7 Days before we launch our kickstarter and update 0.14 (public) update 0.15 (patreon) comes out! Below is our public post with the final details laid out for our pre-launch leading up to launch of the kickstarter.
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A brief public update on what's going on for the two updates of the game.
Update 0.14 (aka really update 0.14.5)
This will mainly bring the side girl routes into the game. (Bridget, Zoey and Lola) It won't be as big as update 0.13.5 felt with all the main girl routes offered, but it'll still have interesting stuff going on for them to make them stick out. Oddly enough our supporters seem to think Zoey's route part 1 is the best, but we'll see how the public feels on that.
(Plus the votes are pretty even to boot)
Update 0.15 (patreon exclusive)
With the month of September to keep it short and sweet. The past two updates (0.13 & 0.14) were a bit too much to tackle I think, by the end of August I felt almost burnt out or rather writer block. The point is, I didn't want to push myself and try rushing ahead of myself, hurting things overall for the game. So I decided with September with work on update 0.15, I'd go back to existing early content in the game. I'd adjust and fix up the writing to bring the quality more in line with how the route parts writing felt.
While looking back at day 1, before work on this even began. I had a few things to fix up for the game so that from start to finish, everything would feel more connected and better.
First thing on the list was the stat "Affection". Simply put. Once routes come into play, there isn't really a great use of this stat system. So then players are left wondering "What about my affection with X, Y or Z?" sadly the way the 2nd half of the game was planned to play out vs how it actually is, cancels out the need for affection.
Before anyone wonders, what was cut then? Honestly nothing, there was a rough plan in mind that during say Nova's route. You'd have moments that played off of having affection with other characters to affect dialogue. But instead of trying to frankenstein things together, it felt best to go with what most visual novel games do.
Hidden variables, which isn't anything new to Messy Academy. They already existed to unlock certain scenes, dialogue or see different outcomes. So we're removing affection slowly from the game, in it's place. The stat menu was voted by our supporters to turn it into a diaper accident tracker. This would tie into the idea of the minigame we want to get added into the game sometime in the near future.
What will this tracker even do? Well, it'll keep track of how many times a girl had an accident. There's times you'll have control over causing unnecessary accidents for the girls that fits within their events. If you decide to do this and let it build up, it'll effect things later in the game during the routes and even the ending. This felt like a better fit for the game's theme in mind and also to shift gears from feeling like a dating sim tacked on stat, but rather something that fits with the whole idea of the game with diapers and accidents.
Second thing on the list was that we realized that too much focus was being made on day time, dates and exactly when everything takes place. It was really extreme and in your face a lot of the time, instead of just coming across as being natural with letting the game play out and not be too considered about how much time has passed since the previous event or future events, etc.
So this also tied into the renaming of "Day 1" or "February 10th" etc. Since we don't really need to consistently remind people of dates, times and such. We decided to change the format to "Episodes" as it feels more fitting to the idea we had in mind where Messy Academy would feel like you were going through a slice of life anime episode.
This led to a new layout for how events play out for the game. (Roughly laid out and isn't seen in full during update 0.15)
Day 1 events = Episode 1
Day 2 events = Episode 2
Day 3 events = Episode 3
Day 4 events = Episode 4
Day 5 events = Episode 5
Clear enough right? This has always been seen as the real introduction to the game. We're looking to have this as the common route of the game, moving personal routes starting at Episode 6. Let me explain how that'll work, we'll take Nova as an example for the rest of this explaining. So after Episode 5 is finished, you'll choose one of nine girls routes to be set on, for us it's Nova.
Episode 6 = Day 6 & 9 Nova events
Episode 7 = Day 11 & 14 Nova events
Episode 8 = Day 16 & 17 Nova events
When starting Episode 6 Nova, you won't be dating her right off the bat. But it'll instead be seen as building towards that and even deeper in the relationship. This implies there's Episodes 6, 7 and 8 for each girl roughly. Now where does the route parts come in?
Episode 9 = Nova's route part 1
Episode 10 = Nova's route part 2 & 3
Episode 11 = Nova's route part 4 & 5
Episode 12 = Nova's route part 6 & ending
I know how all this looks but it's not as complex or crazy different than how things actually play out currently. Just that events are now in episode format and a bit more focused. It's a lot to explain about, but the quick sum up of this is that we're adjusting the older content on it's writing quality and while doing that, we're shifting the day/date format into episode format.
Update 0.15 will offer Episode 1 & music added to said episode. Breaking that down a bit, let's compare current day 1 vs episode 1.
Day 1 (Intro to the academy > Erika intro > Miki intro)
Episode 1 (Intro to the academy (expanded) > Erika intro (expanded) > Miki intro (expanded) )
Day 1 word count = 7000 words.
Episode 1 word count = 17,000 words.
Before you think it's just padding and filler added, it's taking what's there and expanding on it. It's not removing existing content, but rather expanding on it and also filling the gaps a bit to help feel more connected. You can be judge on that, but for comparison. There's much more explaining and detail given to players about the intro, academy rules, punishments related to said rules and world building set in place to explain. It should ease players into feeling like things are more believable. (As far as one can believe the concept of a academy that forces students to wear diapers can get)
It covers some new minor events that are fitting to the story between Erika's intro and Miki's intro, etc. Overall there's a good mix of expanding what exists while also adding some new stuff. The episodes should feel fresh and new because of this.
It should be explained that Episodes 1-5 will be the most word count intense, but the other episode stuff isn't as long in comparison. It'll still feel good going into Nova's route with Episode 6 until Episode 12, but overall this format stuff will help the game as we gear up towards the next year of updates to get the game towards it's completion.
