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  

Just a quickie everyone!~ 

I had mentioned this in the Discord server yesterday, but I forgot to make this post with it. ;_;

We originally had planned to add some additional content to the supporter exclusive demo on Nov 29th, along with getting the Android versions for everything sorted out with that. Our programmer last sent me a message last Monday, nearly a week now and I'm patiently waiting to receive word from them on a few tasks that need addressed.

We'll have our next newsletter out on Dec 6th, and so we'll cover some light teasers and updated information on how things are coming along during that post. 

Starting in December, we'll also get voting polls going once again and we're updating some of accessible benefits for $10-25 support tiers, keeping up with those on a monthly basis moving forward. <3 We'll get quite a bit of that done through this upcoming week, so keep an eye out!

If all pans out for new content, we're on the roadmap of having the rest of Episode 5's content in the full release of v0.22 labeled "v0.22 (full)" to deter if it's the demo or not. That is easily on the path of being out ideally in the first half of December, the sooner the better! That'll be for supporters, while the public will gain access to the previous demo content build of v0.22 around that time.

From there, we'd like to dive right into Episode 1's QoL additions and fixes and we're expecting that to be fully ready within week 1 or 2 of January. We'll keep everyone updated in the newsletters through December and forward! <3

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~