A Town Uncovered - 2 Years in Development (Patreon)

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you!

I want to take this time to talk about A Town Uncovered and how far it's come since it's first release on December 2016.

Alpha 0.01 - The Bed Update was released on the 24th of December after 1 week of development as a fun project for me to take on.

This version included 3 characters; the MC, the Missus, and the Jane. It included 3 locations; The bedroom, the kitchen, and the hallway (excluding Jane's bedroom). No music, no GUI, no map, no choices.

The total playtime for Alpha 0.01 is less 5 minutes and included less than 1,000 words. It was the first time working with this art style, it was the first time coding a game and working with this game engine, I had no idea what to expect to come out of this.

Alpha 0.14 - The Fortress Update was technically not a December release but it was released on the 3rd of January so close enough.

After 12 months into development, the game now has 25 characters, 41 individual locations, 54,000 words, 7 music tracks, and a whole set of features to flesh the game out to what it was visioned to be. 

Between here and December 2016, the amount of new bells and whistles were extravagant. I was literally turning a small 5 minute visual novel of waking Jane up into a fully fledged game with a wide variety of locations, characters, and choices.

The Main Story and the 'Alternate' World were introduced, the Missus' story was pretty much complete and both Jane and Miss Allaway's story were in the works.

At this point, the game has reached an approximate gameplay time of 2.5 hours.

Alpha 0.23 is what we're currently up to and will be a Miss Allaway focus update.

At this point in development, we're at about 110,000 words of in game content, 42 characters, and about 5 hours of gameplay.

Compared to the progress between 2016 and 2017, there hasn't been many 'new' things, but a huge focus on story progression. The universe of A Town Uncovered got a batch of new characters, existing ones are becoming more alive, and everyone is slowly being tied into a web within each other's stories.

Jane's Story is pretty much complete aside from a few missing art assets and the post-story h-scenes. We've progressed the Main Story and Miss Allaway's story, added polish here and there, and redone old and ugly art assets.

This was also the year that I was hit with Patreon's ban hammer, in March 2018 actually. The once shiny and mint-conditioned hammer, quickly dirtied with the blood of many Adult Game Developers came down on me. Surprisingly, it came down much much later after the slaughter of others. I saw it coming a mile away and I was just sitting and waiting for the impact. And what an impact it did make. All I can say with that is that yes, it was a pain to go through but I hope that the modification I did to my game to comply to their rules is one that you all are pleased with. I actually think some of you don't really realize what the 'modification' is and to that I say... mother trucker, censorship hurts like a buttcheek on a stick.

I have brought along a writer onto A Team Uncovered later in the year, I have mentioned him many times and you can find him in the credits of the game, Robert Hawkins. As of 0.20, he will be the primary writer of the game, with me to supervise and direct the project. So far, he's been such a huge help with getting me out of my creative block and I'm sure he'll do a fantastic job in future updates.

Miss Allaway will be the last character of Stage 1 in our Side Story Progress Plan and is estimated to be complete and released around February or March, depending on how things go. A more set in stone release plan will be given closer to that time period.

Let me explain what this 'Side Story Progress Plan' is. I've said it repeatedly every time I make a poll on characters that popular characters will get longer stories and less popular ones will get shorter stories, right? 

Stage 1 involves 3 characters; Missus, Jane, and Miss Allaway and they've been planned to include 50 chapters worth of content in their story each. A total of 150 chapters.

Stage 2 are the next 3 characters and they'll have 35 chapters worth of content each. A total of 105 chapters.

Stage 3 are the next 4 characters and they will include 20 chapters worth of content. A total of 80 chapters.

And Stage 4 are the remaining characters that will include around 10 chapters worth of content for each character.

The Main Story is planned to have about 150-200 chapters worth of content itself and we're about at the chapter 40-50 mark.

In a utopian universe, we would love to have every character have 30,000 words worth of material to play around with but the reality is that it's impossible to do. This also explains why these first 3 characters are taking so long to complete. Not only are we writing an entire screenplay, we have to create the art for it, and code it all in in a meticulous and tedious manner. This is also the reason why I'm assuring to all of you that future side stories will be completed in a shorter amount of time, simply due to the smaller amount of content they will have.

With that being said, I want to list a few things I hope to get completed with this game during this time in 2019.

In 12 months time, we will have an approximate word count of 170,000 words. 

We will have included more original sound tracks for the game.

We would have Miss Allaway's story completed along with the completion of the next 2 characters from Stage 2. 

The Main Story will get a bit of progression done, and the game would have reached a total of 7-8 hours of gameplay.

Thank you all for sticking by our side through thick and thin.
Thank you for playing or even trying out A Town Uncovered, whether it'd be once or every update.
Thank you for loving the world we created together, the characters as they grew with you and the MC, and thank you for believing in what we have to show in the future!