ATU Retrospective So Far (2022) and Roadmap

Hey, it's another December and that means another anniversary for this game.

It's actually kind of a bitter-sweet anniversary because on one hand, I'd like to thank you all so very very much for believing in this project and making it possible. On the other hand, naïve GeeSeki of 2016 did not realize how grand and ambitious the scope of this game was going to be.

It's definitely okay to be grand and ambitious with your project but planning plays a gigantic part of it and planning, I did not. I was young, dumb, full of dreams, and not enough game dev experience if any at all.

Years later and I have so much knowledge and growth as a creative that it pains me that I can't really implement them into this game. 

I've experimented and created various different Ren'py Projects to test and push my skills and a lot of them I'm very proud of.

Unfortunately, A Town Uncovered has grown far too big to backtrack and feature creeping is just asking for hell. All we can focus on now is stories.

For anyone wanting to get into creating a dating-sim, don't be stupid and introduce like 50 characters at once. That's stupid. Hyperbolic but you get the idea. Every character deserve their time in the sun, they deserve care put into them, it's hard when they're all staring at you waiting for their turn as they shrivel up after years of neglect.

Plan ahead for God's sake.

Did anything go right though? Well, I'd like to think that looking at the bigger picture of things, we did create a lively town with plenty of places to explore and things to discover. People come in every few releases and still have a great time which still blows my mind that people like something I created. And it's all thanks to you.

I'm sorry to everyone reading this if expectations haven't been met. We want to do better and find a way to make future releases meaningful. That's why I made this roadmap and set goals for the team to achieve. It's also what you can expect in 2023. No more guessing of what is added, this'll be THE PLAN.

We want to finish the Main Story ASAP and I understand a lot of you only really like the Dating-sim aspect of the game, some people actually love the Main Story over anything else but ultimately, the Main Story and the lack of conclusions makes the game feel extremely unfinished still.

I feel once a conclusion is in place, we can feel safe knowing that if we can no longer viably develop for A Town Uncovered, the fans of the game have an ending to look forward to. That's our goal.

As for the dating-sim side story aspect, we will aim for shorter story-lines. As much as we want Missus or Jane length stories, those take literally forever to complete and we want to push more character-driven stuff without skimping on the quality of them.

We want to thank you for supporting us, whether you are new or a veteran. You will always be welcomed in A Town Uncovered.