[~Pembroke Academy Newsletter #5 (Public)~]

Just a tiny note before we begin! From this newsletter forward, we'll be releasing a newsletter that says "(Support)" and one with "(Public)" in the title. This is so we can openly discuss upcoming content for both the supporter exclusive version, aka the latest content in development, while also providing our public fans news dedicated to the upcoming release they'll be expecting.

With that out of the way, let's dive into what's coming ahead in January for our public fans! Along with our rough roadmap heading into February as of right now.

We'll begin with some teaser screenshots to hype everyone up! (Much of this was seen last newsletter.)

v0.22 (demo 2) will become available to the public fans January 10th! This content will continue from where things left off shortly after the protagonist headed off to the nurse's office.

Not long afterwards, the protagonist finds themselves waiting for their buddies to text them back in order to meet up again. That way the group can check out a few more clubs before it gets too late, but the protagonist grows impatient and upon noticing a few nearby fliers for some clubs, they decide they probably have enough time to check one out before they hear back from their buddies.

This is when the protagonist is given five different clubs to explore, but be careful! You only have time to check one of these out! (Of course, making a save right before the choices will let you easily check them all out regardless. :P )

Demo 2 provides players with the drama, volleyball, anime, and science club scenarios. The gymnastics club scenario won't lead into any new content for the public build.

One important thing to note with v0.22 (demo 2) is that there's some level of visuals that aren't ideal and up to our typical quality. Mainly slight issues with transition effects, some minor sprite related visual issues, or text related fixes that shouldn't impact enjoyment of the content, but we're aware of these issues.

We're looking to properly test and fix all of this later in January with our support builds ahead, its just that we've been playing catch up since late November, and so we're still getting a hold on our active development and speed of tasks being done.

We want to provide content on a monthly basis, and we've been doing this since November. But, we also haven't had much time to dedicate to testing and applying fixes needed, unless we halt releases and naturally we don't want to do that.

In short, we're busting our butts off through January to get caught up, more so after the busy holiday season! <3

In terms of new content mentioned, there's 4 out of 5 club scenarios to choose from. Roughly what's there in terms of word count, is 23-26k word count. Estimated playtime is around 2 hours, depending on reading speed.

[~Dev Team Mentions~]
(These mentions are what's actively being worked for supporter exclusive content.)

The last week or so has been a little bumpy with the holiday season. For some of us on the team, we still got quite a bit done in-between and even still, I'm playing catch up to ensure we're making good strides on progress for development. ^^

Writing, editing, and programming recently has been focused on lightly fixing up scene 9 this past week into the weekend, with that expected to receive its editing pass next week, before the programmer receives it.

Currently the programmer is working on scene 8 for the engine, and the scene ended up being 17-18k in word count and there's a CG scene moment involved, so there's a lot they'll be working on this upcoming week on scene 8.

Editing wise, we'll have scene 9 ready for the editing pass during this upcoming week as well! Once that's done, it'll be added to the programmer's active work needed for this month.

Writing wise, I'm combing through and fixing dialogue for scene 9 and expect to have that done early next week. Then, scene 10 will ideally be ready for editing by the 13th.

A lot of the time sink ahead will be for our programmer, as there's a lot to add in with scenes 8, 9, and 10. Then our testing phase and polishing for fixes being made, getting all of this ready as v0.22 (full) set for February.

We just hope everyone understands we're trying to ensure everyone is always actively doing something each week on development needs, so we can steadily get new content out each month and ideally without feeling super rushed or seeing content suffer due to being rushed, etc. <3

Art team mentions below!

CG art as mentioned, we're working on finishing up the CG art for scene 8 and the pacing for that looks like they'll finish it by the middle of January. We'll have previews to share for concept and finalized previews for that during this month for supporters!

Besides that, we're simply trying to stay ahead on what CG art is needed. Luckily, much of episode 1 & 2's CG art for the QoL updates are fully ready, so we'll power ahead on what remains for episodes 3 & 4, etc. (We know there's some CG scenes without our female protagonist still, so we'll have those ready ahead of time too.)

Sprite art wise, we've been working on some story related spoiler content. Nothing I can really openly share at this time, but we do want to share previews asap! The soonest we'll see a lot of this stuff for sprite art previews will come shortly after v0.23's release.

Besides that, we recently got stink line visuals created for the sprites! If you're just learning now, we're adding Live2D animations to the sprite character art and we recently shared how Miki's idle animation will roughly look in-game.

(See video attached at the bottom of the post.)

There's a lot we're looking to animate with Live2D besides character's idle animations. There's their outfits for one, another thing is animating when a character farts, and for many, most importantly, we're looking to animate when character's wet or mess their diapers!

The stink line visual effects will be animated and seen after a character has messed themselves, and so there's a lot we want to get done with Live2D. A lot of it will depend heavily on our monthly funding, and we hope we can see it increase as we move through 2026 majorly as we continue to share more hyped previews and in-game for the Live2D stuff being added to Messy Academy! ^^

Our mission for January for Live2D is have Miki's sprite all ready and begin testing her in Ren'py. We're toying with the idea of a mini sandbox scene where it'd be used for development testing mainly, but we could provide this in-game for players to briefly see all the functions involved with Miki to give a very clear view of what we're doing with all the characters, etc.

With our priority focuses being on writing, editing, programming, CG and sprite art, along with Live2D. This means our funding is mainly being poured into these elements for 2026.

If there's funds left over besides those things for a given month, then we'll have more music being worked on, and later on sfx too. But given our limited funds and budget across the team, we can't exactly take all of this on at once, unless our funding increases even more. ^^"

We're going to do what we can regardless, but of course the higher our monthly funding goals are hit. The easier it'll be for us to cover costs on more areas of development. For the time being, we figure most people want art naturally. :P So, we're focusing fully on that with priorities!

(Not that we didn't in the past, but just in general spreading out what funding we receive across everything is becoming more difficult, so we're pushing lower priorities on the back burner until funding increases and even then, we're handling things that seems in the best interest of supporters.)

Regarding music though, we do have a new background music track being worked on for January. It was actually paid for in December, and so we'll see how things look for January after tackling the higher priority payments on the team.

[~Release Roadmap~]

-Public Access-
v0.22 (demo 2) - January 10th.

[Demo 2 includes the drama, volleyball, anime, and science club free roaming scenarios, each scenario has connections to the main girls, with these ones being linked to Miki, Nova, Erika, and Rachel. Roughly two hours of content for playtime. 24-26k word count total.]

-Public Access-
v0.22 (demo 3) - February 14th.

[Demo 3 includes the gymnastics club free roaming scenario, with two branching choices within linked to Juliet or Heather based on player choices made within the scenario. Roughly a hour and a half of content for playtime. 15-18k word count total.]

-Public Access-
v0.22 (full) - March ??

[The full release will include episode 5's scene 8, 9, and 10. Each scene has their own unique CG scene moments with plenty of variants based on player choices made in the moment. Roughly expected to be three hours of content for playtime. 30-31k word count total.]

[~Closing Statements~]

There's a lot being worked on into 2026! We have a good bit of art previews we're looking forward to sharing with supporters this month as well!

We're most excited to provide more content this month with the wrapping up of the scenario content. We wanted to provide more content sooner, but we're still getting a good handle on what we can do within a matter of four to five weeks in development.

Once again, there's a lot of moving gears with game development, even for a visual novel. So, we try to make the most of the weekdays, with myself pouring easily 45+ hours each week into development related to writing, management, and other areas I fill in to keep things moving steadily.

One goal for 2026 I'd personally love to see us obtain, is hitting $3,000usd per month in funding. We're about halfway through, despite our goals saying we've reached $2,000. ^^" Its a known issue for Subscribestar they're looking into.

If we can hit that goal, it'd not only help majorly with improving the game as a whole, but mostly to help fuel more CG art and Live2D being added sooner, etc. But, it'd also allow myself to take a fair payment % cut for my own efforts poured into the game development.

This is important, because right now, I'm pouring 45+ hours per week into development as if it were my job. I actually enjoy doing this and working on game development as a whole, but as 2026 pans out, I'll have to cover monthly costs and bills one way or another.

The ideal dream is being able to continue what I'm doing now for the project as my career, continuing to pour 45+ hours per week into it, receiving just enough to cover monthly needs and bills, etc. Without having to take up a job elsewhere.

Of course if I have to find work somewhere to help cover my monthly costs down the road from now, that'll have a impact on how much content we see done for Messy Academy from month to month. We'll still try to get what we can done monthly even if that's the case, but it'll really slow things down if I'm working a 40+ hour job outside the project. :S

So, I really hope with the content we have planned for the months ahead and surprises along the way. It'll allow this dream to be realized! <3

Hope everyone's New Year is off to a good start!~
-Messy Studios