#echo devlog

Customize your MC. From appearance, personality, to motivations. Your character is yours to make.

Rich relationship dynamics. With eleven other contestants and the cameras always rolling, things are bound to get messy. It's up to you whether you want to keep it platonic, find your person, or hook up in the pantry. Nobody's judging...except the audience.

Multiple endings. Your time in the mountains can leave quite an impression. How will your story end?

Anjali Lal | She/Her, 25, Model/Skincare Entrepreneur

Polished, poised, and unapologetically high-maintenance, Anjali doesn’t suffer fools or wrinkles. Her sharp tongue and cold exterior might scare some off, but if you make her crack, she just might surprise you. [BIO]

Dmitry Volkov | He/Him, 30, Private Wealth Manager

Outwardly, Dmitry comes off as too perfect. But he’s more than just good manners and a strong jawline. Quietly protective and endlessly thoughtful, he’ll always strive to put you first. [BIO]

Jong-woo Kim | He/Him, 23, Fitness Influencer

Bubbly, bright, and built like a Greek statue, Jong-woo brings the sunshine wherever he goes. He’s a little awkward, endlessly enthusiastic, and surprisingly wise for someone who still calls his mom every day. Whether he’s working out or working the room, you can’t help but smile when he’s around. [BIO]

Kailee Blake | She/Her, 26, Interior Designer

Kailee's all smiles and sweet touches, but it's clear she knows how to play the game. While her affection might feel genuine at times, her true motives stay tucked behind that charming facade. If you’re not careful, you’ll think she’s on your side right up until she twists the knife with a smile. [BIO]

Kalea Mahelona | She/Her, 22, Student

Kalea is candy personified: sweet, soft, and easy to break if you’re not careful. She’s clumsy, shy, and easily flustered, but once she warms up to you, she’s all in. [BIO]

Linden Craft | They/Them, 31, Café Owner

Grounded and honest, Linden is the breath of fresh air you didn’t know you needed. A little quiet and unreadable, they offer comfort by simply being. With their steady presence and emotional maturity, they make it easy to be exactly who you are. [BIO]

Luca/Lucia Gigliotti | He/Him OR She/Her, 28, Luxury Art Curator

Cunning, cultured, seductive: Lu thrives on tension and desire. With them, love—if it exists at all—is a just game. Whether you join in is your choice. Either way, you’re in for one hell of a ride. [BIO]

Makai Jones | He/Him, 27, High School History Teacher

Aloof, unreadable, and hard to impress, Makai keeps his guard sky-high. He’s cautious and most people don’t get past the walls he’s built. But if you do manage to earn his trust, you’ll find someone loyal, grounded, and quietly ride-or-die in a way that never asks for recognition. [BIO]

Marcel Toussaint | They/He, 29, Mixologist

Flamboyant, passionate, and just a touch unhinged, Marcel refuses to be ignored. They flirt for sport and love watching people fall for them, whether or not they plan to catch them. But sometimes, even a wildcard wants something real…it just might take a while. A very long while. [BIO]

Misty Delgado | She/Her, 26, Park Ranger

Misty is the epitome of cool and always in control. She takes life one day at a time and is definitely not one to rise to the drama. Sometimes, she’s so laid-back it makes you wonder if she’s here to make a real connection…or just enjoy the view. [BIO]

Santiago/Santina Reyes | He/Him OR She/Her, 28, Tattoo Artist/Small Business Owner

HIGHS: Guess who finished the Cold Zone route? It was me. I did.

Well, mostly. There are still spots I need to edit and a few things I’m considering adding in, but it’s essentially wrapped!

I think my favorite thing about this chapter so far is that this is the first real opportunity for MC’s conflict type to shine depending on your choices! Not to mention the amount of layers. There’s the whole Makai mess, the revamped advantages, and now Marcel and Misty are disrupting the balance 🫣

I was playtesting Makai’s route earlier today and there are quite a few ways that can go 👀 Getting through this route was rough at first, and then it all started coming together, and now I love it. I hope you all will too!!

Now I can properly move onto the lodge routes. I’ll probably start with Dmitry first. I already drafted your first night sharing a bed and it’s…ya know?

And! In addition to having Misty and Marcel in the mix, you'll meet two more characters this chapter as well, one of whom has one of my favorite routes 🙂‍↕️ Can you guess who??? 👀

I also added more visual signals to the choices. Originally, I was planning to keep MC’s malice/helpful/messy choices hidden and have the consequences emerge later. But then I thought it might be jarring if you haven’t been paying attention and your MC suddenly says they don’t care about someone or refuses to apologize for a very intentional choice.

SO while you won’t be able to see the totals, you’ll be able to see which choices will earn you those points 😊

LOWS: Writing the Cold Zone route was a slog. I’m not even going to pretend it wasn’t.

I think a lot of it came down to stress in my real life and not feeling motivated or inspired to write the way I usually do by the time I get home. But also, this chapter, as I mentioned, has a lot of opportunities for conflict. The struggle this time was trying to address that when, like, half the cast is extremely conflict avoidant lol

It was a good opportunity to define the characters’ voices without having them fly off the handle, but man, it wasn’t easy getting there 😭

I think my biggest problem for this chapter has been deciding when to let MC’s locked-in choices come through versus letting YOU make choices in the moment. So far, I’ve been leaning into those application choices. And when I read it back, I’m pretty satisfied!

Still, the perfectionist in me thinks there’s more I can do, and that’s where things get tough. Because then I’ll hyper-fixate on a passage instead of making the progress I want to make.

I also think I'll need beta testers soon…

Anyways...

Last month I asked your opinions about chapter releases, and it seems like most of you prefer getting the full chapter when it’s ready.

Okay, heard. I’m aiming to release it this summer. What? No? Who said that? 👀

BYYYYYYEEEEE~

HIGHS: I’ve been thinking about relationship statuses for a while now. For transparency, there are 8 of them: lover, anchor, platonic, wary, warming, rival, stranger, and dismissed. As I’ve been writing this chapter, there are certain…things that can happen where if you were platonic it might be kind of jarring in context. So I introduced something that lets me officially account for previous statuses. I'd been tracking them locally before, but this makes it so much easier to call whenever I want! It also opens the door for more flavor. If things were purely friendly and suddenly there's flirting, now the ROs and MC can actually acknowledge that shift. I already tried it in one scene, and it's just the subtlest little phrasing but I love it and it makes me smile~

Aside from all that, I've got a lot of scenes drafted and have a full road map for chapter 2! I just need to finish writing it all...which brings me to...

LOWS: I won’t lie; I haven’t gotten as far as I would’ve liked to in this chapter 🥲 I was hoping to have the Cold Zone route completely done by now, but I still have quite a bit to write. I haven't even officially touched the other routes yet 😭 Some days I write a ton; some days it’s only a couple hundred of words. Life has been life-ing. I did find something that allows me to block certain apps and websites so I can just write without distractions for a few hours. I'm trying to use it more often, but I think my mind's too noisy lately so it's admittedly been hard to focus.

The other thing I've been wrestling with is deciding which variables should exist and which shouldn't. I worry about bloating (and my own sanity 🫠) I want the game to be as customizable as possible, but I don't want to add variables just for the sake of having them. If I include a custom choice, it needs to mean something and get referenced enough to justify its existence (I'm looking at you multi-lingual choice set 👀)

So that's all for this month! I'm gonna keep trucking along, but I do have a release date in mind~ wish me luck 💗

BYYYYYYEEEEE~

Current Total Word Count: 115.35K (approx. +25K words for ch.2)

Actually wait! I have a question for you lovely people! When I read IFs, I find that I like when the full chapter is out (unless I'm absolutely hooked and can't wait 🤭) Still, I'm curious what you all think.

No promises on a schedule or anything! This is purely for research 😗

Taking some constructive feedback + a few things that were personally bugging me, I went back into ch. 1 and made some updates. I just kept re-reading it thinking, “what’s missing?” and eventually accepted that I needed to do this.

SO! First, I addressed the situation where MC is friends with certain ROs and promised to pick who their friend wanted. Based on feedback and after re-reading it again, it felt weird not to acknowledge it. So now, MC can mention it, and the friend should react accordingly.

Second, there are obviously MCs who haven’t built romantic connections, which makes the Cold Zone pretty much inevitable. I actually already have mechanics that can support that route...it's even briefly mentioned right before the ceremony if your MC hits that threshold! I just kind of forgot it existed in my excitement to publish the demo 😅 Anyways, there will be some extra text in place post-ceremony to make that path feel more intentional.

And lastly, because I am who I am…I CRAVED MORE DRAMAAAA

So I reworked the advantages; the upgraded versions are much spicier imo 😈 But you’ll have to wait to see exactly what I mean though~

I have a few other small tweaks I want to make in ch. 1, so these updates won't go live just yet; my top priority is still ch. 2!

LOWS: Expectation is both my biggest motivator and my worst enemy.

I’ve got my own standards for the quality of my work, and then there are the expectations I think everyone else has. You all have been so kind and excited and enthusiastic; I want to give you the same level of fun you had playing ch. 1. and I’d hate to let you all down, let alone myself 😭

There have been moments where I write thousands of words, reread it, and immediately think, “Ah this is shit, I hate this. They, too, will hate this” And then I scrap it, then rewrite it. And then I still wonder if it’s good enough!

For example, some characters’ scenes come so easily, and then there are ones I sit with for days and days and days…right now, that character is Makai lol HE’S PMO LIKE HE’S PISSED YOU OFF AND I’M TIREEEEDDD 😩 I’ve been on his first solo scene for a WEEK AND A HALF! I've lost count how many things I've cut and rewritten for him!

I want to build his arc carefully, and that means I can’t reveal everything too soon. At this point in the story, everyone’s only known each other for a day. So what level of emotional intimacy makes sense? How deep is too deep? Is it believable for him to say this? Does that line push things too far too fast? If he holds back, will it feel unsatisfying? How do I create something that feels meaningful without rushing him? How do I leave players curious, and even better, wanting to stick around with him? That’s the puzzle I’m currently sitting with.

*sigh* I just need to lock tf in

With that…MAKAI GET YOUR BITCH ASS OVER HERE! We are finishing this SCENE 😤

Catch you guys in the next update!

BYYYYYYEEEEE~

Highs first: When I started WMU, I had zero twine/sugarcube experience and only basic CSS/JS knowledge. There was a lot of fumbling and swearing and tears…I’m definitely still learning, but I finally feel like I’ve got a decent grasp on things. A huge portion of early development was just getting comfortable with the code, and writing, of course. That said, WMU is in a pretty good place! I’m so close to wrapping up the first chapter for the demo.

Today, I finished the first group game which felt like the first real test. At first, I thought I’d just track the points, easy-peasy. Then I remembered that I’m trying to avoid making new passages for every single choice, which meant I needed to adjust the code to account for the wrong answers, the right answer, and the default response if you get the question wrong so I can put them all in one place. I also had Kalea DOMINATE the game, with her swooping in to get the right answer whenever you fail, and realized the win threshold against her would’ve been way too high. The whole thing had me spiraling into coding HELL! But it’s done now, and I learned a lot for the next series of group games.

For writing, all that’s left for this first update are the results of the game, individual RO time, and the first Warm-Up Ceremony (pairing with your chosen RO)! Of course, I still have to edit, code, and playtest, but knowing that this is all that’s left until demo day is weirdly comforting.

Now for the lows: How many variables are too many variables? Does the limit exist? There are a lot of variables in this game (and counting!) I even built two separate trackers to make sure I don’t lose anything, and I still get overwhelmed sometimes. There are the big story-beat variables, and then there are tiny ones I sprinkle in just to make the experience feel personal. But balancing all that with MC personality options is tricky.

For example: Anjali is one of the ROs with an optional contentious/flirty dynamic determined by friend/flirt points. Right now, it reads bold so I’d either need to account for shy MCs or generalize it so it works across the board. Part of me wants to stick with the point system; another part thinks I should introduce a new variable specifically for those dynamics. I don’t know…it makes my head hurt sometimes lol

Anywayyyy, that’s about all I’ve got. Thank you again for all the follows and love 💗 If you're curious about anything, feel free to ask; I'm happy to answer!

Off to write I go…

BYYYYYYEEEEE~

Highs: You’ll be pleased to know that the demo is essentially done! I've still got some editing and playtesting to do, though to make sure I didn't miss anything. I wanted to avoid putting an official release date in case I couldn’t honor it, but of course I have my own deadline in mind that I’ve been working toward. It happens to be the exact date that Warm Me Up starts filming. I’m still not telling you when that is though lol patience my friends! Just know that it is muuuuuch sooner than you think 😉 I shared a test file with one of my friends who's an interactive fiction newbie and always gives it to me straight, and she really liked it! She gave me some great feedback too, so I was able to edit a couple of things based on that.

This past month, I was finally able to fix the mobile version! When I tell you it was driving me INSANE! The back button wasn’t showing up, then it was peeking out from behind the passage, unclickable and taunting me 😒 then the setting buttons were overlapping and too small. It was a headache, but if I did everything correctly, you should be able to comfortably play on mobile (I hope) I also introduced a TON of new widgets that’ll help me update things easily as the story grows. They do increase the outcomes/branching by a lot, but ultimately, it'll give you more personalized story beats based on your stats and choices!

And the lows: You know, I mentioned last time that this is a variable-heavy game and that I have two trackers to stay organized. I think what’s most concerning is my own human error? My process is this: simultaneously write and code, and then, after I’ve finished a chapter, log all the variables, choices, and stat changes in my trackers and use the totals to determine/review stat thresholds. But I make mistakes! So when I’m trying to account for conditional statements and their thresholds, I find that at that point in the story, you might not see the flavor text because you haven’t hit those stat thresholds. Then I realize, oh wait, maybe you actually did, I just accidentally typed in a 1 instead of 2 or something in my tracker. Then I gotta go back and review it to make sure I’ve got it right. I either need to take my time and pay better attention or stop working into the wee hours of the morning…or both. Both is good lol

And that’s it! As always, if you’ve got questions, I’m happy to answer 💗

BYYYYYYEEEEE~