Dev Diary, January 6th, 2023 (Patreon)

The first post of the new year, and I have to tell you it's still weird not having to drive anywhere to work. But it's nice looking out the window at the neighbor de-icing his car and not having to do that.

I said I would give you a little insight into the new game U4IA, so here it is, trying to spoil as little as possible in the process.

Synopsis
You've been having a pretty shitty life so far, and a friend of yours recommends you travel to this island in the Caribbean in an attempt to escape from your past, somewhere you can start anew.

This island, while off the grid and seemingly paradise on earth, holds its own secrets. It's not only you who are trying to get away from something. The inhabitants might not be all that they seem like.

On this island, you'll meet a lot of girls of course. They too have their own reason as to why they are there. They all are trying to escape or find something or someone, and just want to live life to the fullest and have fun.

You should definitely try to form some sort of friendship with these, as the ghost of Christmas past will most certainly come knocking on their doors, all at once. Get close to them, and learn more about their past. Potentially also prepare.

But whether you're looking for romance or just fun, you will definitely find it. Especially on an island popularly nicknamed Euphoria.

Character building
You will be able to build your MC through a talent tree, gaining perk points as you advance through the game. The perks you choose through the talent tree will last until the end of the game. At the start of every episode, you can alternatively sacrifice a talent perk point for a temporary 'observant' buff that will help you notice things you would not have noticed otherwise. This buff lasts one episode and you will have to sacrifice another talent perk point in the next episode keep it up.

Age
The MC is at the beginning of his 20s. The girls range from freshly dinged 18s to milf.

Progress
I've been rendering animations almost none stop the last few weeks, and that worked almost perfectly with the holidays and a lot of family visits and dinners. So far we're at 951 story renders and 6,558 frames of animation. In total, I'd say I'm about halfway there. The second half should be quicker to do than the first half, as the holidays are behind us, and some of these locations/scenes I've finished have been really draining on both me and pushing my GPUs and RAM to the limit.

For more specifics, I've finished about 13 scenes (excluding the 10 or so different roam locations), 3 free/path-roams, 4 lewd scenes, and one additional more humoristic type of lewd. As mentioned earlier, there are 12 romanceable girls, and a whole lot of other people (where you can have a bit of fun with some of those girls too).

To add to the synopsis above, you won't really know who all the 'good girls' are until later. Some might be there for reasons other than your well-being.

Next week
For the next week, my full focus will be on story renders while I also try to deep dive into the music selection, or at least create a decent list of musicians to contact.

Unfortunately, with the Premiumbeat deal falling through last week, my plan for you to have a big diverse range of music to make your own playlists that would last all throughout the game took a hit. But I'll try to make up for it with more tailored music for the different scenes.

Hopefully, that should shed some light on the development for now. Have a nice weekend and stay safe out there.

// Drifty