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!

This was meant to be put out yesterday, but I've had very little time to sit at my computer lately with the moving process, so I apologize for that!

Speaking of which! This will be the last post prior to the move! There will be two other posts that are set to automatically be posted for me, one for Thursday and then again on Saturday. One of those will be bg art previews, while the other will be previews for showing off recent work done on ep 5's Bridget gaming cg moment updated in the new artstyle!

Since those posts will be posted automatically, they won't appear in the Discord's #project-news channel. It will be updated when I can gain access to internet.

The road trip will begin Thursday morning and the goal is to be at the new place by Saturday night, with Easter Sunday being our full day in the new state and overall starting the process of moving things in, getting the internet sorted out and getting everything prepped for our pets, etc.

During the trip and when I have time during the next week or so, I'll continue work on the project from my work laptop using my phone's hotspot when possible. I still don't have a date set for v0.22 as of this news post, but I have to imagine we're very close and its a matter of seeing the GitHub updated and let the programmer know if everything is fine. 

v0.23 will consist of the female protagonist being playable for episodes 1 & 2, along with the overall QoL additions and improvements being made to those earlier episodes mostly in the form of offering better gameplay choices and pacing of such things. There are some new written scenes fitted in-between existing ones, one of these without spoiling too much.. Is our introduction to the headmistress running the school!

While that might seem like it'll ruin some aspects of the mystery unfolding, I ensure you, it'll only leave more questions and help spark the protagonist's curious nature into trying to discover the truth!

We'll also see John take a backseat in the story, his role won't be visually around as much outside of being connected to one route and possibly some light main story mentions. But in his place, we'll be introduced to Tara! She will take over as John's role as the main teacher the protagonist and buddies are introduced to, and she is quite a interesting character! One that should be fun and I'm sure the replacement of John's role as a teacher with her won't be a hurtful one for many once they get the chance to see how she comes across.

I don't want to ramble on about v0.23 much more than that for now, but I will say this, work on episodes 1 & 2 has been underway for a while now. So, the ideal plan is that once we get the ball rolling with one release, the next will follow on a set schedule with it being pretty much ready outside of the programming needs. 

We'd like to really push to deliver consistent content in a timely manner beyond that, but of course first we'll need to showcase that we can prove it with actual results. So, naturally take that as lightly as needed.

To wrap things up, there's some really big and exciting things for MA coming up, it's mainly just getting them actually out to everyone of course! But once we do, we're really hopeful that the work that's been sunk into these updates will met with excitement, mainly v0.23 with the number of gameplay additions and we'll continue to take feedback on these systems introduced to tweak them, add to areas based on suggestions and really.. We want to provide players with a more personal unique experience, while knowing our limits of how far to push the boundaries.

With that said, I wish I had some screenshot previews to share today. But clearly those will be in my hands to provide sometime later this month ideally. I chatted with the programmer yesterday briefly while I had the chance to sit at my computer and they're hard at work still. Soon as I hear from them with updates, I'll provide updates for everyone that same day! 

Thank you for being more than patient with us and we're excited for the next chapter in MA's game development!~

Buckle up, it's time for another dev report!~

I'd like to begin by apologizing, as I'm sure many are aware that we've had troubles with setting estimated dates for upcoming game update/releases and failing to deliver on said dates.

This has been a difficult subject, because I receive a large range of fans/supporters who all think we should handle things a certain way that others wouldn't agree with or vice versa. Some people want some general estimate and get upset if none is given, while others naturally get more upset when we toss out estimates and fail to deliver.

Well, I think last month, I've taken a lot of the feedback as a collective from all angles within our Discord Server to form a path forward.

That being... Moving forward, we will only mention dates within our posts or comments, if we're 100% sure that's the actual date for content being released. This means, we have the content completely ready for said date upon announcement.

We may change this outlook as we get going again and things look differently, but for the time being, we have a number of elements at play that make it difficult to pinpoint or estimate set dates.

With that out of the way, let's get into this report!~

This post will be split up into sections indicated by "[~Text~]" and the section below it, we're going to try to keep these condensed, but the main points will be outlined early on before we move into recent development team related mentions.

[~Behind The Scenes: Upcoming Content~]

{Recap: Moving process has taken its toll on me, way more than I expected and I admit, I underestimated just how mentally and physically draining the past 2-3 weeks has been. Programmer had some issues preventing them from working on v0.22 further, but they're continuing that and was hoping I'd have stuff to show today from that. No date is set for v0.22 yet, but mini news posts are planned for a week from now and again after the move. v0.23 is shaping up as a pretty big update, with much of the writing and additions involved being done.}

First up, v0.22! What's the status? What's taking so long?

The truth is, there's a mixture of things on-going that's caused delays. The biggest one is something I've mentioned before I believe, which is that I'm moving across country. This has been a very long and difficult process for many months, with a lot of mental strain and more recently, physical strain as a lot is being done on a daily basis to sort everything out.

I really don't like to openly speak too publicly of my personal life in this manner, but I've been getting 5 to 6 hours of sleep on a daily basis for multiple days in a row, which has taken its toll on me naturally. Every few days, I finally crash and get some proper sleep, but this isn't a intentional choice.

This is the result of how extremely busy I've been recently between classes, personal tasks, project work, cleaning, packing and in general preparing for the moving process as a whole. There's a lot involved with this move and to say it's been a lot is really a understatement. I plan out my daily schedule pretty smartly and even still, the result is that I don't have enough time in a given day when juggling the moving related stuff to get done still.

I know it'll sound like yet another excuse, but I'm trying to juggle everything the best I can and I think I can fully admit in the past 2-3 weeks, it's just too much to take on currently.

Once the move happens in a little over a week from now and we're settled in, things should proceed more normally. I fully intend on working ahead on the writing content, so that we keep the ball rolling after v0.22 is ready. I just have to apologize for the lack of released content naturally, but my hope is that as the drop of new content happens, it'll be met with excitement and even more so if we prove that v0.23 follows after it within a timely manner.

Our programmer had some difficulties as well recently, causing delays and there's not much I can do to speed that up. I know a mention of replacing people popped up, but even if I humor that idea, it still takes time for a new person to adjust to a different project they're not used to.

I think its easy to assume there's a one way solution to suggest, but actually putting it into practice brings with it a number of issues as well. There's pros and cons to every approach, not dismissing the idea that when backed to a corner and all other options have been exhausted, that you shouldn't proceed in some manner. But each decision made will bring with it some level of good, bad or other.

Moving along...

I've confirmed that our programmer is working on content and while I haven't received a new Github update from them yet, I should be expecting one very soon. I was honestly hoping I'd have one to showcase some updated screenshots or footage teasers for v0.22 content being worked on, anything visually to showcase.

While I don't have much to show here today with that, I will provide some in a mini update post before the move takes place and then another once I'm setup at the new location.

Behind-the-scenes... Writing content for v0.23 has been going smoothly and we're looking to make that a pretty exciting update, as that'll feature the quality of life improvements to gameplay and additions for Episode 1 & 2 together! Including the option to play through said content as male or female protagonists!

A lot of v0.23 will focus on giving more power to the players, as we're looking to provide you with changing the protagonist's names to your liking. Besides that, there's a lot more small and big player choices and gameplay elements we're working on to better the overall gameplay pacing.

While we can't make every choice super impactful in-game, we do want more of them in varying degrees. Some choices might not have their impact seen soon after choosing set choices either. There will be choices that might not seem like it'd impact X or Y later, but it'll show itself and take you by surprise! 

Overall, we want the player experience to have plenty of moments along the on-rails story to take breaks from that with fun, exciting and enjoyable aspects that reward you! Sometimes rewarding you by leaning into your unique preferences!

There's a lot to unpack with that in the near future, but we're gathering visuals to properly showcase a lot of this in action. I'm pretty excited to share a lot of that with everyone and it's been a long, long process in putting it all together and figuring out how to handle everything we want to include into the game without bloating it out of reasonable scope.

[~Team Developments~]

{Background Art Developments}

During March, we shared the recent bg art previews for how the unique dorm rooms are looking for the main cast. There was some minor things that needed touched up still, but those are being handled by another artist.

Two of these touch-ups were the addition of 2D drawn clothing added to Nova and Miki's dorms. It was pointed out that some textures looked off and light fixes are being done for those as well.

Alongside sharing these previews, our bg artist has been working on two updates to existing bg's last month. Both are pretty much ready, except one is just waiting on a 2D texture for a sign. These bg's would be the courtyard and festival courtyard!

We'll be sharing previews of these two bg's during April!~

While we're still waiting on this month's funding to fully process, we suspect that bg art will take a backseat for April once we're done with the above. The priority on work is shifting elsewhere and we're getting caught up on paying for what's recently completed. Expect bg art to resume during May.

{CG Art Developments}

Last month Marxe made good progress on two cg scenes! Both are related to episode 5 content.

One of these can't be brought up due to spoilers for upcoming content, but that one is finished and it was updating the old artstyle for the existing cg scene, while including new variants. The other one is nearly done, which is a updated cg of Bridget in the gaming club. That also includes new variants and I can speak more openly with that one.

During the gaming club, the protagonist ends up with Bridget trying to use her powers to distract him from beating her in a video game! When all else seems to be failing, she resorts to the ultimate attack... Using her diaper! Animation frames for Bridget's messing outcome have been upgraded, along with brand new animations for a wetting outcome!

This will depend on player preferences prior to facing against Bridget.

While Marxe has been finishing up work on that during last month, we've received word that Ajose's city has been without power again recently. >.< (He's from Venezuela.) Which explains his recent MIA status since late February.

Funding from this month will most likely go towards providing Marxe with another cg scene for him to work on during April, since he can't proceed with some of the other paid work that's split between him and Ajose sadly.

{Sprite Art Developments}

Last month, we shared previews for Miki's favorite cutesy mascot duo Fizzy & Fuzzy, two adorable magical foxes that are featured in her dorm room as bedding and posters merch! Those textures added to the bg were done by her, but we also saw previews for the magic duo in general too!

Continuing the theme, we later shared previews of more merch that Miki owns in the form of a new underwear set and outfit she owns to be featured in-game! Although.. Rumor has it, Pembroke Academy has created some Fizzy & Fuzzy themed diapers, but hey! It's just a rumor right? ..Right?

Perhaps we'll see soon enough!~

While much of last month's work was focused on the mascot duo textures, reference material and Miki's outfit. Lisa did begin work on textures that'll be featured in the festival courtyard bg preview we have planned for April, which is nearly finished!

I suspect with our funding for this month, we'll begin to see two sprite characters being worked on. One was already in the works, but due to spoilers we can't say much about them yet. The other character has some spoilers involved as well, so it might be an awkward month as these previews with more spoiler heavy content are put off until closer to when they appear in-game.

{Chibi CG Art Developments}

We sadly didn't have much progress done during last month on chibi related work, but I did get some previews for the first chibi cg scene that's coming along and it features the female protagonist Blythe!

So, I'll be sharing some early concept previews of that during April!~

I'm currently awaiting to hear from Bandy and see how to proceed with work on chibi art needs for April, but they have at least 3 chibi cg scenes paid for to work on, along with some chibi sticker/emoji's. So, we might put more priority of this month's funding towards a different area and let her catch up on paid work for a bit.

{GUI Art Developments}

We're very close to wrapping up the GUI needs for the game! During March, they finished the Student Files screen and elements related to that. This screen will let players look through pages of the game's cast, read up their information, see their visuals and outfits, etc!

Besides completing that, they're now working on the DLC Episodes screen and elements! We sorted out the details for how to proceed on that screen visually, so I suspect we could see that finished up this month or into May.

Once that's wrapped up, we'll keep in close touch with ds-san in case there's little elements of UI stuff we need, but this should completely finish what we need for the game when it comes to GUI work.

{SFX & Music Developments}

Finally, ending things with music and sfx!

We had a little break for them during February, so last month we proceeded forward with having them work on a new music track and previews for how that's coming along were provided a little over a week ago!

I suspect that'll probably be finished up very soon and then we'll begin working on having them look over the Episode 1 & 2 QoL content as a whole to create sfx to match up with the visual moments that feel most impactful or important.

The current music track being worked on is supposed to fit as a background track for the dorm room locations, but it's one variant out of three being done.

As mentioned, with the QoL content coming along behind-the-scenes, we want to have much of that ready in ideal shape. So, we'll put some of the funding from April towards that and hope to share some preview footage examples of it in action with our overview of QoL additions and improvements!~

[~Development Report Conclusion~]

That's it for yet another dev report! Once again, I can't express how sorry I am with things recently. I understand the frustration involved and I hope we can avoid that as much as possible moving forward with our approach to not estimating dates until we have content completely ready without any doubt, then set the dates.

But just in general besides that, I know things hasn't been smooth for a while and really without opening up with a lot of personal happenings involving this moving process.. It's difficult to paint a picture of how greatly I underestimated the process. >.<

I tried to explain generally as much as I can, but even if I was comfortable sharing every private detail involved. It'd honestly be a very lengthy post and I wouldn't know how to properly word it all in order without rambling... Just know that it's been very difficult and I say that not as a excuse for the shortcomings of the project recently, just generally, it's been difficult personally for me with everything involved for this move and there's a lot of emotions attached with it, besides the mental and physical strain.

Pushing that aside, I'll be sorting out posts and setting a few of those on a schedule for them to automatically post for me during the awkward period of the move and getting settled in. Expect two posts during next week, probably set for Tuesday and Thursday!

[~Disclaimers & Project Information~]

If this is your time with us and you enjoy the game project, please consider supporting us at the low cost of our $5 tier on Subscribestar! Besides the public versions of the game we release, supporters can expect a number of exclusive posts up to 2 posts per week ranging from news updates, art previews, voting polls and much more! Some months do vary based on our development, but should be expected each month is the benefit of supporter exclusive versions of the game.

Those versions are always one update ahead of what we provide for the public for free to give thanks for your support! The support is what provides our team with covering the costs to add new assets into the game and keep development active.

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 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<
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(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)
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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 possible scam attempts.

~ From all of us at Messy Studios! ~