[~5th Year Anniversary Celebration~]

It's hard to believe it's been 5 years since we've released our first build of the game. The project has always been a passion hobbyist one for myself and even if we cleared enough funding to live comfortably from what we do. It'd only allow me to continue this burning passion forward, allowing me to focus on it as my dream career instead!

I still have hopes that one day this might be a possibility, but it isn't any easier than a regular day job with how much effort is put into it. ^^" Even still, it's something that I could easily see myself doing for the rest of my life if given the opportunity!

We'll see how things pan out in the years to come and once MA has fully finished, as we already have plans for our future project. We're being very careful about how we approach the next project and all I can say about that for the time being is this: It'll be a project that current supporters and fans of Messy Academy will easily enjoy just as much, if not greater than our current project.

My line of thought, is not to turn our backs on our supporters and fans in favor of chasing after people who have no interest in our games, while losing the dedicated community we've formed up to that point. Will there be new things in the next project to appeal to new groups? Sure, but one thing development teams and companies seem to forget easily along the way is that you never turn your back on what got you to where you stand today or within the future.

I'm sure we all are well aware of some game companies that had humble beginnings and you have fond memories of their early works, but their recent works feel like a dried out husk in comparison? That's what we'd like to avoid as we move beyond Messy Academy.

Many lessons have been learnt through the past 5 years, as some of you might not be aware. I went into game development completely blind and it sure does show when you get to see our early foundations! XD

These lessons are ever evolving as we continue development on Messy Academy and I already have an idea for how we'll dive into the next project without bumping into some of the issues we've faced during current development.

I could reflect back on things all day if given the chance... But we have a series of anniversary posts coming out throughout this month that'll fully cover all of that!

So, before we get into the exciting reveal below! I'd like to personally thank everyone, regardless if you consider yourself a fan or follower, a supporter new or old, perhaps you helped us with our successful Kickstarter back in late 2020? No matter where you stand with this project and our team, we honestly would not be here today celebrating 5 years of development if it weren't for all of you. The game wouldn't even be what it is today without all of you and so from deep within my heart, I appreciate every one of you and thank you all for being with us through this messy journey of game development! <3

With that said, 5 years is quite a milestone! So, clearly we had to do something pretty stellar to celebrate the occasion! Without further ado, I present Messy Academy's finalized title screen and illustration done by Lisa, our sprite artist!

I'm still stunned by how beautiful it turned out! It's been very difficult for me to keep my mouth shut in the past few months, not to ruin the surprise of this! ^^"

I knew that with the milestone celebration, we still needed the finalized title screen done anyways and it clicked in my head one day early in 2024. Lisa is a talented artist and her designs on the sprite characters has been a major highlight to me since the beginning when working with her and I had seen glimpses of her personal illustrations before, so I knew I had to request her to help design the title screen illustration!

So, I came to her about the idea and discussed costs and provided her with a deadline. In total I believe we had about 6-7 months to get this fully finished and I don't want to speak for Lisa, but I do believe she had plenty of time without feeling rushed or pressured by the deadline with how early I came to her about it. ^^

I knew from the start that the illustration had to feature the main cast of girls outside of Pembroke Academy, but it'd be a tight squeeze to display nine characters, but I think Lisa managed to do a excellent job! 

The idea was that the cast would be posing for a group photo, with the camera laid on the ground and so we have everyone posing for the picture! Some characters are more into it than others clearly, looking at you Heather! :P

Speaking of the poses, that was quite a task to figure out what suited each character! Even as the creator of the world and characters, we still had to account for how to display fitting poses, while making sure we could fit the other characters in as well. We knew that there had to be some casual peeks of diaper action within the illustration naturally.

Now, with the overall idea figured out between Lisa and I. There was the technical side of it for the title screen to keep in mind. 

My idea here is still a work in progress, but we have the assets for the illustration already created with this plan in mind. That is, a fresh player starting the game will be presented with just the background of this illustration at first. Then, as you play through the game and meet Erika and save your progress. Upon returning to the title screen or starting the game again, you'd now be presented with Erika by herself. Then as you meet Miki, she too would appear, etc.

I like this idea to showcase and make it feel as if you're building up the illustration during episodes 1-5, but on the other side of things. A fresh player to the game wouldn't see the illustration in it's full glory until they progress up to episode 5. So, we're still figuring out how this will be presented in-game and finalized from a technical point of view.

Would you believe me if I said this is just one version of the illustration? ...That's right, we also have a version that has the cast in their casual clothing! The idea with this is that later into the routes, the title screen would change to reflect that the school semester is coming closer to an end before summer.

There is technically a 3rd version, but that involves heavy spoilers for the story. That version will display later into the game after a certain point within the story and it'll be a turning point for the game as a whole.

Speaking of the technical side of things. Ds-sans is our GUI artist and they did the title screen details we can see in the first image, which was also a challenge in making sure I worked closely with Lisa and ds-sans so that the finished title screen overview and illustration paired together nicely. Even towards the end, we had some adjustments needed to be made with the GUI to ensure everything worked just perfectly.

I'm sure the images speak louder than my own works in this regard! ^^

I knew for a long time that I wanted to see the cast in Lisa's style, to see what a illustration by her would look like and how closely the characters would match their sprite counterparts. Of course, a illustration allows for more detail than what the sprites can display, but still! I think Lisa did a outstanding job in showcasing the cast in this illustration and I couldn't ask for a better highlight to celebrate the milestone in this project's development!

We can't forget ds-sans and their work here either! If not for the finalized GUI visuals they provided, the finalized title screen wouldn't feel the same! The game as a whole would feel much different without their amazingly wonderful GUI art! 

In closing... 

I'm extremely over-the-moon with the finalized title screen and how everything turned out! I couldn't be prouder of the results and we hope this is just as exciting of a highlight to kick off our 5th year anniversary as it is for us on the team!

Despite our shortcomings with game development this year, we've begun our new approach to delivering smaller portions of content in a more realistic manner, which should allow us to deliver new content on a monthly basis once more! Our first update to showcase this new approach is underway with a bit more bumps in the road than we first expected...

But even with that in mind, I've been testing the new content and even tonight, more testing is being done. We have about 2/3rds of the content ready and my goal is to get this first update out by this Sunday! I still have to rely on our programmer to provide me with what remains or fix things soon as they can too, but they've been pushing themselves this past week to get everything ready. They know just as much as I do, how important new content is to many of you and we want to share that to join in with your excitement just as much! <3

Once that update is out, it should be smooth sailing and I think actions will speak louder than words... So, once the update is out. We'll begin highlighting details about the next update asap and ideally showcase through our actions, that our new approach is going to work out long-term with the team's personal schedule much better than it previously did.

Thank you all for the 5 years so far! We can't wait to look back on how things proceed from here!