Hi everyone! I hope you've all been doing well into 2024 so far, hopefully avoiding issues like I did back in January with a lot of stressful issues reaching the tipping point. ^^"

I wanted to start this off with a personal mention, for those who are concerned with how I'm doing since the issues that really pushed me over the edge in January. I'm doing much better! For a while I was a bit worried and felt like a robot when it came to emotions. (Figured I was just emotionally spent from the panic attack, but part of me was wondering if the event had impacted me somehow.)

I'm very thankful to say I feel back to my normal self again, emotionally intact and not a robot! XD It took a bit to sink back into classes, since I had taken a week off during the highlight of that stuff taking place, so catching up and trying to keep up with the day to day tasks was a bit of a struggle for a moment there too.

Mainly I just wanted to briefly start this off with the personal mention stuff for those who were concerned. <3

Now for MA stuff!

When can we expect the next releases and what are the plans with those?

The first release to sort out is v0.20 pt 3 for public and pt 4 for supporters. In case you missed the plans for that, the public version of pt 3 will include Bridget's scene and two other scenes. Support version of pt 4 will have a total of 6 scenes and will be the finishing point for episode 5.

We're mainly touching up the quality stuff involved with episode 5 and once you all see how that looks, it should make the wait a bit worth it. Granted we aren't trying to withhold the content by any means.

v0.20 pt 3 & pt 4 should be ready within the last week of February, I do prefer to release new content on the weekends as its less of a pain for my schedule. <.< But February is a odd month and so, I'm willing to prepare myself to get the release out during the last week. Once again, I can't thank everyone enough for being more than patient with us. <3

In efforts to make up for the bumpy transition into 2024, besides the releases mentioned above... We have content coming very early in March during the first week or two.

This content is going to be part of a big announcement and feature art previews with it, so sadly that's all I can afford to say about it at this time. (Trust me when I say, I've been trying to bite my tongue on this for a while!) This content/announcement should be a huge thing for MA and we're curious how people will enjoy it and see how we can take in feedback to work in stuff if possible. ^^

Later in March, we'll have our typical content release by then. This will be v0.21 and it'll also include the above content within it, in case anyone prefers to hold off on the above download until v0.21 hits.

v0.21 will have us back to our normal release schedule, which is a new release every month. The oddball releases that feature stuff like "v0.20 pt 1, 2, 3" or "v0.19.5" are going away! In other words, v0.21 and then v0.22 will follow in April, v0.23 in May, etc.

The only exception to that rule will be releases titled "Hotfix" which is in the case of a event, where a major bug or issue is present with a given release. We can dive into fixing the issue asap and put out a fixed version within the days after a release. In those cases and how to tell releases that are hotfixes or just normal, they'll look like this. v0.21 = normal release, no bugs/issues. v0.21 Hotfix = fixed version, suggesting v0.21 had major bugs/issues and this is the ideal release.

Don't worry, we'll be sure to let everyone know about those when the time comes. This is our roadmap from now to the end of March, during that month. We'll kick it off with more details on v0.21 and what the content will entail, but just expect it'll be route content. :P

Posts have been lacking lately on Substar, Pixiv, Kickstarter, etc.

>.< This is something that I noticed recently and its unintentional. Right now, its just a awkward month in terms of what I can put out for posts right now, but this will improve a bit. The ideal setup is that we put out 2 or 3 posts a week.

What we should have coming before long is monthly voting polls related to new content or other focuses, behind the scenes script posts, preview teaser screenshots for upcoming content, art collection posts and some other stuff.

Our artists have been busy, but we don't really have much to showcase right now outside of some cg art related stuff. This is because Lisa is working on some a lot of story spoiler related stuff for sprites, with maybe 4-5 things that remain that can be shown off before she finishes up all the sprite needs for the project. ^^"

Rest assured, the lack of posts in February hasn't gone unnoticed! I plan to toss a bit more out this month to catch up a bit, but March will for sure be a more activate month with posts left and right.

With that all said, I've rambled on long enough. Expect some screenshots and video footage teasers of the upcoming content sometime next week! (These teaser previews will avoid major spoilers with the content.)

Before I begin, in case anyone hasn't been up-to-date with whats been happening in the past week for me personally, not to even mention this Winter season as a whole. Its been really stressful and with early last week's problem happening, it finally set me over the tipping point. The short of it is, our basement flooded, I had a bad panic attack, been recovering mentally/physically since that episode.

The good news is that with my recent doctor's visit and just recovering in the past week since the event. I feel nearly back to normal now, but I was so fatigued, worn out and sore. My breathing felt off and so.. I had my vitals taken the other day with my visit, xrays and blood work done to be extra safe.. Since there's other things I could've been exposed to during the whole event and just having that peace of mind alone is good.

I'm sorry for anyone who has felt put-off with our content delivery during January. The week of that mess taking place was meant to be a huge undertaking with getting stuff done and wrapped up for our next release, but there's been all of this dropped on me and so.. I want to say right now.

I'm okay for one! Second, we're looking to get the content that was meant to be out in January, out soon as possible, early in February! We have more in store for kicking off March right away with some major news for the project and extra content with that, but we're being really quiet on that mention until we have everything ready first.

If you'd like to read more about the troubles going on this past Winter and the past week for my personal happenings, you should be able to access those posts for free below!
https://subscribestar.adult/posts/1150686

I'd also like to thank everyone who supported us during January! The continued support since the Patreon purge has been much appreciated! <3 I know things have been crazy to kick off 2024, very unexpected... But we have a lot planned for the coming months and hopefully, no more major things for me to deal with personally for a while. >.<

Let's jump into plans and team stuff!

[~Messy Studios Team~]

[~Dev Plans/Story & Programming~]

Our new programmer has been doing a lot of quality fixes! There were some stuff with ep 5 content that was meant to be a bit more animated, but it wasn't a major priority with having Artie on-board to help in-between getting a new programmer to join, so we skipped over on some features for ep 5. Those are now in the game and will be seen with v0.20 pt 4!

Which brings me to another point...

In order to make the rest of the v0.20 series of releases less confusing. We're wrapping it all up in one final release called "v0.20 pt 4" for supporters. v0.20 pt 3 will include Bridget's scene, along with 2 additional scenes to make up to the wait on our public version of the game.

The faster we put ep 5 or in other words, the v0.20 series behind us. The faster we can dive into the route episodes!

Our programmer has not only fixed up stuff for ep 5 to make the experience ideal, but they have also been fixing up the game in general on the coding end. That way, there should be less awkward issues that are quality related. The releases planned for both support and public here soon will also include new gui elements/screens.

They've been working to get our finalized save/load, config/settings, choice buttons and new textbox into the game! These will be seen in the next releases all at once!

Our goal with March is to showcase the protag's face reactions as part of the textbox and we're making sure that visually looks good, but we're sure when players get to try it out for themselves. We'll be taking in feedback in order to help improve how the game looks with that.

I wish I could go into more detail about our plans with early March, but just know that if we manage to deliver on the v0.20 release for support and public pretty soon this month. We'll have no problem with delivering what we have in mind for March and it'll be one heck of a announcement that'll possibly excite many fans for the game!

Even with that, we'd still be delivering normal content for March towards the later half of that month. Which will begin our first look into the route episode content! We'll be starting off with hopefully many people's favorite, Miki! But in case she isn't your favorite, we have plans to include Nova for that month too!

[~CG art~]

MarxeDP & AjoseMP had a slow month to kick off 2024. Hence there wasn't much to showcase during January for cg art. ^^" The goal for this month is to get a lot done and so we should ideally have quite a preview month on art!

It'll be a good mix of stuff and one of these will be revealed with our announcement in March to prevent early spoiling.

[~Sprite art~]

Lisa has started 2024 with great progress on stuff! Sadly its a bit secretive right now, but we might have a bit of other stuff to show off during February.

The reality with sprite needs is that we're honestly so close to being done with sprite stuff for the project, that a good amount of what remains is spoiler related with the mystery story. ^^" Revealing much of that in previews, would only cause major confusion and more questions before we're able to reach the point in the story when things get pretty interesting with the academy...

[~GUI~]

ds-sans has finished up the history/log screen, along with getting the textbox updated with some adjustments. I believe our next goal is starting work on the title screen, which should be really exciting! There's two concept plans being suggested, so it'll be interesting to see which one we end up going with as the finalized look for MA.

I suspect with only the cg gallery being the last thing after that, we'll probably wrap up gui needs here before May.

[~Ending~]

Once again, its been really stressful this Winter and I don't want to make more excuses with stuff, but I do hope by sharing more openly with what has been going on.. That it gives a bit more perspective to put yourself in my shoes.

Even with that said, with starting to feel normal again. I'm already starting to play catch-up on what should've been ready at the end of January. So, thank you all once again! <3

If this is your first time joining along and you enjoy the project, please do consider supporting us on Subscribestar if you aren't already! Plenty of exclusive posts are made, at least 3 new posts every week or more!

Keep yourself informed and updated on development by following Subscribestar notifications or bookmarking our >Guide Post< You can also continue to keep updated through our Itch.io page or Twitter as well!

Be alert! The only websites that are officially ran by myself (Princess Bridget) and Messy Studios working on development of Messy Academy are from the following list below. Any place otherwise is unofficial and they might be impersonating us for their own gain. Avoid payments/donating to other sources as it won't be helping fund further development into our game!

>Subscribestar<
>Pixiv Fanbox<
>Kickstarter<
>Twitter<
>Itch.io<
>Pixiv<

(You can also find our official posts/account on these sites, but due to their nature we won't include links directly.)
>F95zone< (Username: Messy Studios)
>omorashi< (Username: Bridget1999)
>tapatalk< (Username: Messy Studios)

Be alert! The one and only official Discord server for following the Messy Studios team development is this one. >>Discord<< If you've come across any other server impersonating us, be sure to report your findings with me directly and steer other's interested in our video game project away from possibly scam attempts.

~ From all of us at Messy Studios! ~

I know.. some of you may be thinking here we go again. >.< Let's just dive into the main details and then I'll fill everyone in on what my personal situation is like right now. (Hence all the madness in the past weeks.)

The big thing to announce in order to simplify things and wrap up the extreme madness that is episode 5 content. We're going to roll everything together in one final release for this month set for January 31st. This will include everything that remains for episode 5.

Why are we suddenly deciding to do this instead of v0.20 pt 3 and then pt 4?

Well.. I think even if we did release the rest of pt 3 by tomorrow. It'd be a week's difference to provide the content for pt 4. Not to make things more confusing.. It just feels like it'd be best to roll everything together into one last release and make everyone happy ideally, so that's what we're rolling with.

If for any reason, the time difference with Substar and my timezone rolls us into February 1st while I'm releasing the last part of episode 5 content. I will personally send out the exclusive download links to everyone myself to ensure you gain access for January's content release. <3

Public release will be the same day, v0.20 pt 3's content and we'll try to offer a tiny bit extra with that. February would see the differences between public vs support releases back to normal with v0.21 for supporters, rest of v0.20 content for public. Then v0.22 for supporters with v0.21 for public in March, etc.

Why the sudden change of plans?

I'm going to try my best not to rant on, but bear with me. I don't often talk about my personal life, as I'm not one for sharing too much openly in that regard, but I feel the need to shed some light on what we've been dealing with while I'm still trying to keep a leveled head and work on the project and school classes.

I live with my Brother and his gf in a house that's very old and the short of it is that the place has had a lot of problems that require a handyman. Which my Brother is not.. So, recently a lot of things have suddenly chain reacted one after the other. As we try to fix one problem, two more appear in its place. >.<

One of the first issues we've dealt with this Winter is that our furnace has been broke, which means we've been using space heaters and other means to keep warm in our bedrooms. Just our bedrooms. If we go into any other area of our house right now, it is about the exact same temp as it is outside. (Ranging between -10 to 30.) 

For perspective, if we leave any bottled water outside of our bedrooms. It will freeze solid in our house.

So, our first issue was figuring out about the furnace. Which presented us with two options. One being that we get a custom ordered part that's $1,700usd, which might or might not be the issue. Even if it isn't the fix, we'd be stuck with the part and down that money. The other option is sink $4,000 on average for a brand new furnace and costs to get it all installed on top of that, which is just too much out of our budget right now to fix.

Our next issue during the Winter has been power outages, which goes without saying in freezing cold temperatures.. Its deadly to not have any of our heat sources or power. Luckily... Knocking on wood with my bad luck recently. We do have our power fixed after we went without for a couple days and had someone come out to do a temp fix with our power line.

The recent issue on top of this mess, is that this past week.. Our water pipes froze since we have no way to keep them heated given our situation. We crossed our fingers that with our pipes freezing, that it'd hold out, but we had one pipe burst already and thankfully. We were able to turn off our main water line valve to prevent any flowing water that's thawed to not continuously flow through our house.

Now, just within the last two days.. We noticed that the pipe that leads to our main shut off valve is also busted wide open on a curved part of the line. Thankfully its completely frozen right now, but we can see a good 3-4cm opening on that pipe that is blocked by frozen water for now.. 

We've spent a good part of our day earlier today trying to patch this exposed pipe with anything and everything, because we don't know where our outside water main valve is located to shut our water off leading into the house up to that other valve that's already off. >.<

We have to hope that the pipe doesn't thaw enough to spray and flood our basement or cause other issues from now until tomorrow... But we're calling people first thing in the morning to see if we can get someone out to the house in order to locate the outside main valve and shut off access to any water coming into our house. 

That means we're now also without any water other than bottled water to use until our insurance company also gets back to us tomorrow about the burst pipes and see if they can cover even half of the costs to get things back to "normal". So, now we're currently going to a nearby laundry mat to do clothes and if we want to shower/bathe, we have to go to our parent's place. We can't wash any dishes or pots/pans to cook at the moment and anything that requires water, you get the idea..

Again, I don't typically share a lot of personal stuff and the only reason I'm sharing this stuff is to help shine some light on what our perspective of living has been like this Winter. I'm not asking for anyone to pity us, I'm simply just trying to be transparent about why this Winter between December and this month has been crazy on top of my other daily needs with school courses and chores, besides the project work.

Despite all of this madness, I've been trying to keep things moving along regardless. It's just that some of these issues with our situation are real concerns to take care of instantly and on the fly, unexpected and so.. I hope by being a bit more open with this information. It helps explain things as we try to keep the project stuff moving along steadily.

Edit: 02/02/2024 (Added the events of our basement flooding the day after, etc.)

I'll just copy/paste what I wrote in the Discord Server, because I've already typed it out many times now with talking to people about it.

Since all of this had happened, I woke up the following day and to keep it short.. It felt as if I've been hit by a truck physically and mentally. My breathing felt off, chest, back and other areas were sore and worn out. It didn't even dawn on me until after my visit to the doctors office, that adrenaline + panic attack has this kind of effect in the days or weeks afterwards.. >.<

Even 5 days now since then, I feel fatigued. Its like being sick with a mild cold without the cough, stuffy nose, but that same kind of tiredness and just feeling out of it.

What didn't dawn on me in the moment of the chaotic situation was that I had stood in a foot of water while touching our circuit breaker in order to shutoff power to the basement to prevent more problems. Not even realizing until after the fact, just how seriously terrible things could've been if I was shocked in that moment. (They say, even a little bit of moisture on your fingers while turning breaker switches on/off can shock you and be dangerous, let alone standing in water and doing it..)

I'm counting my blessings and realize that all my luck has probably been spent in that one moment to prevent what could've happened.

The main thing I want to get across is that I am okay, but I've been trying to take things slow and not over exert myself after that episode happened.. I'm still not back to normal yet, but I'm improving since then. I'm just hoping the fatigue goes away, cause its been rough.

Our basement is drained, cleaned and disinfected now.. Thanks to my Brother and his gf handling it and preventing me from helping for good reason. The same plumber that came out, is coming out this week to inspect the pipes and fix everything for that. So, one step at a time with the house troubles and everything.