Crazy how fast time is flying by! Weather has been pretty crazy to kick off Spring already and it doesn't even feel like we're fully out of Winter yet! >.<

Hopefully everyone is doing well and staying safe! We'll dive into this report with a bit of news and some plans for this month in terms of other posts to be seen, some of which are going to be seeing the return to behind the scenes related posts for new content coming!

(Behind the scenes related posts can host written scripts, picture previews and a more direct look at what's going on. We'll be hosting a good bit of these during April and with any luck, we'll also have a confirmed date on the next content placed. :P )

(In case you missed our previous Development Report in March, you can recap on that below!)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/march-report-79477138

[~Expectations for April!~]

We'll be kicking off this week with our finished preview for the disclaimer cg art, which is exactly as it sounds like... Trying to explain it briefly.

The purpose of the disclaimer cg art is that it'll warn newcomers of the kind of content they can expect before diving into the game. Your typical "Must be 18+ and any people/persons depicted are purely fictional and aren't based on any real people, etc." You get the idea here. :P

Beyond that, it'll also act as a disclaimer to let newcomers know of the official websites and discord. This will allow newcomers to find us, follow along officially and if they choose to support, they can do that as well.

This is one of those odd things where I've noticed MA hosted on some sketchy 3rd party sites and some discord servers are slowly popping up that might confuse people. Pretty much... We just want to have a way for newcomers possibly discovering MA through other means and playing the game through said means, they'll be made aware of our Patreon page and other areas, etc.

The disclaimer itself should be a fun and fitting scene that matches the energy of other content seen in the game itself. It will be made clear that the scene itself is breaking the fourth wall, letting you be aware that it isn't related to the rest of the game. It will still feel very much like how other scenes in the game feel, or in other words... It won't feel like a dry and cut scene of the two characters just reading off the disclaimer information. ^^"

To wrap this up... It should be a fun and very rewarding disclaimer scene that fits what you'd expect for MA. The cg art itself has a nice touch of fan service to keep your attention, while trying to be direct and quick about the details, not to waste too much of your time before letting you get right into the game.

(Disclaimer scene will only be seen when clicking "New Game" for the first time, before episode 1 actually begins. If you have saved data that you can load from, you'll be able to skip ahead to the latest content without having to sit through the disclaimer. In other words, newcomers to MA trying the game for the first time will see it and older fans/supporters with save data won't have to worry. :P )

Moving on...

Later into the weekend, we should have our first behind the scenes related post. Ideally I'll have some written script previews in that post, which showoff episode 5's content in written form. This does mean, it will include some spoiler warnings.

I'd like to have some more visual previews of the content itself prepped up for this post as well, but we'll have to see. This post should give a good idea of the content behind the scenes and showcasing how far along we're sitting, without tossing out a false alarm for a release date until we feel we can deliver on a confirmed date without any issue.

Following shortly after that, into the following week...

We'll probably have at least 2 sprite related previews to share, one being the next oc character that's been in the works during March. The other preview will probably be a collection of some minor additions to other characters done recently.

At some point in the later half of April, we'll have a huge announcement post that'll host a ton of sprite and cg art previews. That'll be a big highlight this month, but we're figuring out the timing on when to share that with everyone as we're collecting the last bit of visuals needed to show it off. :P

Overall, April should be a pretty wild and fun month for everyone! We don't want to get ahead of ourselves yet, but I think with what we're planning to show off through the month. It'll probably click with some people, that we're hinting at having a release date that'll be confirmed for episode 5. One that we have zero doubt in our minds upon announcement, that it'll be delivered. ^^

(In case you missed our previous Development Report in March, you can recap on that below!)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/march-report-79477138

[~Messy Studios Team~]

[~Story~]

I had to do a lot of thinking about where and how to share details about story stuff, if it'd be considered spoilers or general information, etc. I can safetly say that anything I mention here will be spoiler free for story mentions!

It probably goes without saying that there's a lot going on behind the scenes for our team and one aspect that has a lot of notes and keeping track of details is the story. This also includes stuff purely meant to be seen by myself as notes for writing the world setting, main plot story, character's stories, etc. Most of this stuff will be shared within the game, but there's some details that change over time and stuff that is purely notes for dev work.

This has been a long time coming and I don't believe it's ever been mentioned within the game about MA's location setting? But after a lot of thought and other notes I have for the game's story... I have made a decision that isn't as impactful as it's being made out to sound like, nothing major is changing with visuals or assets for the game... But later when we slowly get back around to quality fixes on earlier content, we'll add or adjust details in regards to this as we go along.

(Locations below are based on reality, but fictionally. We aren't taking reality completely 1:1.)

Originally, MA was meant to take place within the countryside of Japan. This didn't make a ton of sense for a few reasons, some more related to the main story plot and I don't dig into those details due to spoilers... <.< But with many of the oc's being from different locations and really looking at those closely...

I've decided that MA's setting will be within the countryside of Wales, UK. This makes a lot more sense with the backgrounds of students, for the most part... You can expect much of the cast and characters to be a fair mix of English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish. Lesser than those will be from europe countries with Germany, Italty, France and a bit lesser than that will be neighboring countries to those. Russia and Ukriane, with some odd student transfers from America, Canada, South America, Africa, China, Japan, Sweden, etc.

Those later mentions are much more rare within the academy to make sense of things. Much like in reality, you probably wouldn't expect a ton of english speakers attending a college Japan due to the language barrier? ^^" Maybe I'm wrong about that, but you get the idea I hope... The majority of students attending the academy will be made up of English/British, Welsh, Scottish and Irish.

There are some oddities about MA's visuals that'll probably come to mind that doesn't add up with the location of Wales, UK. The gym uniforms seen in the game are clearly more typical in Asian countries, along with a few little things in bg art that probably isn't typical in UK schools vs Asian school locations. (Sliding doors, classroom signs "A-1" and some minor stuff like that.)

I have thought about even these details and found a way to make sense of these oddities for the location, but I'd be diving into spoilers if I go on about that... ^^" Just know that the headmaster of the academy has some personal tastes and it'll be explained within the game along the way.

With all that tossed out there... I'm sure some of you are wondering what some of the character's nationalites are that makeup the academy. Sooo! Let's drop the list I have below! :P

Brandon - English
Erika - English
Charlotte - English
Nurse Bell - English
Juliet - Welsh
Heather - Welsh
Nathan - Welsh
Zoey - Welsh
John - Scottish
Headmaster - Scottish
Lola - Scottish
Evelyn - Irish
Sadie - Irish

Rachel - German
Garnet - German
Nova - Italian
Rosa - Italian
Bridget - American
Joey - American
Allie - Ukrainian
Karissa - Russian
Miki - Swedish

This is only part of the cast for MA, there's still oc's and other support/side characters or background students, etc. But it gives a bit of insight into their nationalities and I think it shouldn't have to be said, but there's a big difference with MA's fictional Earth setting vs reality. MA is based on Earth's setting, but there is still differences in fiction vs reality with the setting. (A easy one being there's multiple royal families within the UK in MA.)

I think these story details alone could deserve it's own post, but I think for now that'll have to cut it short here or I'll put everyone to sleep with my rambling... ^^"

[~CG art~]

Our artists MarxeDP & AjoseMp have been working on the disclaimer cg art that we're sharing this week. I think it'll shock many with how nice it turned out!

We've received some higher support tiers during March, meaning that besides the Miki's Dream toilet chamber stuff being worked on. We'll also see the Miki's Dream dungeon traps at some point here in the near future! We're working through some other stuff in the priorities list for cg art, but we're tackling those, even if it isn't seen right away!

There's a lot being done for cg art this month, stuff that we hope will be a huge surprise in the later half of this month! ^^

If you missed our previous cg related previews last month, you can check those out below! (Supporters $10+ tier to view.)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cg-concept-art-80410435 (Disclaimer concept)

[~Sprite art~]

Lisa's still going at it! We'll have Tomo (oc) finished here before mid April I'm assuming, then we'll move onto Marron (oc). That'll mark the end of our oc characters being done for the game for the time being. I think it's fair to say that we could still open up a little room for other oc's, but our goal in the coming months into Summer will be making sure the existing oc's are fitting into the game well.

If there's room to add another oc or two, we'll let everyone know with plenty of time  before choosing. We'd like to consider the best method for how to handle that.

Similar to the cg art surprises for later this month, we'll have some big stuff for sprites too!

If you missed our previous sprite related previews last month, you can check those out below! (Supporters $5+ tier to view.)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/sprite-preview-79757275 (Mika preview)

[~BG art~]

We recently contacted the original bg artist Olivson and had them work on a spoiler related bg piece needed for the game. One that we didn't share even on Patreon for supporters, that's how heavily spoiler related it is to the story! :O

On the bright side! We're in the middle of working on one that isn't spoiler related and we expect that'll be done sometime in April. The concept preview seen so far for that is looking pretty nice!

We'll have about 2-3 bg art pieces needed after that. We had thought we had all the locations needed over a year ago or more with bg art, but there were just some odd spots that needed it... So I'm glad we could get in contact with Olivson to have them work on these once again! ^^

[~Music~]

On the music side of things, we've finished up Erika's Theme! We're now moving onto Bridget's Theme, which should be pretty interesting to see how that'll turn out! I haven't been sent any previews yet, but we'll possibly get to hear Bridget's Theme by the end of this month or early into May. :P

If you missed our previous music preview last month, you can check that out below! (Free to view/listen.)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/music-preview-80097728 (Erika's Theme)

[~Ending~]

Sorry for the longer post! >.< If you made it this far, thank you for your time in reading through everything! We hope this month will provide a ton of exciting posts with a fair mix of public related stuff to share and supporter exclusive posts!

If you enjoy what we do, consider supporting us on Patreon if you aren't already. ^^

Keep yourself informed and updated on development by following Patreon notifications or bookmarking our brand new >Guide Post< for 2023. You can also continue to keep updated through our Itch.io page or Twitter as well!

Be alert! The only websites that are officially ran by myself and Messy Studios working on development of Messy Academy are 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!

>Patreon<
>Kickstarter<
>Twitter<
>Itch.io<
>Pixiv<

(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)
>omorashi< (Username: Bridget1999)
>tapatalk< (Username: Messy Studios)

Be alert! The one and only official Discord server for following the Messy Studios team development is this one. >Invite Link< 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 possibly scam attempts.

~ From all of us at Messy Studios! ~