[~New Years 2023 News Post!~]

I'd like to begin our last news post for 2023 by once again saying from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has followed along with us in 2023 and for those who have decided to follow us over here to substar. The support received during December didn't exactly reach out $900 goal that we had coming in from Patreon prior to the purge that happened on Nov 28th.. >.<

But, even despite us not reaching the goal. We've still hit $700, which is very close! I don't mention this goal and money in a bad way.. The only real concern with our funding is that it all goes right into the team that works on MA development. (This covers our artists costs, editor, coding, music needs and more.)

I've said it long ago in the past on my behalf, but for me. This is really a passion project and I don't take much money if at all for my own income. If I take anything, it's just to help cover tax season every year for the project.

Not to ramble, as this post will be big anyways. ^^" I deeply thank everyone for the amazing support and December was a bumpy month with everything going on from finals/exams before break, losing power at our house for a few days, holidays and trying to still find time for personal enjoyment vs project time. :S It's been wild to say the least!

What we've seen in December is just the beginning, as we'll go into January with more exclusive posts, game content delivered and more!

Before we dive into a look back on 2023, I'd like to give the heads about v0.20 content. Our programmer that was with us up until November had decided part way, that they had too much going on with other projects and left us in a odd spot. Artie, our original programmer who helped out during 2020-2021 or so, despite having his own project he actively works on, decided to lend a helping hand these past 2 months for part of November and most of December where possible.

This was a generous offer to help our team, because without it. I would've still had to find a new programmer that'd fit for the long term of our project and it's possible we would've had no content for 2023 delivered at all.

I'm happy to say, thanks to Artie's help. I've talked with multiple programmers and we have our solid programmer to officially begin on January 1st with our team! So, there's no worries with that situation, but be mindful January could have some awkward adjustments as they get comfortable with the project and how we do things.

That said, Artie's offer on help had a deadline and without trying to rush and make bigger issues for the new programmer, we're looking to get the next few scenes for v0.20 content out right away in January with the new programmer using these to test themselves. Then the final release for v0.20 content should be out by mid January we're predicting.

(The new programmer already has a list of bugs/issues to fix and so we're trying not to hammer them with a mountain of work on their first month on the team and force them to run away before we've even started.)

I understand that many are looking forward to the rest of v0.20 content and we're right there with you! I don't want to delay the rest of that content any longer myself, trust me! We're so close to route content and that has me very pumped up, as I'm sure many of you are for seeing what we have in store for the character stories to be told and finding out more about Pembroke Academy's ulterior motives...

With that said, please bear with us just a tiny bit as we head into January. With the holidays behind us by that point, it'll be a busy month for the project, but what we've shown in the past 2 months is just our beginning of moving things steadily along once again. <3

[Looking back on 2023]

The year was huge in progress with our art team! As we were heading into 2023, I knew some adjusting was needed with art as a whole. I reached out to our sprite artist Lisa and our cg artists MarxeDP and AjoseMp, setting us on the journey to update a lot of stuff for the finalized look of the game visually! It isn't ideal to do this later in a project, but it's been a learning experience that'll be taken into account for future projects.

Throughout 2023, we've seen all of the sprite character art fully updated! While we still have a few things remaining for sprite needs on the project as we head into 2024, that list is very small. It'll be bittersweet to announce that we're finally done with sprite needs for the project by Spring 2024, but Lisa has been with our team since late 2019. I honestly can't wait to see what she has ahead of her in life and where her career will take her, with finishing up her schooling this year. ^^

CG art still has a bit to update into 2024, but a ton of it was sorted through during 2023. We also saw a ton of improvements with cg art this year with many things like focus on animation introduced into the game, which has been lightly seen with the current supporter version of the game that'll be out for the public early in January.

We still have some plans to improve on aspects for the cg art for the new year, but alongside that. We want to get a lot of new cg art done as well! When we're officially done with sprite art, we'll be dedicating extra funding towards more cg art and possibly hiring another artist to help in this regard. We want to make sure the visual direction is still very close though, but this would be for around Spring into Summer of 2024.

As a whole, the art team did a ton of work on the project in 2023! We've shared this in-game with v0.20, showcasing the finalized sprite art for all the characters so far. Even some finalized cg art has been seen in v0.20 and we still have plans for returning to earlier content to replace the earlier art with their finalized versions and new variants/animation as well!

We hope everyone has seen the massive amount of work put into the art side of the project this past year!

This brings us around to my personal mission to begin 2024 with on writing! I have plans to slowly return to earlier episodes and apply QOL (Quality of Life) fixes to some areas of writing and scenes, but mainly it'll focus on adding the finalized needs for art or music direction.

There are some new scenes being mixed and fitted into earlier episodes, with episode 1 as our first focus point. This will include a new addition to the intro of the game's scene where the guys arrive, giving some in-game context to their backstory for how they even ended up at the school in the first place. The scenes with John being introduced are being reworked, with him being replaced with the new character Tera, who acts as the main teacher character for the guys and so some fixes with dialogue and how that feels is needed.

There is plans to introduce a brand new scene near the point when Brandon and Erika visit the Headmaster's office to pick up his dorm room key, but I can't expand on that yet. The other known change is for the nurse's office to add additional information that there's two offices in the building with more than one nurse helping out.

Besides that, we'll be working in more choices that feel meaningful and impactful to your personal experience. It sounds like a lot and not to cause alarm... We're not doing these as our main priority, new content focused on route content is our main priority. This QOL stuff will be slowly worked on in the background for when we're able to sink time into it.

Much of what we've begin to see with episode 5 on the coding side will be applied to earlier episodes as well. Sprite animate effects, transition effects and trying to bring more life to the game as a whole. In some cases like Miki's Dream, additions like a combat system and mini-games will be added and we hope to include fun moments like this in place of some existing choice areas for the base game.

Since Miki's Dream was meant to be DLC content, we'll hold off on touching that content for now though.

I'd also like to announce that our editor PhoenixGR has been a huge help recently and will continue to help improve the quality of the writing! Often having another pair of eyes look over what has been written and helping add their input or suggest a different way of handling sentences or paragraphs can be a major help!

I've already found their help with episode 5's content to be very welcomed and if you've picked up on any changes with the overall quality on the written/editing skills in the recent episode compared to previous ones. You can technically thank them and myself for our combined efforts in trying to present the best for our fans out there! <3

I spoke about Artie helping out, but really without him rolling up his sleeves and jumping in to help. We probably would be in a very awkward spot with the project, even more than people know or can tell. ^^" While I had wished we could've done more, it was just very awkward timing with being at the busy time of the year for everyone.

Typically in the past, our team as a whole takes December off from development, but with the Patreon purge on Nov 28th hitting us and still trying to work through other issues, on top of delivering content... I chose to wave away that typical break period for myself and our editor joined me, along with Artie in order for us to do what we could still despite our own busy schedules with the holiday season.

Just understand that we hope with what we've been able to do despite everything tossed our way in the past 2 months. We hope it still proves that we're moving into 2024 with a renewed energy that has been missing from the project for quite a period of time.

With on more mention about 2023, the year was a big one for music! ComposerJF officially finished the soundtrack for MA, ending on 24 total tracks for the game! Much of the year's music focused on character themes being finished up and our needs for the base game on music is finished! We're looking to work with ComposerJF in the future with our DLC content for MA and I can't wait!

Our next journey in sound direction is the addition of ambience/sfx being introduced to MA! This is planned for Spring/Summer of 2024. It could be sooner based on funding we receive, but expect the mentioned period to be when we'll begin work on this.

2024 forward has a mix of finishing up stuff for the project on our team and introducing new stuff still. We highly suspect that 2024 will be a exciting year for MA fans as the train is in motion once again with the end of 2023 and we're only adding more fuel to the engine to keep it moving into January forward!

We hope to see many of you join us into the new year! ^^

~Messy Studios