A Town Uncovered - 1 Year in Development (Patreon)

Hey, perverts. 

Firstly, Merry Christmas and happy holidays to every single one of you. I hope you all had a special one this year. I've decided to make this post Public instead of Patron-Only just so anyone who aren't pledged but are still interested in the game can see what's been happening and what's going to happen next year.

Exactly 1 year ago, a day right before Christmas, I released Alpha 0.01 of A Town Uncovered to the world. I was excited to get my project out and to let everyone know that it even exists. Alpha 0.01 was the result of 1 week’s work of total passion and enthusiasm, sparked by a game I played 1 day before I committed to moving from the ‘this makes me want to make a game of my own’ phase to the ‘I’m going to make a game of my own’ phase.

It may not be an original idea, but what are these days? Almost everything is a baby spliced from many other ideas and inspirations. A Town Uncovered tips its hat *m’lady* to Summertime Saga, Life is Strange, Stranger Things, and Longstory.

The first few months of development were… sloppy? To say the least. The art was pretty badly done compared to today’s standard of ATU’s style. The main story had to go through a pretty major surgery around Alpha 0.05 and has turned from a crime and mystery themed plot to what it is now, supernatural and fantasy. Many of you like how it’s going so far, many of you don’t. Don’t worry, I plan on making the main story and the side stories pretty much separate for the most part. On the other hand, it’s still too early to say until I take the time and completely write the main story.

As for the side stories, the family mattered the most to the most. After many months of working on it and still getting used to a work flow, the missus is more or less done for round one of her development. As for the female MC, she’s very close if not half way complete (until her revisit of course). Compared to the missus’ side story, the female MC’s story is longer and has more themes involved. Even though that’s the case, I feel that I’ve gotten a hang of optimizing my work pipeline and getting stuff done at a more efficient rate compared to say half a year ago. Looking back at how long it took to get the missus’ story to where it is now and looking at the pace I’m going at right now with the female MC, I can say that you can expect the female MC’s story to be completed or near completion in March 2018. And a missus x female MC x MC mini-story completed in either April or May.

As I go through more characters’ side stories, they will decrease in size to accommodate for their lack of popularity so if you want a lengthy character story, vote for your damn wifus plebs. <3

At this point, you’re probably thinking to yourself, ‘damn, this mother fucker is a slow mother fucker’. Why doesn’t GeeSeki hire other people to help him with this project like other Patreon creators? And to that, I say, based on how I am as a person, I work a lot better solo with the occasional help and feedback from the community. And if I really need to, I’d rather commission someone to do something for a short duration of time than to bring them on as a team member. 

Real talk based on my experience with working with the people who joined A Team Uncovered. Aside from the commission per piece based members such as for music tracks and background art, working with most notably Cipheos and she-who-shall-not-be-named (writer) was a hell of a learning experience and it made the game overall better than what it would’ve been without them. With that being said, long story short, instead of micro managing and waiting for things to be done, I could easily do it myself in less than half the time and move onto other things without having to discuss the plan with anyone else. That’s just how I see things, and really. Finance wise, the amount pledged to this project is only enough to fuel myself and future commission work. Hiring someone part time isn’t worth the hassle when most things I need to have done, I can do in a few minutes or a few hours, rather than waiting 24 hours for them to answer my plea and do the thing I ask for.
Sorry, I went down that road. That’s basically how it is with me and I 99% know that I won’t be bringing anyone else on as a team member in 2018. All I ask is for a bit of faith and patience and you will receive carefully nurtured results.

So what should you expect in 2018? You should expect the family’s story to be near completed until I revisit them late 2018 or in 2019? Yes, I do expect to be working on this game for that long (and even longer), there’s still a ways to go. I also plan to have a month or two somewhere in the year dedicated to advancing the main story so that more characters can be introduced and things will make more sense. I may do a whole lot of writing and leaving mostly sketches as temporary fillers, just so I am able to really fill the main story with as much worded progression as possible. I also hope to fix and improve the skill point earning system so that it’s a better, permanent fix to an annoying, grindy system. Generally, expect more story progression with each coming update as I’d say a good 25% of the year has been fixing up crappy art from the start of development and working out gameplay and story. Today, after 1 year of development, everything is more streamline and still going strong if not stronger than it has been.

Thank you all for supporting the game, whether you’ve been a supporter from the start or just supporting today, it all means the world to me. A Town Uncovered would not be alive and throbbing without your interest and generosity. I would like to hear from you, your opinion on the game so far, how am I doing as a creator, what can be improved in the game and development, etc. Feedback and ideas are always welcomed. Don’t be afraid of judgement. Don’t be afraid to try and fail. You do you and those who care will come your way. #VagueInspriationalQuote.

Take care, perverts. Just a reminder to clear your browser history.

GeeSeki out. Peace