Hello once again all you Couch Lion aficionados! Welcome back to another Dev Diary. It’s been a bit since our last one, but that's the holiday season for you! We hope you all had a great time with your friends and families. Now just because we were busy eating our body weight in delicious foods doesn’t mean we haven’t been working hard on Dream & Sugar. The whole team continues to charge forward and I’m pleased to report we have not just one, but two routes finished now! That’s right folks, you can now date Hugo from start to finish! Everyone’s favorite sassy musician being completed marks the rough halfway point for our implementation process, with only the Riley and Nora routes to go.

What does that mean for our timeline? As we grow increasingly familiar with Ren’Py and our main implementation team gets more comfortable transitioning the script from written word to gameplay word, we should see an increase in production. That said, we want to make sure we continue testing thoroughly so that we deliver a product that works for you, dear player, first time without any issues. With 2022 wound down, that means we’re looking ahead to 2023 as our release date. This project has been amazing to work on and the team wonderful to work with, even though it’s turned into something bigger than we could have ever imagined.

In other news, we’ve figured out how to alter the pronouns in the game! This means that you can now play the game as Nora or Noah, and choose masculine, feminine, or non-binary pronouns for either. This additional feature does add to our production time, but don’t worry. The coding team’s dedication to making the change context and code focused means that we didn’t have to go back and reexamine every single line of dialogue for a pronoun. The art team’s version of Noah is amazing, following our original desire for the character while giving the protagonist a more masculine twist. All in all, it’s an exciting step for inclusivity, which has always been something we’ve kept in mind as we create Dream & Sugar.

And speaking of the art team, the next Dev Diary will be an interview with them! You’ll get to hear from the talented artists bringing our CGs and characters to life what it takes to work with 2D characters in a 3D world, and we can’t wait to share that with you! As always feel free to jump over to our sister blog, the Devlog, to check for more technical changes and growth as we move forward with the project. Everyone stay safe and stay warm, and Happy New Year from everyone here at Couch Lion. We look forward to bringing you the full game next year!

- Couch Lion Studios