Merry Christmas! (Mini news bonus!) (Patreon)

To everyone who's part of Messy Academy's development process! Doesn't matter if you're part of the dev team, supporter, fan, etc! We wouldn't be here without everyone helping out and allowing us to have the pleasure of creating this amazing visual novel for everyone of you! ^^ <3

We have a lot in store for everyone as we head into 2022, with plenty of twists and turns within the story to keep you on your toes! I'm nervous, but also very excited to see if we can pull these off as they've been planned in our dev notes for a loooong time now! ^^"

I wish I had something a bit more gift worthy to give everyone today, but my little surprise wallpaper isn't quite Christmas themed. :P So I hope some of our plans for 2022 will help hype up the new year ahead of us very soon instead!

[1] - Finalized GUI

[Coming sometime within Q1 2022, we're having ds-sans wrapping up the finalized gui elements for the game! We shared a little mock up a while back that shows off their work when it comes to our Messy Studios logo. (Logo) The visuals for MA in terms of gui elements will hopefully mesh very well with how the sprite, bg and cg visuals pair along with it. This of course will be the intended final visual look of how MA will look! (What we see for visuals in this nature would be the ideal finished game look as we continue to add the new story content.)]

[2] - Sprite art!

[2022 sprite art goals is to fully finish up all the remaining KS oc's that were part of our 2020 Kickstarter launch! We'll begin to see the first one sometime in January/February. Other minor stuff for sprite art will include some very minor additions to outfit pieces for characters, a example being a school related event in the story that uses some more... Flashy outfits. :P Besides that sprite art is looking to stay lower on the radar, which isn't to say Lisa didn't do enough. (Quite the opposite!) She's done 2 years worth of stuff non stop, so reaching this point is amazing! Even beyond MA, I'd like to have her work on future projects with us if everything lines up for her by then. ^^]

[3] - Music!

[During Q1 2021 we started getting more music added to the game! While it's a lower priority for us, only requesting one new track per month or so. We're very happy with all the new tracks made this past year and 2022 will be no different! We'll see plenty of new tracks added to the game throughout the upcoming year, get ready for character themes very soon! :P]

[4] - Funding Campaign?!

[In late 2020 we launched a successful Kickstarter campagin to raise upwards to $6000, a good $2000 more than we were asking to reach. Which isn't just amazing for us for our project, but for the whole dl/abdl community! While experiences will vary, it at least tells me that if you put the effort into it. Even indie level games focused around dl/abdl themes can succeed! We really love to see other projects in the wild within this community that pops up and at times when I can, I love to reach out to them to offer any tips or help within degree or give a shout out even. I've always had the mindset that when it comes to communities, that not everyone will be on the same equal playing field, but for those who are seen in a higher spot than others. It's better to lend a helping hand and share, be helpful to others and see more wonderful content overall within said community! ^^]

[Back on the topic though! There is some light thoughts floating around in my head to do another funding campaign to help raise a little extra funds to help cover the finishing development touches. The important thing to note is that we're aware that there's rewards/benefits still not handed out fully with our Kickstarter backers. (We know how some funding campaigns go in those regards or worse!) So before we even fully decide to launch another funding campaign, we're looking to make sure we take good care of the Kickstarter backers firsthand! The only exception for rewards that we can't deliver until towards the very end of development would be the digital artbook, as there's always new art coming and coming still. But we could possibly split that up into 3 parts or so digitally to at least get some of it out along the way.]

[Wrapping it up! Ideally the thought with another funding campaign is that it'd help greatly in covering costs that our monthly funding runs into minor issues with at times. (Mainly I try to cover these out of pocket at times if small enough.) But being completely honest, I'm not really doing MA for income/money. I really love creating MA and seeing everything slowly come together, it's like a mixed hobby with little bits of work added to it. I think I'd be lying to myself if I didn't want to be able to make a living income from this project or future projects, but that isn't what's most important to me as oddly as it might sound I'm sure. ^^"]

[Anyways! Possibly Q3 2022 for another funding campaign, but only if we deliver on previous rewards before hand!]

[5] - Interactive Moments?!

[I've talked a bit about these in the past months with the idea that "Interactive Moments" would be more akin to simply being choices that pop up through the game. Of which, they'd offer a bit more interactive nature but not quite really... <.< So for example while being in Erika's room, there might be a brief moment where you'd be able to choose from 2-3 interactive choices that let you within the story interact a bit more with the surroundings. So in this case, let's say there's a bunch of cutesy figures on Erika's dresser and you can examine them along with other stuff nearby as you get a bit more flavor text and maybe even minor additional details to help build up the character's more so, but nothing that'd feel like if you didn't do these, that you'd miss out on important information.]

[That was the plan... But plans change! We'll still see these kind of choices added to the game, but they'll be referred to as "Interactive Choices".]

[Interactive Moments is a new planned feature altogether for MA! It has nothing much to do with choices that you select in-game, but rather it's actually interactive! Before I over hype this feature, it should be noted that this is in early concept phase. I still have to most likely talk about it with Artie, but what will probably end up happening with this feature, is that we'd be bringing a programmer on to help implement the feature. It'll require quite a bit of stuff from cg art that has frames/variants that work with it and the plans in mind for these interactive moments. So just what exactly is this concept feature for MA?]

[I'm sure some of you might've seen this in other games before, but let me try to explain it with a example for MA where we would see it take place to paint a picture in your mind.]

[With the help of interactive cg art, during diaper changing events in the game. You as the player will be able to see things in first person much like some other cg art. Insert girl would be sitting/laid back and you, the player will be able to interact with elements on the screen! Not gui choices or menus, but let's say there's baby lotion, powder, wipes, fresh diaper laying nearby on the screen. You'd be able to click and drag, interact with these objects and preform a diaper change for the girl. You will be able to click and hold onto the girl's skirt to lift it up or help move their legs into a better pose as their face expression changes to reflect what's going on. Your goal during this example would be to carefully change their diaper without making them too humiliated/nervous.]

[If the girl becomes too humiliated/nervous based on how you're going about actions, they'll forcefully stop you and put a end to the interactive moment. (Allowing for some challenge with each girl's personality for differences, etc.) This can happen at any given moment through the interactive moment.]

[Ideally there would be a gameplay element to keep track of during your interactive moment in this example. Uncomfortable meter, which tracks how close you are to causing the girl to stop you in your tracks and put a end to things early. Arousal meter, which is built up based on other actions you can do during the interactive moment, but be careful! These actions can cause your Uncomfortable meter to build up faster, but if you manage to get higher Arousal meter, you'll be rewarded surely!]

[The interactive moment in this case would have a few different outcomes based on how you manage to get through it. You can choose to mainly focus on the task of diaper changing and comfort, or you can focus more so on arousal, perhaps a mix of both if you're good enough! :P]

{Remember, this is a early concept feature. Things can change or possibly be canceled during development of said feature. Ideally we'd love to hear of ideas or thoughts about this feature concept. This feature won't be seen until sometime Q2 2022 at the earliest testing phases and we'll host testing builds of this feature for beta testing it to be added to the main game itself as intended.}


We have much more in store for 2022! But these are some of our big goals for the year in development, so we're very excited to see these tackled along the way! ^^


Merry Christmas!
~From all of us at Messy Studios!~
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Edit: Additional notes! I'll be posting this previous Thursday's "Throwback Thursday" on Sunday! The holidays have been really all over the place, but we'll get that soon!

Our guide post for 2021 will be converted into a brand new guide post as we head into 2021! Jan 1st, we'll post the new guide post and pin it to the top like the current one. This is because after having too many links in a post or length, it can no longer be updated any further and so with each fresh year, comes a fresh new guide post!

The new guide post for 2022 will still have links to 2020 & 2021 guide post archives, all other important links seen in the current guide post will transfer over to the new 2022 one too. Just a heads up in case you make use of our guide post/bookmark it and wish to stay up to date with us easy into 2022! ^^