[~5th Year Anniversary Post #1~]

Can you believe it? It feels like it was just yesterday! It’s been 5 years to this day when development first began on Messy Academy!

A lot has happened since then, like many games during development. We’ve had our ups and downs along the way, but the game wouldn’t be in the state it is today if it weren’t for the help of many others on our team, Messy Studios!

Many of those who have helped shape the game have come and left along the way naturally as they’ve finished up their contributions, while a few of us continue chugging along and will continue to do so, until we’ve fully finished the game.

We have a ton still ahead of us for content, as we near wrapping up episode 5. We will still have in total: 72 episodes to complete!

Not to fear, as those are route episodes spread out amongst nine characters, each one featuring 8 episodes uniquely to them. These route episodes are also much smaller than the game’s base episodes 1-5 and so we’ll soon begin to chip away at these route episodes this Fall!

With that said, this is our 5th year anniversary milestone post! Get comfy, because this will be a pretty big post that’ll reflect upon the past 5 years of development on Messy Academy, behind the scenes discussions, previews, cut content and much more from those early days leading up to today!

But before we officially dive in, we can’t forget our deepest appreciation to all of our fans and supporters throughout the past 5 years. Just as important as those who have contributed to the team, we wouldn’t be here today without the overall support! Regardless if that support is purely through comments, likes or perhaps funding us during the early years on Patreon, maybe perhaps you helped aid our very successful Kickstarter campaign, or you’re new and have recently found us through Subscribestar or other sources!

Whichever way you’ve showed your support to the project and team, we’re extremely thankful for each and everyone of you. <3

(Below will cover our reflection during 2018 up to 2020. This is part of a series of posts being released this month, each part is limited to 20 images and so that's why we've had to split this majorly huge anniversary post up into multiple posts! The later posts will cover our later years through the month.)

[Year 0]

~Before game development~

The year was 2018, it had to be late into that year and I was still pretty fresh at my old day job. That’s roughly when the idea in its simplest form for Messy Academy formed in the shape of a badly done comic using 3d models. I’ve nearly forgotten about its existence and some of you might be curious, but trust me when I say, I’d highly not recommend it even if you could find it online still.

Even still, I must speak of it briefly.

I’ve always been the creative type, originally I wanted to be an artist and used to draw a ton while growing up into my mid teens. I wasn’t very good, but they were just personal pieces for myself to enjoy, a lot of SFW stuff mainly.

At some point, I drifted away from drawing and one of my other big hobbies was reading. It never dawned on me that I could lean into creative writing as a form to create stories, not seriously at least as my background with writing as a subject in school has always been rough, and yet I loved reading.

There was a point where I began writing down ideas that’d come to me and build upon those. I’d be here forever if I spoke of everything I’ve ever written down, but one of these ideas in its simplest form was a tiny script for the comic.

As mentioned, it made use of 3d models since I didn’t really know how to do comic panels and wrap my head around something like a 4-panel even! So, the “pages” were simply one big screenshot. (I warned you it’s bad!)

The Messy Academy comic was made up of 6 parts and aside from similarities in character names, general setting and some very rough visuals. That’s about where the similarities end between the comic vs the visual novel game.

It is in no way canon to Messy Academy the visual novel.

When the comic wrapped up, I already knew that I wasn’t proud or satisfied with the results and had to do proper justice to the idea, but I wasn’t quite sure yet how to approach it. At the time, I was still getting used to my new workplace and I believe the comic fully ended as we headed into 2019.

[Year 1]

~Let the development begin!~

With the comic finished by Spring of 2019, I was getting pretty cozy with my day job. In my free time, I’d begin to expand on MA’s story, world and characters, etc. Originally, my idea was to turn MA into a written story, releasing new chapters monthly as a book once it was fully complete.

I didn’t even begin writing any drafts for MA as a book, before the concept of turning it into a visual novel hit me. Game development had always seemed interesting and out of reach for normal people, making me assume while growing up that the only people who could create video games were big companies or those with a large range of skills to pull it together.

I’ve never created a video game and I knew a little about the field, but I was going into this completely blind as a pure hobbyist. I didn’t just wake up one day and know exactly what a visual novel needed to create one, but I knew I wanted to take my best crack at it.

So, I began with light writing and putting together the details of the game in its simplest form. This would later become known as the MAcharbible, which is still used to this very day! Think of it as a mini book of documents that host all the information about the story, world setting, characters and development related details. Anything needed for the project is split up into their respective categories and added to this.

With most of these details put together over the summer of 2019, it was time to begin researching game engines! As mentioned, I was going into game development completely blind and so the idea of even attempting to understand Ren’py this early on was daunting to me. General coding was so alien in understanding how it functions together.

This is why I ended up choosing Tyranobuilder in the early days for the game engine, which came with its own list of headaches.

With it being a more visual learning experience, it made me understand the basic concepts of coding little by little while working with it. I’d actually recommend it to those who have no understanding of coding, even more if you’re a visual learner. It does have its downfalls, one thing I got used to doing early on with doing the coding for the game using that engine is making sure I saved my progress often!

It might’ve changed since then, but at the time, the program would freeze up and you had no other choice, except to force it closed and lose your progress. (Many times I was frustrated by this.)

The other issue I found later down the road, was for bigger projects over 1GB in size. Their export tools couldn’t handle projects of that size, resulting in having to do some manual exporting which was very hit or miss if game builds would work correctly or not.

Many of these issues and general wishes to provide the game in the best state possible, would later have us change game engines for good, but we’ll get to that later.

With the general details written out and the game engine chosen. I began work on creating the first build of the game v0.01! At this point, the game was planned to be a chapter-based experience, with 10 chapters in total and the best way to describe this early vision of the game would be more linear?

The chapters functioned similarly to how episodes in modern day work at a more basic level, except there weren't really plans for dedicated routes. Instead, in-between chapters would be “free days” which acted more like a dating sim, allowing players to choose who to hang out with and gain more affection with them, which would unlock special scenes generally.

Anyways, I had the writing ready, coding sorted out and the assets together as I prepared for my first game build release of v0.01 by September 6th.

~v0.01~

The official release happened on September 6th 2019 and it consisted of nothing but 3d placeholder models taken from the comic, even making use of the background locations from the comic in these early builds as I was working purely by myself at this point.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. I knew there were a handful of people who enjoyed the comic, but I went into the project and made it from the start, that the goal would be to completely replace the placeholder assets with wonderful 2d art in time as funding is received.

Of course, I knew this wouldn’t be a simple task and so much of my early days were spent researching, advertising and trying to market the game around different websites and social platforms. I must’ve posted a ton and still don’t know how I had the energy to pull it off…

I just knew that not many were aware of what MA even was yet and so, I not only had to create these builds for the game. I also had to put the time into learning how to advertise and market the game as a complete beginner in the field.

To say the least, it took many months before funding broke its first $100 dollars and in the early days, I poured money out of my pocket to help showcase what could be possible if the project could receive regular funding on a monthly basis.

But more about that as we move along.

So, v0.01 had 3d assets being used. It was a very awkward period in development, because I had a vague idea of how the characters should look like, but I was limited by the models being used. If you were to play v0.01 today, you’d notice that all the girls pretty much look the same outside of their hair being different, eye color and I believe their uniform skirts were unique?

That’s it, very limited! I still remember a few odd comments about how some characters looked a little too young and I couldn’t help but laugh, because I was like “What do you mean? They all share the same face and body!” 

Seriously though, I would point out that the assets in-game during this time were placeholder and I’d want to replace them as soon as possible.

Now, what did v0.01 cover exactly for content? Well…

It consisted of: Chapter 1. Which is hard to compare to the modern game, but it’s that version of the intro to the game. The main plot points was to introduce the main 6 girls, which consisted of: Erika, Miki, Rachel, Nova, Heather and Bridget. 

That’s right, Bridget was originally a main character early on! While Lola, Zoey and Juliet were considered side characters.

Chapter 1 focused on your introduction to the academy and its locations within its walls. It also featured the very famous punishment act, which no longer exists in the modern game. At the end of Chapter 1, Brandon is in class after having briefly met the main 6 girls and seeing much of what the school has to offer. He would receive a confession letter, but didn’t know who tossed it onto his desk.

This would lead the teacher, John, to read the letter for himself and this was breaking rules at the time, prompting the player being put on the spot to randomly choose one of the six girls to be punished by John in front of the whole class. Of course, whoever you chose would lose affection with the player and during your first “free day” after Chapter 1, you couldn’t hang out with this character because their affection would be too low.

The girl was clearly upset at you for getting them in trouble, so it was a odd player choice to force players to pretty much choose a girl they wouldn’t like and then showcase a 3d cg scene where John is spanking said girl, until they messed themselves and this was followed up by performing fellatio on John.

Clearly, it was a pretty extreme highlight to the game and many people felt split about it. Which later resulted in adjustments and the removal of the whole punishment act in general. This would also affect how things function in the modern version of the game, where teachers are now only females, much like the students as it makes total sense for an all-girls setting.

Thanks for bearing with me so far! Here’s some early screenshots from v0.01 and behind the scenes assets to help paint a picture as we reflect through the years and updates!

~v0.02~

The next update was about 2 weeks after the first release, at the time, I was shooting for new content every 2 weeks, but the game was much simpler at the time as well.

This update also was huge, as it brought Uncle Artie aboard! His job at the time was to take over on writing and editing, allowing me to purely focus on coding and handling socials with advertising and marketing, etc. 

With the little information provided about the general story summary and characters, he helped add some additions that wouldn’t be part of the modern game without him! You can thank Artie for Charlotte, Allie and Rosa’s additions!

Which brings us to the update itself, since the first update was Chapter 1. We were now working on the “Free Day System” as a base for future content between the main chapters of the game. The main idea with this was having a map interface that was bare-bones, but you’d select a girl to hang out with during the morning, noon and afternoon. In total, you could hang out with a number of girls three times during each free day section of the game.

These would often provide the player with an increase in affection with the given character and expanded on character development. It was pretty much the route content at the time, focusing more exclusively on the character you liked the most and getting rewarded with cg scenes, etc.

It’s coming back to me, but originally chapters wouldn’t feature player choices, only free days. The only exception to that rule was one major choice typically by the end of a given chapter, so free days would fill the void for a more gameplay experience.

The first free day between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 would only feature the main six girls, but there were plans in motion for the 2nd free day to feature Lola, Zoey and Juliet after they were introduced during Chapter 2.

I believe during this update, while Artie was writing and editing. We juggled ideas off one another for what kind of scenarios each girl would find themselves in. This was kind of difficult, because there were six girls and each one needed three scenarios. But it also presented replay-ability, as you could choose to hang out with Miki all three times in the day to see all of her content, then start over with a save file and choose Nova instead for her unique scenarios, etc.

At this stage, we were still trying to expand on character’s kinks or fetishes as well to showcase during the free day content. You see, beyond the diaper focus, each character would have another secret that’d be discovered along the way and blend together with diapers.

It was a pretty rough task, as I believe we had about a week after Artie joined in order to get this update ready, but he was a trooper and got through it! 

There was quite a bit of unique content created for the free day, with the below being brief summaries of these events.

For Nova, in the morning you helped time her swimming laps. By noon, you found her cleaning and restocking the diaper training room. Then by afternoon, you peek in while she’s changing in her dorm room, before going on a jog with her.

For Miki, in the morning you found her hanging out in the diaper training room with Charlotte as they played a board game. By noon, you find her getting a diaper change in the nurse’s office. Then by afternoon, you trail her to behind the school where she was hiding and surprises you. 

For Erika, in the morning you find her studying in class by herself and join her. By noon, you find her sitting under a tree out front of the school eating lunch. Then by afternoon, you find her in another class and decide to have a trivia study session with her.

For Heather, in the morning you find her in the middle of punishing another student. By noon, you come across her in the dorm while holding up a frilly dress, narrowly escaping punishment. Then by afternoon, you peek on her while passing by the locker room before hanging out in the gym.

For Bridget, in the morning you find her out back of the academy playing her game device and help her. By noon, you come across her swimming or trying to at least, as you offer to help out. Then by afternoon, you see Joey trailing behind her into the punishment room, as you come to her rescue since she finds him to be a creep.

For Rachel, in the morning you peek into the restroom and find her peeing, along with pleasuring herself. By noon, you come across her in the classroom reading about pandas and hanging out together. Then by afternoon, you find her swimming by herself and join her.

Here’s some early screenshots from v0.02 and behind the scenes assets to help paint a picture as we continue!

~v0.03~

I believe another 2 weeks had passed roughly by this update, bringing us to around October 6th or so by the time this one hit!

It didn’t quite process with me, but not all of the free day content was included with the previous update... It actually took us until this update to fully include everything for that content! While that was the main focus, we also took the chance with Artie taking over on writing and editing at the time, to look over Chapter 1 and expand in areas.

I believe we added new cg scenes that didn’t exist prior to Chapter 1 during this update, along with pacing out stuff a bit better, adding more choices and general fixes.

By this point in development, we also hired Lisa to help with officially creating the 2d sprite art! I think it was this update that also brought our very first previewed look at what Miki would look like in 2d form, even if it was simply at the very beginning of the game in the form of a disclaimer screen that was added in this build.

It was a small start, but I think this was a slow turning point with the project as well. It showcased to people already on-board with supporting us and those curious how things would pan out, that we were keeping to our promise about replacing those 3d placeholders. I still remember being very proud of how Miki first looked and wanting to share previews of her instantly with everyone!

Miki’s creation process was pretty rough at this stage, but still pretty similar to how she appears today. We were still trying to figure out the visuals for the diapers at this point as well, because Lisa didn’t have a background in ab/dl art and so, I recall providing many references to her and it wasn’t long before we settled on the finalized visual design for the character’s diapers.

Related to this, since the very beginning, I knew that each character would have uniquely designed diapers that fit with their personality, interests or hobbies and simply has something related to why it suits them the best. It just didn’t quite show that great with the 3d assets, but as we moved into creating the 2d sprites, it allowed us to lean into the original plans I had in store with the game.

But there would be a lot of original plans for the game that’d come into fruition as we replaced those 3d assets!

Some story and character details about the game at this point during development included the early creation of “Bindy” otherwise known as Charlotte. Miki befriends her while playing hoovernatch, a made-up board game. The concept of Charlotte being mute was actually Artie’s idea! During this build, he noticed that she didn’t have any dialogue in what was supposed to be a small throwaway background character, but he thought it’d be unique if she was given a name and officially a mute character.

I’d later expand on her character by making her form of communication a simple notebook, one that supposedly has phrases already written throughout the pages to express what she wishes to say or how she might be feeling. Although, I prefer that her feelings are expressed through body language. Overall, she’s a very fun character that adds to the school setting!

Another early concept, one that’s officially scrapped and safe to talk about with the modern direction of the game’s story is the character John. Early in development, he was meant to be seen as the targeted nemesis and possibly the one secretly running the school for his own benefit.

This isn’t exactly correct, as John was always meant to be a red herring to throw players off from the true Headmaster in control. I can’t reveal who the headmaster is, sadly, but let’s talk about John a little bit.

John originally would be helping the headmaster out and there were plans that involved him mind controlling students. He would benefit greatly from this, fueling some of his perverted fantasies as payment from the headmaster. But he wasn’t ever meant to be seen as the one actually behind what’s going on with the school, just helping out and getting to reap the rewards.

Of course as we moved along with development and expanded upon the story, John’s role would also change. Not only because of the player's feedback towards the character and his perverted actions being too much, but also because it didn’t quite rub me the right way either in what direction things were leaning into with that character. 

Originally John was secretly dating Lola, which would’ve played into how the protagonist had to tip-toe around this. This later was changed with across the board changes, because it would’ve leaned into NTR content and while our original plan was to include a little bit of this content, it wasn’t the draw for the game as a whole. So, as we moved along with development, we took a stance to make it very clear we’d stay away from NTR content as it leaned into our overall focus with adult content.

In modern day, John and Lola’s roles are very different. John has now taken the role as Lola’s Uncle and he doesn’t work at the school as a teacher or staff. These two were not related until modern changes to the game, but it’s a much better role for the two.

Here’s some early screenshots from v0.03 and behind the scenes assets to help paint a picture as we continue!