Ahead of Girlfailure Art Club’s 2027 launch on PC (Steam), Japanese indie developer and publisher Artodria has announced a crowdfunding campaign for the upcoming romance visual novel. The campaign will be run on Campfire from October 24 to December 26, with funds going toward enhancing the game’s illustrations, music, videos, and language support.
Girlfailure Art Club follows the story of Mamoru Gasai (the protagonist’s default name), a second-year student at Akeba Academy who joins his school’s art club and is “forced” to spend his school year surrounded by four quirky otaku girls: Rinne, Shoko, Kana, and Yuri.
Rinne is obsessed with obscure subculture and the underground scene, Shoko is a massive fan of shonen manga, Kana is a moe-voiced girl aiming to become an anime seiyuu, and Yuri is a hardcore self-shipper (making her the only non-romanceable art club member).
Girlfailure Art Club was started by Artdoria in an effort to fill the “cringey otaku girl” visual novel niche, with parts of the story being inspired by their own experiences of being an art member in high school. With more than six endings and roughly 8-20 hours of play, the game promises “second-hand embarrassment from all the 2010s otaku culture references,” and a happy ending after you make your favorite high school girl fall in love with you.
The Campfire campaign’s target goal is 2 million JPY (roughly $13k USD), with three stretch goals having also been added. Notably, if the campaign raises 5 million JPY ($32k USD), support for additional languages will be implemented. Currently, Japanese, English, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese are confirmed to be supported.
Other stretch goals include additional in-game art, a new opening sequence, and even an original theme song and background music composed by Tenmon, who worked on several Makoto Shinkai films such as 5 Centimeters Per Second and Children Who Chase Lost Voices. While voice acting hasn’t been confirmed as a stretch goal, the developers are asking fans to “stay tuned for further announcements.”
According to the Campfire campaign, Girlfailure Art Club’s script has already been finalized. The developers are now dividing their time between working on the game’s graphics (which are 40% complete), script implementation (10% complete), and translation (15% complete).
On a related note, this isn’t the first time Artdoria has turned to fans to help fund Girlfailure Art Club. Back in April, it was announced that they would be launching an official development blog on Pixiv Fanbox to collect funds for the visual novel. Aside from details on how the project would be funded, plans for a localized release and voice actors were confirmed.
Girlfailure Art Club is set to release in 2027 for Windows (Steam).
Related:
