Yet another year at Pembroke Academy, where students celebrate by dressing up for Halloween and see who can get the most treats, compete for best costume and enjoy a range of fun activities and games!

This year, the female protag, Blythe, was dressed as a cute witch and it must've been pretty effective, as she managed to fill her bucket with tons of yummy treats!~

Happy Halloween! Let us know how your Halloween went in the comment section, what spooky or adorable costume did you go with? Extra points for those crinkly butts out there this year! :P

Love the chibi art? Want your own OC or character commission work on a budget? Look no further!~ 

@Bandyrash_ Offers plenty of options ranging from $15-60usd! Not just chibi art either, and she's very open to many kinks/fetishes being acceptable. So, what are you waiting for? DM her, or secure a commission slot on her Vgen page today! ^^ (Click the @ url to be sent directly to her Twitter page.)

[Bandy's Vgen page for commission slots!] 
https://vgen.co/Bandyrash_ 

[Art credits: @Bandyrash_ ]

If you've missed our previous post earlier this month, one of the main things we've been focusing on is hiring a new CG artist.

The short version is that Ajose, our previous long-standing CG artist that used to handle the drawing phases stepped down. Technically.. <.< They haven't replied to any messages of mine since around March of this year and I tried holding out hope as long as we could, but after talking to his buddy Marxe, who handles the bg details, color/rendering phases for CG art.

It's clear to me that we needed to move on and do our best to find a new artist who could mimic the existing style nearly 1:1.

So, much of this month has been really busy with tackling this. In the start of the month, we had 25+ artists reach out with their pages, example work, details, etc. Once processed, we narrowed it down to roughly 5 artists that seemed the most promising.

In the past week, we had 2 artists from that narrowed selection cut out of the list. One was sort of a last minute second thoughts thing, where it didn't sound like it'd workout long-term and I respect them for that. It's much better to know prior to working together if it doesn't seem like it'll work out, vs a few months or a year down the road.

The other artist provided a test commission and unfortunately, it just doesn't seem like a solid fit for our project.

That leaves us with 3 promising artists. One already provided their test commission and it's looking great so far! The other 2 artists, one should be providing their test commission this week. The other one, I haven't heard from since the 12th and I'm giving them the chance to confirm if they're working on a test commission or not. <.<

I'm expecting to have a decision made by early November for our new CG artist being hired and the plan heading into next month is to provide them with 2 new CG scenes to be worked on.

Marxe currently has ram problems with his computer and so we're looking to get that fixed for him asap, so he can continue on the CG scene he's nearly finished with and then he'll begin working alongside the new artist we hire.

Besides the hiring process, we have been working ahead on upcoming content and I have to apologize for it taking a bit longer than expected. There's quite a bit of stuff going on behind the scenes with the written scripts to boost the quality across the board.

The big thing is balancing more fan service mixed with comedy throughout episodes, but in general we're adjusting the pacing of the game as a whole. That way, if there's a more serious dramatic scene involved, the follow-up scene should steer away from feeling too dramatic and give a break from that, while also feeling like it belongs naturally.

One thing I've been really trying to hammer just right is episode 5's free roaming scenario, which gives the player 5-6 options that feels more in control for the player to break up the linear experience. Not only should these feel that way, but ultimately, they should be fun experiences.

We're trying to improve more on the comedy and fan service mainly, and some of that has required some thinking outside the box to mix the two without feeling too out of place.

In short, we're looking to deliver better experiences with the game's content and while much of this will be seen with the rest of episode 5's content coming soon. We'll see the majority of it in the follow-up release that'll cover earlier episodes.

{When to expect content?}  

Take the following with a grain of salt, as little bumps in the road might affect these dates slightly. But we shouldn't expect massive delays.

-November 8-9th = v0.22 Episode 5 Demo Access!
-November 8-9th = New Public Release Build!

(The demo will be provided to any active and inactive supporters who've spent $5 or more. You'll receive a direct message from us with a special link to download the demo from. The content included in this demo will mainly focus on the free roaming scenarios, giving players about a little over an hour of content, with 5-6 unique scenarios focused on introductions to some background oc and non-oc students, with the highlight being flashback moments involving Miki, Erika, Nova, Rachel, Juliet and Heather.)

(The public will receive the current version of the game that's been support exclusive for a long time. This will give the public fans access to Juliet/Rachel's scene, Heather's scene and Zoey/Lola's scene before it ends. Roughly a little over a hour of content.)

-November 15-16th = v0.22 Episode 5 Full Access!

($5 active and inactive supporters will receive access to the full version of v0.22, which includes the free roaming scenario content present in the demo outlined above. Along with, 3 additional scenes, which should be around 2 hours of content roughly.)

Our plan after these releases is to get things back to normal, and so the below is a tiny bit more up in the air. But we're looking to keep things steady and continue along.

-December 6-7th = v0.22 Episode 5 Full Access! 
-December 6-7th = v0.23 QoL Episodes 1 Access!

(The public will receive access to v0.22 in full, which will contain everything outlined above for content.)

($5+ active supporters will gain access to v0.23, which will provide you with the entirety of Episode 1's content, which will now give players access to the female protagonist being playable, new art added, new written scenes included, better focus on the main story, and much more with quality of life improvements being made. Expect around 2-3 hours of content.)

From this point forward, we'd ideally be looking at monthly releases for both public and supporters. The way we handle that normally is with that last mention above, where on the same day that supporters gain access to the latest content, the public gain access to the previous version of the game. 

That way, supporters have their hands on the latest content for around a month, along with other perks for their month of support. 

The dates below are subject to change due to the holiday season.

-December 20-30th = v0.23 QoL Episode 1 Access!
-December 20-30th = v0.24 QoL Episode 2 Access!

(The public will gain access to v0.23, which will feature exactly what's listed above for that.)

($5+ active supporters will gain access to v0.24, which will give the entirety of Episode 2's content, now with access to the female protagonist being playable, new art added, new written scenes included, better focus on the main story, and much more! Expect around 2 hours of content.)

The releases for December should put us back on track with how we normally handle content. We have plans along the way to toss out mini bonuses for being an active supporter of our Subscribestar/Fanbox long before the public has access to these. Mainly, we want to give back over time where it's fitting, given we've hit some rough waters with development leading up to this point. 

Once in a while, we'll try to offer fun bonuses to our public fans that seems fair too. But we'll really be trying to keep things balanced, so that supporting our project feels good in terms of what you're receiving on a monthly basis. 

With all of this said, we'll toss out a few posts this week focusing on art previews and for early next week, we'll toss out our first "Pembroke Academy Newsletter" which will cover general news, along with development updates, previews on how things are coming along and there might be a bit more in-depth previews for supporters, but we'll provide enough teases with the previews publicly as well.

From everyone at Messy Studios~

Forgot to toss this post on Subscribestar/Fanbox, but it applies to these platforms as well!

The short tl;dr version of our original post is that we're taking a mini hiatus period until Oct 6-7th before making posts again. This is because of recent events taking place and trying to make the most of our time recently to get content out asap before anything else could possibly delay that any further.

When we return to making posts once again, our ideal plan is to toss out at least 1-2 posts per week across our platforms, both public and support exclusive posts. This should include general news about the development, previews, voting polls, and more!

Behind the scenes, things have been a bit rough lately, which has also caused less for us to share or show off too.

Outside of the writing, editing and programming trio. There hasn't been too much to share from our artists lately, for a number of reasons and some might be personal. So, I'll try to avoid saying too much with that... But let me split up what everyone's been up to recently as a general update before next week when we have more to share!

[Writing, Editing, and Programing]

I don't want to spill too much about what we've been doing recently, because I think it'll be more surprising if we visually showcase it. All I will say is that, we're hammering out the last few things into this weekend.

Part of what's slowed things down, is that we're leaning into the main story in a very exciting manner and this has been laid out and planned for a very long time in development. We just recently sorted out the exact timeline of events and how these play out in-game, with twists and turns for the story ahead!

I think it'll make a lot more sense as we share this in-game with everyone, because for some perspective.. We have a document dedicated to the main story itself, and that's about 30 pages of detailed information, timeline of events and making sure everything makes sense within the world setting of Messy Academy.

This is very important, because when certain elements of the main story are revealed here shortly. It'll easily stir up some discussion, theories and possibly confusion? To say the least.. It'll be a turning point for the game, and we understand that there will be a lot of questions and we'll be trying to avoid spoiling the story when answering said questions..

But, we want everyone to know that we've spent a ton of time ensuring everyone who loves the game for what it is currently, will still enjoy the direction of events being unveiled through the story, for some.. It might even increase excitement as we continue along!

In short, we've spent a lot of time making sure everyone who enjoys the game currently, will still enjoy the game even after these moments in the story reveal themselves. Of course, as mentioned, we'll host some Q&A regarding this at a later date and we'll do our best to be clear what players can fully expect, so that there isn't any confusion.

[Art Team]

This is where things have been a bit awkward lately, and I'll mention each area of the art team separately.

Sprite art has slowed down quite a bit, but even besides that. A lot of the sprite art that is being done in 2025 has been very spoiler heavy in terms of the main story. I've been waiting until we showcase these in-game through the story, before showcasing art previews for them, only because if I revealed some of this now.. It'd only bring a lot of questions with it, and so we do want to share more sprite art with everyone, but.. It'll be towards the end of this year.

Background art on the other hand has been coming along each month, we've been completing one every month. We've actually fallen a bit behind on sharing previews for these during the Summer, and so you can full expect to see some of these throughout October!

Chibi art has been more on the slower side this year, not that we haven't had stuff popup that's finished. But, just some personal things taking shape for our artist and splitting their focus on other commissions to reach monthly goals for money needs, etc. They've been providing me updates on a good number of chibi sticker/emoji's that'll be added to Discord and in-game through the phone interface system we're working on adding into the game.

There's currently 5 of these for the main nine girls in the cast so far! Even if we don't have finalized previews for these yet, we'll be sharing the sketch/final lines previews in October!

CG art requires it's own dedicated mentions for good reason... So the rest will cover that and what's going on without getting too personal. For the sake of explaining, our CG art is handled by two people: Ajose & Marxe. (Ajose handles the drawing phases. Marxe handles bg's, coloring and rendering.)

Earlier in 2025, I believe the last time I received word from Ajose was in February? March? Since then, I haven't had any word from him. This has happened in the previous year on a shorter scale time frame, where he was gone for two months while his country had issues going on, directly affecting power and other limitations to continue work. But in those past events, he had returned and continued work again.

Sadly that isn't the case this time. I actually don't know the details and I didn't mean to pry his buddy Marxe into sharing anything that he might've known, but the short answer I was able to receive in the last two months, is that Ajose is most likely not returning to art. Which sounded more like a broad thing, like.. It isn't just not wishing to continue on this project, but rather, he's unable to or due to other reasons, isn't continuing with his art in general.

Of course this puts things in a rough spot for the project, as we've worked with both Ajose and Marxe for easily 4 years. We have a set CG art style created for the game that was mainly done by Ajose, with his buddy Marxe of course helping too. So, without Ajose being around, we're looking to begin the hiring process for a new cg artist.

The problem is one that I think many might realize instantly with visual novels. That being, typically as a player, you expect a fairly consistent visual for how the game appears from start to finish, right? Well, in our case, we have much of the cg art done for about half of the game technically, but.. As a player, you'll go through the first 7-8 hours of the experience under the impression of how CG art looks and then suddenly be met with what is very clearly a vastly different style or appearance.

That's kind of our problem to solve in hiring a new artist to take over for Ajose, because we're clearly seeking someone who has good foundation studies in art. (Anatomy, figure drawing, perspective, etc.) But on top of that, someone who is okay with doing nsfw content featured in the game, knowing how to draw said content in a appealing way too.

That's without even considering if said artist can mimic the current CG art style close enough to keep things consistent or if they'll struggle, or where we draw the line in the sand and go "Okay, we just have to accept this vs nothing."

As you can probably tell, this has been something I was hoping to put off, hence we're 7-8 months since I have last heard from Ajose before officially moving on. Because naturally, I was holding out hope that Ajose might return like last time, then that hope was replaced with acceptance that he might not be returning, followed by.. "How do I find a fitting artist to replace them? Will Marxe stick around and how's this new process going to look? etc"

It's a lot to consider and I've even read through what other indie developers have for advice about the topic of handling artists who ghost them, leave suddenly or other reasons. The best advice I gained from that is similar to what Ajose and Marxe were doing by default, where it's best to split up the tasks amongst a number of artists.

What I mean by that is, as highlighted Ajose would do the drawing phases and then his job on a new CG scene was complete. The rest of the process was up to Marxe to finish it. Splitting up the workload like this is ideally what I'd be seeking still for a new artist joining the project.

The other key advice gained was when starting a project, setup a style that is easy to adapt to. Which is a bit confusing in what its saying.. But more or less, the style shouldn't be that artist's set style they're known for, otherwise when needing another artist to come along, the new artist will have a harder time adapting to a more complex style the previous artist had.

All-in-all.. This is why CG art has been very slow this year, and even though Marxe has been doing some heavy lifting on solely doing some art himself. He has also had a lot going on since Spring with moving across country, fixing up this new home and getting settled. So, that hasn't helped much either.

During October, most likely by this weekend leading into next week. I'll begin officially hiring a new long-term artist to take Ajose's role in the project. If by chance you know someone or are an artist yourself who has the qualifications needed. Please reach out to us in the comments, or if you're in the Discord Server, feel free to DM Princess Bridget directly. Just understand this will be a process that'll most likely take us much of October in the background of active development, to talk to artists, process things and test artists out lightly before we actually decide on someone.

[Music]

New music has been coming along every month for the most part of 2025, some of these we have to share as well during October as we've fallen behind on showcasing some of them. A lot of these new tracks will be heard in our upcoming supporter build/release, along with the majority being for the QoL updates applied to episodes 1 & 2.

[GUI Art]

I'm happy to say, we've officially finished all GUI work needed for Messy Academy in the past month or two! There might be some very minor UI work needed for the game that we've overlooked, but the main elements for everything is completed and we've been adding much of this into the game engine, so we'll see a lot of this with the next update released. Some stuff like the phone interface will be seen later, as that'll be introduced with the QoL additions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{Original post below taken from our Twitter!}

There's a mini hiatus period for posts this week until next week! Which means no Miki's Super Secret Fan Mail Monday this week, or other posts being planned this week. We'll resume posts by Oct 6-7th.

We apologize for this, but with some recent personal events taking place and foreboding weather ahead, we're trying to make the most of our time prior to any bigger disruptions, ensuring we get new game content released asap!

Recently our place lost partial power and we had a electrician come out to inspect everything. Which turned out, our outside main power source hookup plug is melting and we're unsure if it has been like this long before we moved, or if it only got this bad in recent months.

In order to keep this place cooled down, we run multiple AC units and naturally that draws a ton of power, about 4-5 amps per unit, let alone other devices being used daily. 

It turns out the outside panel is for 50 amps of service and so, we're exceeding this and there's some questions still for the guy when he comes back out tomorrow to replace the plug and restore power to the area without it.

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to this line of work, but it sounds like we'd want a device that monitors what our active amp usage is with phone alerts. That's just one part of the solution, as we can't upgrade the service to a higher amp usage. 

So, our options are limit what we run majorly and hope that prevents a fire hazard and even then, that's rough with how hot it gets here year round. The other option is investing into a solar system that could handle some of the power load, possibly running 2 AC units on solar power/battery bank for at least 6+ hours daily. (We get plenty of sun.)

But researching into that, my results showed we'd be investing $2,000-$3,000 easily to handle running something like that. Although, solar power would be useful as we're in a hurricane prone area known to flood and in the past, it has taken days, if not weeks for regular power to be restored.

Which brings me to another issue ahead of us, hurricane season.

We're thankful so far that nothing has impacted us yet, but October is known for being really active and possibly the worst for activity. So, besides recent power issues to sort out, we're trying not to get disrupted due to weather as well.

That said, we need some time and so we're putting a hiatus on posts we made this week, until next Monday to help juggle some additional time towards some problems, along with getting new game content released asap before anything else can delay it. 

By next Monday, besides the regular Miki's Monday post. We'll let Miki reveal some other stuff, since she's been over the moon to announce it herself. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait!