Many of you have expressed over the years for the addition of a female protagonist added to the game and after a long amount of consideration, looking at the game from every angle, how much work would be involved, is it possible? Etc. Well worry not! We have a lot of previews, details and Q&A to help answer any concerns. Buckle in, its a big post!

Without further ado! Let's shine some light on those shadows below!

Everyone welcome Brandon & Blythe to Pembroke Academy! Now there's going to be a lot of Q&A at the end to fill in the blanks for what's going on, but let's drop the bombshell first.

Brandon is our male protagonist and Blythe is our female protagonist!

For a long time now, our number one requested addition for Messy Academy has been a female protagonist to play as. This is where Blythe comes into play! There's still much to show and detail first, but our Q&A section towards the end will cover everything!

Let's read those student reports next! (Information not shared is split by Brandon <- -> Blythe)

~Student Report~

Name: Brandon Wilkins <- -> Blythe Wilkins

Height: 5’6

Weight: 143lbs <- -> 128lbs

Birth Date: February 17th.

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius.

Nationality: English.

Age: 20

Body type: Petite.

Bust: C cup. [Blythe only.]

Friends: Joey, Nathan. (The girls at the academy generally, even mutually.)

Activities/Interests: Computer/tech, watching anime, reading manga. Generally curious and a bit open minded at times to try new things.

Traits: Average, Curious, Geeky, Slightly shy. 

~Background~ (Blythe exclusive information is quoted in brackets [example])

Prior to Brandon/Blythe’s transfer, he/she was attending an open college in England. Within their two years there, he/she would befriend Joey and Nathan, as they shared similar interests. [Early on, Joey tried hitting on Blythe, but she isn't interested in guys. Since then, the two have seen Blythe as one of the "guys".]

They would often hang out in their free time, playing video games or discussing the latest anime series, anything that seemed geeky that interested them.

While all seemed well, there was something missing from Brandon/Blythe’s life, and the same could be said for his/her buddies: they were still virgins, struggling with their chances on campus to get lucky. They needed a fresh start, and it just so happened that fate would be in their favor. Brandon/Blythe was curious about transferring schools, and while browsing around online, he/she found an ad for Pembroke Academy.

It sounded perfect, but he/she quickly noticed that Pembroke Academy is an all-girls private college. [Blythe knew she could probably get in, but she didn't want to leave her friends behind.] He/she most likely fantasized what it’d be like to attend such a school before being snapped back to reality. But before he/she was able to close out of the webpage, he/she noticed a new window that had popped up, asking for their details to enroll.

He/she knew their chances were all but confirmed to be zero, but he had nothing else to lose. [Blythe wouldn't go unless her friends could somehow get in.] He/she casually tossed down their information, along with their buddies’ details, and life went on for a few weeks.

Then, the day came. The headmaster <Redacted> took a liking to the them, and decided to accept their enrollment to the previously all-girls academy, for reasons still unknown to the rest of academy staff.

Once everything was sorted out, Brandon/Blythe transferred to Pembroke Academy during early Spring, along with their two buddies, Joey and Nathan. As usual with new students, they weren’t very excited about the rules. However, the promise of a school full of girls was too tempting to let their thoughts discourage them. They’d accept the rules ultimately, unaware of what would await them at Pembroke Academy.

[End of Report]

We can already sort of see how things differ so far, but let's continue with our previews before the Q&A!

First, we want to share a glimpse at how the game will be changing during March in response to this!

Coming in March, we'll have a protagonist portrait area on the text box ui as seen above! This differs based on which character you choose to play as at the start of the game of course. It also applies to content that has the player in the role of other characters, like Miki's Dream for example will showcase Miki's face in the portrait area.

This is something we've wanted to do for a long time and struggled on how to handle it until now! The portrait window acts as a visual to see how Brandon or Blythe are reacting throughout the moments in the game. During cg scenes, the portrait window is excluded of course!

The previews above also showcase the near finalized text box, which is in-engine right now as it appears in these screenshots. We condensed the buttons on the bottom right into just one button "menu" which, once clicked on, it unfolds your typical options to save, load, check chat log, config, etc. This allows for the text to not conflict with the buttons during gameplay, only when you need to access any of those other buttons.

The last thing we're tweaking right now is making sure the name box and text is looking good across the board, as we found in some moments of the game. It was a bit chaotic to read before and so we're trying to improve in the visual ui and how everything comes together nicely.

Enough of my rambling, you nice folks want more previews! Let's look at Blythe and Brandon's expressions! They have a ton!

27 expressions shared between them both! The reason for so many, is that we want to ensure that if the player has to see the protagonist's face throughout much of the gameplay. We want to keep things fresh, just as much as we do with any other character in the game.

We're still looking over other options to add more to help fill in and ensure Brandon and Blythe has a very expressive range, so we hope you all look forward to seeing these in-game!

Next up, outfits! Let's begin with Blythe.

Blythe's casual and gym outfit! There isn't much to say about the gym uniform, considering its the same as the girl student's we've seen in-game already.

The casual outfit for Blythe was designed to be a mix of playful, cutesy and a tad bit dorky in a sense! We wanted to consider the personality of Blythe and how that'd affect her taste in clothing, along with connections with Erika being kept in mind, despite the 2 year age gap between them. (Blythe being older than Erika, same as Brandon.)

Blythe's school uniform and swimsuit! The school uniform is familiar, given all students at the school wears the same one outside of the guy characters.

The swimsuit design was picked as this in order to keep some balance to the two protagonists, considering Brandon's choice in swim attire was provided by the academy. So the same was applied here for Blythe, nothing too flashy.

Blythe's underwear and diaper designs!

Originally the underwear designs were a bit out of place, not shown here. But we had originally planned to do a cross-dressing thing with Brandon, so the bra design was a training bra at first... Which clearly doesn't quite fit Blythe's chest without looking "off" in a way. So, we went with something cutesy, but not too far one way or another, trying to strike a balance for her character. Same with her choice in undies.

Her diaper design started with trying to go with a similar feel to Erika's in color scheme. Except instead of colorful stars, we went with a overall cat theme. Its hard to see, but the front has a few adorable kitties with the tagline: Meow Meow Kitties

That's the outfits for Blythe! Next Brandon!

Brandon's casual and gym outfit! The gym uniform is what the academy ended up having on-hand for the guys when they arrived, which if you're all caught up with recent content. You may have learnt who has helped create some of the uniforms at the academy. :P

The casual outfit for Brandon was designed to be a mix of playful and a bit dorky, but we think it works with his new adorable charm! The only slight concern I had with him, is trying to prevent him from coming across as childish in attire. Which is kind of rough to find that balance with what we were going for to fit with his personality.

Brandon's school uniform and swimsuit! If you've played the game a bit, you might've seen the guy's uniform with Joey/Nathan wearing it often. Nothing too major there, except I must say... Brandon seems a bit adorable here with it than before, but that might just be my own preference talking.

The swimsuit as brought up with Blythe, was provided by the academy and so it isn't super unique or flashy, same as what Joey/Nathan wears.

Brandon's underwear and diaper designs!

With his tastes in underwear it was a bit similar to Blythe, trying to go for this cutesy, dorkable feeling, but its kind of rough to nail that.

His diaper design seemed like it'd benefit with going for a blue tone for colors and to be opposite of Blythe. We wanted to go with a dog theme and so on the front, you can see a tiny doggie with a tagline: Bark Bark!

Onto our last preview for outfits, its a double feature for Brandon and Blythe! I won't say much about it in terms of context, but some fans might already know what its related to a certain someone's route. More details on these differences in the Q&A area at the end!

Again, no context! :X (Why is Brandon cross-dressing?) Oops! I mean he looks adorable! (Okay, shush Bridget!! :X )

Ending the big reveal preview section with a little visual comparison! Since Brandon and Blythe are 5'6, I wanted to prepare a few examples to show how they both compare with the shortest girl in our main cast (Miki), along with someone near their height (Erika), and lastly someone who gives a good example of taller ones in the cast (Nova).

Miki is 5'2 and Brandon/Blythe are 5'6 for reference.



Erika is 5'5 and Brandon/Blythe is 5'6 for reference.

Nova is 5'8 and Brandon/Blythe are 5'6 for reference.

As you can probably tell, there's some changes with Brandon visually besides his height. We'll fully dive into that stuff very soon! Why did we change the height exactly? I'll cover it in the Q&A with more details, but looking over our height chart with all the cast members in MA.

It became obvious to me that the average height for most of the cast fell between 5'4-5'8 and so, I wanted to find a middle spot for the protagonists to feel balanced within the cast. This does of course make them look a bit silly in the case of seeing Brandon/Blythe getting dwarfed by Nova's height and a few others like Zoey, Bridget or Heather for a few other examples.

But it depends on how you also view it too. I see this in sort of adorable relationship fashion, for anyone on the shorter side out there. (Heeeeeyy!! Shorties stand together!) If you've ever dated someone who was just a tiny bit taller than you, its hard to explain, but there's a cute factor to it depending on how it comes across. That's kind of how I view this and that isn't to say a pairing like Brandon and Heather would visually be "cute" for everyone... ^^"

Although, someone a bit more kind like Nova who might have a soft spot for shorter, softer looking guys and finding them cute as a tomboy herself? Well... You might be able to see what I'm trying to say, but my main hope is that with finding this middle-ground in height for the protagonists, it won't really feel majorly weird to anyone as the visuals above showcase.

Okay, I lied! This was meant to be exclusive for supporters in March and we have more to showcase for our supporters, but we do have a cg scene example to showcase how Brandon and Blythe look! (We'll also tackle this in Q&A for more details)

Aaaand that wraps up our visual section of this post! ^^ Wasting no time, let's dive into the Q&A! (Questions will be in bold lettering, Answers will be normal text below them.)

How will a male/female protagonist work in MA?

The first thing to make very clear is that this isn't going to impact our monthly regular content releases.

March is going to deliver the rest of episode 5 content early in the month, then towards the end of the month. We'll deliver episode 1's QOL fixes, which includes the male/female visuals seen on the text box portrait ui area and differences between male/female as the protagonist.

April should be some route content and episode 2's QOL fixes, but it'll be rolled into one release.

Mainly when we have fully finished the new content for a upcoming month, like April for example. The rest of the time we have left in that month goes towards a mix of keeping new regular content done on time and looking over existing content to apply quality fixes.

As you might be aware of, with the addition of a female protagonist. There are moments in the script that clearly was created with a male protagonist in mind, so that's some of these fixes being applied.

So, you're redoing episode 1 and existing episodes yet again?

QOL fixes are not complete re-writes of what exists. I'll highlight episode 1 as a example of some changes being made in response to allowing Blythe to be added, along with general QOL additions.

Starting with Blythe, if you've played episode 1. You're aware that we currently follow Brandon, Joey and Nathan who are all male. Things begin to get a bit awkward when we think of Blythe in Brandon's place currently when the group receives their uniforms/diapers, heading to the bathroom to change together.

The way things play out currently for Brandon will remain the same.

The way the moment differs for Blythe in that example moment is that Joey/Nathan head in first to get changed, getting to add a teasing moment for Blythe until she has to go in after they come back out and she changes alone, before things generally continue forward normally again.

Main point: We aren't rewriting the entire scripts from scratch, we're just adding little additions that differ between the gender that the protagonist is to make sense where it applies.

Does that mean every scene will have differences based on if the protagonist is Brandon or Blythe?

I've thought about how to handle the addition of a female protagonist for a long, long, long time and it goes without saying. I wouldn't be doing this if it was going to be double the work we do on a regular basis. ^^"

There are going to be some differences at times in scenes, the main priority is to keep these as similar as possible, barely any major changes across the board. Why? Because as highlighted, we don't need to increase our workload nearly double.

Is that to say there aren't going to be scenes or moments where we do have no choice, but to have bigger differences? Sure... For example, there's a famous cg moment with Brandon and the Nurse that as of right now... It suggests a female x male action taking place, we can't just leave that the exact same for Blythe.

Does that mean, let's take that entire nurse scene script from start to finish and write up 3-6k word count exclusively for Blythe? No, not at all! Again, the less we NEED to change, the better. In a world with more time and endless funding with no other concerns, it'd be a different story.

Main point: There will be some differences at fitting times when it can't be avoided, otherwise we're trying to stick as closely to what exists now as possible.

Will Blythe be playable with the rest of episode 5?

Episode 5 has already underwent some differences in the script to test-run this entire male/female protagonist concept. We aren't in a spot to deliver Blythe into episode 5 for two reasons.

One is that we do have the differences in the script, but we don't have the visual portrait stuff even functioning for episode 5 right now, not in full.

Secondly, we want to introduce Blythe from the very beginning and so we'll have episode 1 QOL fixes allow for this in March. Then episode 2 is unlocked for Blythe in April, episode 3 in May, etc. While we're slowly catching Blythe up to where the current content ends, we're also still continuing with regular content releases.

So, how does that work? As mentioned, episode 5's script is already keeping in mind that there's a need for it to function with Brandon and Blythe right now. We're going to continue into the route content's scripts on writing those with both Brandon and Blythe in mind, so that behind the scenes, even if we don't have episode 5 for Blythe being playable right now. It'll technically be done.

Think of it like this... Let's say by the time we hit June/July, we have episodes 1-4 all done for Blythe being playable. But by that point, we also have all of the route episode 6's done for the cast for Brandon as a playable protagonist, so there's a gap still, right?

Episodes 5 and the future scripts are being written with Blythe in mind, so when we finally hit the end of episode 4's QOL fixes. We'll deliver Blythe's episode 5 and the route episode 6's for her as a playable protag all at once, like flipping a light switch on. (Coding wise it'll be hidden in another branch until that time though, sorry!)

But then both protagonists are fully able to be played from start to where we're currently at in content delivery moving forward by that point.

Will Blythe be able to date Joey or Nathan? Is there male characters being added?

Considering the story setting for MA, it wouldn't make sense to suddenly have a ton of male characters for Blythe to date. Not to mention how much work that'd be. >.<

We decided that Blythe is a lesbian, kind of in the stage of being unsure of herself, but knowing that she isn't interested by males at least. Not only does this help solve the issue with Joey or Nathan trying to hit on their own friend, but as a whole with the school setting. It helps play into why she has a similar goal or interest in this all-girl's school like Brandon does, despite being female.

It isn't perfectly realistic and there might be some loopholes along the way, but I think that goes in general with fiction. That isn't to say I want to wave loopholes away or just go "Meh, its a fictional story, X or Y doesn't need to make sense."

My goal has always been to keep things feeling pretty grounded with reality, why certain things are able to work or not, with the main goal being not to have major plot holes or glaring issues in that sense when the project is fully finished.

Is Blythe's relationship with Erika similar as it is with Brandon?

Pretty much the same, Brandon and Blythe are 2 years older than Erika. Which I think translates well in the game currently, but there will be some subtle differences naturally or later with relationship, if you choose to pursue that route.

Okay, address the elephant in the room. Why did you change Brandon's design?

It's a lot to unpack, but with adding Blythe. The main reason for changing Brandon's design was for cg scene costs. Let me explain.

You can probably tell that Brandon and Blythe are pretty similar, just some subtle differences to help. This helps with cg scenes in general, maybe not so much with sexual acts... But as you can see with that cg scene example in this post, not much was needed to change and so, it isn't considered a brand new character from scratch in terms of costs.

When we're thinking of there being a ton of cg art for the game, this is the biggest factor for why we wouldn't have been able to realistically do a female protagonist option before. Our funding even back on Patreon at our highest, was not enough to hire on another cg artist or pay them to do these male vs female cg scenes.

If our funding changes in the future, we can of course use this to help make exclusive differences in cg scenes for the male or female protagonist, like with sexual act moments. In short, the more funding we receive, the more we can do. As it stands now, this was the best option to keep everyone happy considering our funding for the team's costs just barely gets us by as it stands now.

Why didn't you just make Blythe look similar to how Brandon looked before then?

I did think about this before going through the outcome we have now.

There's a few factors, which boils down to trying to find a better middle ground as Brandon's previous visuals had him at 5'8, dwarfing over much of the cast in a extreme. His body type and visuals could've worked for a female for sure, but it no matter how I tried to visualize that. It just wasn't looking right. >.<

I wanted to ensure that despite Brandon's changes to his design, his personality was still the same and this would still work with Blythe.

Personality-wise, there's nothing to fear with this. It's mainly visual design, which I hope everyone who does prefer playing as Brandon is okay with his new design, even better if you really love it! But I can only cross my fingers we were able to handle him well visually that doesn't feel like a major shock.

Where's Brandon or Blythe's glasses? Do they have freckles now?

Another thing that went away in the design, but we did attempt to see how it would've looked with them having glasses. I felt that the glasses impact the expression visuals a bit too much, which was a concern with wanting to showcase them in the text box throughout gameplay.

The addition of freckles was something I originally wanted to do for Brandon when his visuals were created long ago, but the glasses seemed like it was too much visually going on before. So, out with the glasses, in with the freckles!

Is all the art in the game being replaced during March?

Sprite art for Brandon and Blythe is only seen as part of the text box portrait area, but this will be a on-going process linked with the QOL fixes.

The cg scenes will also fall into this. Our cg artists have been working on this already and so we're ahead, while still adding new cg art into the game.

For now, just think of it as episode 1 later in March having these changes reflected. If you continue from there into episode 2, its clearly going to be missing these things until late April when we add the new regular content & episode 2 QOL fixes until we get these caught up around June/July.

This feels like a big mess to me for development, why not just delay all of this until everything is ready and playable?

To be fair, we're in active development since the start.. ^^" Its always going to feel like a mess, because this is like playing a beta version of the latest video game from an triple A company and wondering why it isn't the finished product.

We're going to provide what we can as soon as we can, but we're only human just like yourselves. (Unless you identify as a alien or anything else, more power to you!) But sadly, we are mere humans on the team who do have our normal day to day tasks to keep us going. I don't think it takes a economist to figure out that $700-900usd split 5-6 ways is not even enough for one person to live off of it month to month.

I'm rambling on, but really there is other methods we could approach and do things. It might be the approach that makes you happy, but the odds are, we aren't going to make the decision that makes everyone happy.

This seems to be the best approach to work with our project schedule.

Now that a female protagonist option is in, how about name change for the protagonist?

Still on our bucket list! We haven't forgotten!

Okay, I still have a question you didn't answer here...

I tried to cover as much ground as possible, but I'm sure there are talking points I missed. If you have a question or concern that wasn't answered or missing some key information, drop a comment or if you're in the Discord server, go to #game-discussion channel and leave your questions there. I'll answer them soon as possible and even add them to this post for others. ^^

With that said, its been a huge post... I hope this is exciting news for many out there! We have much to deliver this month ahead of us, but day 1 of March has begun!