Heartbeat Highschool ♥

PDF Released To Backers!
25 days ago – Sun, Feb 08, 2026 at 11:38:27 PM

Hey folks! 

If you're a backer or preordered, you should have already received a notification from DriveThruRPG to download the PDF of Heartbeat Highschool! This PDF is considered "final," which means it's most certainly not final. I'm sure you guys will find lots of things that need to be fixed, which we will take into account for the public release on February 14th. If you haven't received your link and believe you should have received one, please let us know here on Kickstarter or email me at [email protected] and I'll hook you up. 

You can use this handy feedback form to let us know if you find anything weird or messed up! (If you just want to tell us how cool we are, or have questions about the gameplay, you can do it here in the comments :) ) https://forms.gle/vcp5QYt17gv7iXyJ6 

We are going to shift gears a little bit over the next couple weeks since I have to go back to the layout mines for another project and wait for the feedback to come in. Then we'll make any necessary changes and move to the printing phase.

areyoshi and I will be at Pittsburgh Indie Expo on Sunday, March 15th. Come see us! We're gonna have some cool stuff. https://www.pieburgh.com/ 

It's been an incredible journey and a lot of hard work making Heartbeat Highschool for you guys. We can't wait to see what you all have to say about it and to have fun playing the game.

Until next time: Take care of yourselves; take care of each other. Black Lives Matter. Trans Rights are Human Rights. ACAB. Abolish Canon, Embrace Apocrypha. 

And stay gold,
--Onslaught

Nearing the Finish Line + Cards Charging February 23rd
about 1 month ago – Sun, Feb 01, 2026 at 11:41:37 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

PROOFS!~
2 months ago – Wed, Dec 24, 2025 at 06:39:37 AM

Hey folks! Quick update for you here on the eve of Christmas.

Earlier this month, we received the proofs! Then we got together and yelled and argued and marked them up with highlighters. We made decisions. We talked about what still needs done. And we're working hard on wrapping those last things up and making the book as good as it can be. We're taking a little break to celebrate the holidays, and then I'm going deep on this to get it wrapped up soon. 

We have lots of plans for the stickers and the physical decoders, so expect some cool stuff from that soon.

Until next time: Take care of yourselves; take care of each other. Black Lives Matter. Trans Rights are Human Rights. ACAB. Abolish Canon, Embrace Apocrypha.

And stay gold,
--Onslaught

PENCILS + JOSH & CHLOE
4 months ago – Thu, Nov 13, 2025 at 11:58:17 PM

Hey folks! Not a lot of preamble for this one but things are going just swimmingly now. As of this writing I just saw lineart for the last 7 characters' final art. Super jazzed for that; I can't wait to show you guys! Most of this post will be focusing on introducing some of the characters and final art, so skip this update if you don't want to be spoiled!

In the meantime, the first piece of merch has been manufactured and delivered. (Actually, it was delivered a while ago and I've just been waiting for the right update to show you.) THE PENCILS!

We actually struggled a lot with choosing the right kind of pencil to include. I'm the kind of person who really fights with themselves about exclusive merch like this. If it's a "useable" object like a pencil, notebook, or even sometimes stickers, I almost don't want to use it and just keep it pristine forever. In that spirit, I originally was looking at custom mechanical pencils--this way they could be refilled with graphite and used forever. However, I had also promised that people would receive a randomly coloured pencil, and after a while I didn't find any options that were going to be appropriately crazy coloured, 90s vibe, and be affordable. Eventually we found this amazing colour-change mood pencils from https://pencilguyshop.com, which seemingly is run by a single guy who does this. Cool!! And, we got enough of them that we'll have plenty leftover. If possible, I actually want to just include one with every order on the Kickstarter instead of just the deluxe edition.

All that said, you're not here to listen to me blather about logistics. You wanna see dem beaootiful goils.

Josh and Chloe are two of my favourite characters. (Stay tuned for someone else's opinion.)

Chloe started because I wanted a kind of "older burnout girl" character; someone who was explicitly 19 and kind of on the "wrong side" of the tracks. The idea was that she was in a band and played bass and smoked, and wasn't sure about her future. Watching her initial design come in and then talking through getting it just right was a treat. Originally we were thinking of calling this character "Logan" and leaning in to a more goth/punk girl direction, but once we had this design we changed her name and vibe a lot. 

Josh started with a very simple idea: "You seen The Social Network? The Winklevoss twins." Those guys in the movie (and in real life) seem like huge assholes, but you can create a version of that guy who isn't one. Josh eventually evolved into being a kind of empty headed guy with almost no emotional interiority, but does care about other people and being a nice person, so there's definitely something there. You'll see later that we originally had a different pose for his final art, but it didn't work on the page so we revised it to the one you see now. 

After the update we'll have apricot with design sketches and notes! We're still hard at work and have plenty to do, so keep an eye on the updates. They should be a lot more frequent now (we actually have several other final designs ready to go that we haven't shown yet) so be excited!

Until next time: Take care of yourselves; take care of each other. Black Lives Matter. Trans Rights are Human Rights. ACAB. Keep your eyes on the donut, not on the hole. 

And stay gold,
--Onslaught

apricot, here! These are some process pics for Chloe and Josh, who are VERY different people. 

They were both actually pretty easy to work out- Chloe's bottom left art was my first attempt, and she stayed pretty much the same throughout the process. Josh, on the other hand, I did the initial sketch on the far left before handing it over to Dyo to come up with the middle design. If you can guess which animated character he somewhat emulates, you win a psychic high five. If you want to know why I gave Dyo the reins for Josh, well... Not all the characters can appeal to me personally, now, can they? 

Update + SAM & DECKARD
4 months ago – Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 05:20:21 PM

Hey folks!! Everyone is hard at work on the project as we swing into the final phase. Currently, every character has initial visual design finished and bios written. There are a handful of music genres I still need to figure out, but that'll all come in time. Escher really kicked ass on the initial designs and managed to create a bunch of great new characters that everyone on the team has fallen in love with. 

While that was going down, Dyo finished up final artwork for two characters very close to our hearts, Sam and Deckard! Here's the current version of their pages in the book; this is spoilers so skip ahead if you want to be surprised in the final book!

Unfortunately we already showed you these characters in dev progress, so no progress pics this time. Next time for sure!

We are still on track to get the book finished by our internal deadlines. I've seen a bunch of in progress lineart for other new characters and I can't wait to show all of you. apricot has the concept and composition down for the special edition cover, which we hope to be able to show you something from soon. 

I'm also (finally) putting together the minigames for all the events in the game (such as field day, the promised fencing minigame, and taking your SATs) and these are shaping up to be really fun! I've done a lot of work on the planner (including the cover, which I'm sure will be super nostalgic for many) which will come as a free PDF for everyone, and is available physically as well. (You can always add it on in the Backerkit!) 

Until next time: Take care of yourselves; take care of each other. Black Lives Matter. Trans Rights are Human Rights. ACAB. Don't kill the part of you that's cringe; kill the part of you that cringes.

And stay gold,
--Onslaught