud of the work we did on the project, and we’re sad to have to put it back on the shelf. We hope we can revisit Part-Time Hero someday, and give Magical Pink and the other aspiring heroes the chance to fulfill their dreams. If that day comes, we hope you’ll support us then too!

What does this mean for the team? As we said in a previous update, Future Club will likely have to go into hibernation for some amount of time. We don’t know how long it will take to reemerge, or even if that time will ever come, but we’ve all loved working together. We have so many cool ideas that we want to share with you, and we hope to have the chance to do so in the future.

This isn’t goodbye, but things may be quiet for who knows how long.

Thank you for all of your love and support!

“We are bound together by the future. We all share the same tomorrow.”

Sincerely,

Hi all!

There’s less than ten days of the campaign to go and we currently stand at just over 22% of our goal. To be radically honest, if we want to make our goal we’ll have to be making at least $16,000 a day–coming close to matching the enthusiasm we saw on the first day of our campaign–to make it. However, we soldier on–why not?

We went over the severity of the situation in our last update in enough detail, so let’s concentrate on one of the examples of the benefits if we do make it. As we’ve previously announced, we’ll be working with Eighty Sixed to fulfill all physical rewards, and they’ve sent us over our planned t-shirt design that all backers at Hero Lead and above will receive:

Below is a closer look at the main design. This is still fairly rough – some basic line art and a rough color pass. The final version would have the usual level of polish you can expect from Eighty Sixed!

We love the design but didn’t want to be too prescriptive during the campaign about what color shirt we’d go with so we’re looking to leave that to backers: let us know in the comments or on our Bluesky which color you like best!

We’re still loving the fan-art we’re seeing! Here are some of the cool pieces we’re seeing out there!

Art by CH Animates (https://x.com/CHanimation42)

Art by Wiirdo (https://x.com/Wiirdo)

Art by Dayrin1104 (https://x.com/Dayrin1104)

Be sure to tag us if you’ve taken a fancy to any of the characters we’ve shared and drawn them!

Love,
Future Club

Hello friends!

Well, we’re just over half way through the campaign, and we’ve not quite reached 20% of our goal. We opened with a huge amount of momentum of which you were all part of–and we’re so tremendously grateful for. But we won’t pretend that we don’t have a huge amount of ground to make up if we want to make Part-Time Hero: I'm Broke But I Have To Save The World.

In fact, we won’t sugar coat this at all. Since its inception, Future Club has watched a lot of good indie teams go under or fracture simply because funding wasn’t available–and we didn’t want to be one of those teams.  We’ve been lucky enough to have some client work to keep us going while we worked for the past year on Part-Time Hero, but when that unfortunately and unexpectedly ended, we were at a crossroads: either put Future Club into hibernation, or attempt to get the game that we’ve been putting our heart and soul into made by taking it to the audience.

We made sure to be honest–we wouldn’t ask for an unrealistic goal that couldn’t support our team. We made sure we had our production plan sorted. We made sure we would get the game into players’ hands as soon as possible via Early Access–and we’ve all worked unpaid to make this happen. Part-Time Hero will just not get made unless we reach our goal; we accepted this, and we had to try.

The thing is: we know it’s not the best time. Part-Time Hero represented what we knew: under capitalism, the cards are stacked against you. We saw, we see, ourselves in Magical Pink: someone who knows they can do something incredible if they can just keep their head above water long enough–and we know that’s true of everyone out there too. And sometimes it’s hard to fund someone else’s dream if you’re already struggling to fund your own. We really do love you no matter what. There are no recriminations here.

But we also don’t want to go down without a fight. Every single backer, every single dollar towards our campaign makes it more likely Part-Time Hero will get made and Future Club can stay together. So if you know anyone who might be interested in backing Part-Time Hero, let them know. If you want to know any more about this game, engage with us on Bluesky and we’ll be happy to tell you about what Part-Time Hero could be. And every piece of fan art we’ve already received has worked to make this all worth it. If you’ve fallen in love with the characters as much as we have, draw ‘em! Here’s a great piece by Abbi on Bluesky:

So we don’t have to give up–yet. This is a journey we’re on together, with a little more effort we can reach the destination.

Love,

Future Club

It’s 12 days into the Kickstarter and we’ve raised almost 20% of the total–there’s plenty left to be done, but we’re thankful to everyone who has pitched in so far. As we’ve received some questions on this, we’d like to clarify that from the moment of our launch in Early Access on Steam, Part-Time Hero: I'm Broke But I Have To Save The World! will be available on Windows PC, Mac and Linux–so if you have anyone you know who is holding out for Mac or Linux, let ‘em know!

Design Spotlight: The City Deck

One of the unique aspects of Part-Time Hero’s two-stage life-sim is that in the Schedule phase, you aren’t just playing cards from your deck to perform Magical Pink’s actions–you’re playing with and against the City deck: a deck of cards that represent the status of the city that Magical Pink calls her home. Each turn not just new locations on which to play your cards can be drawn, but new enemies, rivals, and events can appear!

As you play, you’ll not only be able to shape Magical Pink’s schedule deck, but also manipulate the City deck–succeed at defeating threats to the city and see it become a paradise–or fail and see beloved locations succumb to ruin. No playthrough will be the same way twice!

Call to Action

With just 18 days to go and over $160,000 to raise, we know there’s still a mountain to climb. At Future Club, we didn’t want to over-promise with an “achievable” goal and then not be able to deliver–we’re asking you for what we need to support our team and finish this project that we’ve already been working on for a year. It's a challenging time for the industry and for us as a studio, and we are being realistic about what it costs to create a game like this and what is required to keep our team together.

If you’ve supported us, or if you haven’t, the best way to help is to get the word out. Share our Kickstarter page on your socials, but also directly talk to friends and others who you think this game might be a match for. Know anyone in the press, let them know! Have a TikTok following? Why not make a video talking about the project? Excited by Magical Pink, Romeo Lucifer or any of the other characters we’ve showcased? We’d love to see your fan art! For example, we’ve already received this beautiful piece from Leigha and we’d love to see more!

We are so excited to make this game for you and we love the enthusiasm we’ve seen so far! So let’s get this over the line, together!

Concept Art Roundup

Before we go, since the Kickstarter launch we’ve been sharing concept art on our socials and we thought it would be nice to share some of it here with you too. Here’s some highlights:

Magical Pink

Witchy Green

Romeo Lucifer

Follow along on Bluesky to see more of these as they come in!

Love,

Future Club