New Episode Production System

Hey folks! 👋

Since the last Dev Diary, I’ve been completely heads-down building the core of the next update: the brand-new Episode Production System — with upgraded Production Budget decisions and entirely new Creative Direction parameters.

Today I want to give you a quick look at what’s already done, what’s still cooking, and what you can expect when this update goes live.

🎥 Watch the Screen Recording

I’ve posted a short clip on Instagram showing how the new production flow works from the player’s point of view.

» Check out the video «

In the recording, you’ll see the fully redesigned episode production screens, including Production Budget selectors that directly affect your episode’s technical quality, and Creative Direction choices that define the tone, style, and feel of the production.

Let me break these down a bit 👇

💰Production Budget

These parameters already existed in the game — but they’re getting some very meaningful upgrades:

• Parameters are now reordered and grouped more logically, split into Key Talent, Supporting Cast, Production, and Post-Production sections.
• The Talent Hiring screen got a visual upgrade and now shows already-hired talent, so you can properly compare them with new candidates.
• All non-talent parameters can now be adjusted using a clean, modern slider — much faster and nicer to use.
• And the biggest change: Every parameter now shows genre-specific advice about how much it actually impacts episode score. This means when money is tight, you’ll finally know what’s worth prioritizing instead of guessing. This replaces the old Consultant advice you used to get during End Week — and with that change, Consultants are being removed from the game to reduce clutter and simplify decision-making.

Bottom line: you’ll clearly see how spending improves technical quality. No vague hints, no magic numbers — just real, strategic choices.

And this entire Production Budget upgrade will be available to all players from day one.

🎨 Creative Direction

The second major group of episode decisions isn’t about money at all.

You can’t “max these out” — instead, they’re about creative taste, intuition, and adaptation.

I’m introducing 12 brand-new creative parameters: Tone, Humor Level, Realism, Pacing, Acting Style, Music Style, Visual Style, Location Style, Set Style, Structure, Narrative Density, and Dialogue Style.

For each genre and the current audience taste, there’s a perfect value for every parameter. You can either guess it, and/or discover it through trial and error, slowly refining it over multiple episodes.

To help with this, the game builds a heat map — from cold gray to warm gold — showing how close your chosen values are to the ideal. Once you nail a perfect value, it gets marked with a ☆.

But there’s a twist: viewer tastes shift over time. Slowly — but enough to matter.

That’s where the second heat map comes in: Last Known Values. It shows what you discovered earlier, which is usually close… but not always perfect anymore. You might need to adapt.

This whole system makes episode production feel way more personal and experimental, and it also feeds directly into the long-awaited Critics & Viewer Reviews update later on.

Creative Direction will launch as an Early Access feature — as a thank-you to Ultimate Pass subscribers who help make ongoing development possible. 🥰 It will become available to everyone once the next Early Access feature is released.

⏳ Release Pipeline

There are a few things left before launch:

• Final UI elements (like the budget summary),
• The actual “Start Production” flow,
• The new episode score calculation logic that ties everything together,
• And of course: testing… more testing… and even more testing. 😅

It sounds like a lot — but honestly, I expect this final stretch to be shorter than what’s already done.

So yeah… it’s getting pretty close. 🥳

🗳️ Feature Voting – Season 5 Check-In

Ultimate Pass holders, you’re still calling the shots. 💥 (For new players: Feature Voting lets Ultimate Pass subscribers decide which features I build next.)

Current standings:

1. Full-Season Autopilot: 5,857 votes
2. New Genre Explosion: 2,766 votes
3. Streaming Tiers & Pricing: 2,320 votes
4. Talent Expansion & Custom Creation: 1,856 votes
5. Reruns for Network Scheduling: 1,244 votes
6. Marketing Campaigns: 745 votes
7. Production Pipeline for Networks: 655 votes
8. Stats Dashboard: 177 votes
9. More Show Loglines: 140 votes
10. Milestones: 66 votes

Voting closes when the last fan-voted feature, Critics & Viewer Reviews drops. Ultimate Pass holders aren’t just voting on ideas — they’re actively shaping what the next year of Endless TV Tycoon looks like. If a feature matters to you, this is where it lives… or quietly dies. 😬

💖 Why Your Support Really Matters

This game started as a personal idea back in 2019. Thanks to this community, it somehow turned into a real, living thing.

Here’s the simple, unfiltered truth: Subscriptions buy me time. Time to build deeper systems instead of shortcuts. Time to polish instead of rushing. Time to keep this game weird, complex, and unapologetically niche.

There’s no publisher safety net here — just me, the game, and the people who care enough to support it.

Every subscription genuinely helps move things forward. It brings me closer to covering costs and unlocking even more awesome experiences for you. Together, we’re building something truly special.

A Basic Pass removes the End Week interruptions about subscriptions.

The Ultimate Pass is more like joining the inner circle:

• You get Early Access to major new features while they’re still fresh (like Planned Show Endings),
• You help decide what I build next through Feature Voting,
• You unlock Premium Extras like 1,500+ promo images for your shows,
• And yes — your name lives permanently in the Hall of Fame! 🏆

If you’ve ever thought “I wish this game leaned more into that idea” — this is how you push it there. And if you’re enjoying where the game is headed, sticking around as a subscriber helps more than you might think.

There is however another way to support the game: with an App Store Rating. Whether you are able to support development with a subscription right now or not, dropping a rating with ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on the App Store goes a long way in nudging the algorithm to show the game to new players. Seriously — thank you! 😘

👋 Until Next Time

That’s all, folks! 🐽 Thanks for sticking with this weird, stubborn, deeply niche TV management game — and this community.

Stay tuned... and until then:

Keep pitching.

Keep producing.

Keep scheduling.

Keep scheming.

And keep owning prime time! 📺🔥

Cheers,
Greg Karpati
Solo Developer // The Guy Behind the Game 👋