2011 The Year Of Farewells

This year was... weird. It was bittersweet, crazy, successful, painful, happy, sad and... the year of farewells.

This year indeed I've said farewell to my beloved uncle, the person who helped me to become a game developer more than anyone else since I was a kid.

I've said farewell to several pets: the last one, my dog Artù, just a week ago. In the picture above I'm with him during a trip to Germany.

But it was also the year I said farewell to my old car. I know it might seem stupid: but I was somehow attached to it. It was the car I had on my first date. The car I used to go at the office for my first job. Was the car I used when I gave the first passage to my girlfriend, and when I went on my first holiday trip. So many memories, mostly good ones!

I've also said farewell to portals: or at least, to submitting to them. I've come to the conclusion that they get so many submissions that unless you make a perfectly "targeted" game, you won't have any chances. Or you need to be featured on the most popular websites, which is something that seems forbidden to me for reason behind my control. So, from now on, I'll just save my time and take care only of my followers!

How was business in the 2011

On the "business" side, this has been my most successful year ever since I was indie. This month was the best one, despite the various indie bundles, sales, and the crisis. I really hope business will continue like this month, would help me to relax a bit!

Of course, I'm not getting too much excited. Since I know that in a fast paced technology-related business things might change completely in just a few years (or even months). Still it feels good for once not being worried to pay the bills!! :)

It's interesting, if I think back about 2010 which was a rather disappointing year (mainly because of the two Vera Blanc games and Card Sweethearts, the worst-selling games I've ever made!). I was sad and angry because of the various failures, but I still had all my pets and my family members alive. I think this year taught me what really matters in life, not money or success - but love and being loved.

Next Year Goals

I really have big hopes for next year, since I'll release many interesting new games of all kinds (RPGs, dating sim, otome, etc). The only thing I fear honestly, is that I might have to slow down a bit. I am not a machine, and this year for various reasons I was forced to be at home, and since at home I have my computer and internet connection... I worked! I didn't have a SINGLE DAY of holidays. Of course I didn't code or write all the year, but even managing people/sending emails takes lot of time.

And as a consequence I released 5 games in a year, which is something never happened before. I'll try my best, but don't expect 5 games next year! Even if who knows, maybe will still happen.

Happy New Year to everyone!!

The Price is Right

In the picture above, an image of my dwarf rabbit Cleo who decided to travel to the rabbits paradise last week, after 9 years with us.

Why low pricing is wrong for niche games

I'm going to talk briefly about my own experience with low prices. I know that as customer, you'd want the games to be cheaper! who wouldn't want that? however, as I gather data from my little price experimentation, it's quite clear that if I was to sell my games for 4.99 I would be bankrupt in less than one year.

Check the pie-graph below:

On top there's the graph for the number of copies sold. Wow, during the promotional week sale, Heileen1 was almost 1/3 of my total games sold!

However, the enthusiasm quickly fades checking the other graph below, showing the net revenues for the same period: Heileen1 is at the 5th place, below other games.

This is even more "dramatic" if we consider that I sent the newsletter, posted in my twitter/facebook page and so on about the promotion. So in practice, the "regular sales" of my other games (the best selling titles though) were generating more revenues that a super-mega sale...!

I like to do sales, since I know that not everyone can afford to buy my games at full price. Obviously, I'm going to wait several months before I do sales of my recent games, but for games that were released 2-3 years ago (Heileen 1 was released in 2008 for example) it's fine.

But the fact is that unless you have a great exposure, a customer base of millions, like the portals have, undercutting your price is never going to work. You'll only lose money, and if you're not careful, forced to find another job! :D

Heileen 2: Hands Of Fate promotional sale

Speaking of promotions, this week I managed to update Heileen 2, which is on sale until next Sunday (included). Below you find a teasing image of Ebele with the new relationship bar added to that game as well. (Sadly Ebele is not dateable in the game, even if there are some spicy situations with her...)

Since I'm using online activation, I decided to offer two kind of downloads: the "standard" game, without voices, which is 45mb, or the fully voiced game that is 100mb. I'm particularly interested to check the statistics after some time, to see how many people prefer the voiced vs unvoiced version, since I'm considering if to make some more voiced games in future or not.

And the various games in progress? they're all still going fine! This week got some sketches for the Roommates game from a new artist, new finished CG scenes for Planet Stronghold: Warzone, new images/texts for Queen Of Thieves and new texts for Heileen3.

I really am not sure which game will be done first, since mostly depends on artists/writers speed, and what kind of gameplay will choose to implement in some of them (I have a few interesting ideas for Queen Of Thieves but must see if is something that I am able to code or not!).

Warning: Promo Sales Ahead!

In the photo above, my cat Orfeo (italian name for Orpheus) in a curious pose (to say the least)!

What's about the promo sales in the title? Well, the game engine I used for all my recent manga games, Ren'Py, got a big update recently, improving the speed, compatibility and adding the DirectX support (requires DX9 installed though).

So I am slowly rebuilding all the games I've developed with it in the past years. The first one to be updated was Heileen 1, the first visual novel I developed myself. For each game update, I'll have the game on sale at very big discount, with the idea that many people will buy it and report eventual problems (there really shouldn't be any, but you never know!)

As I'm rebuilding the games I am also adding some small features, like for example I added the infamous relationship bar (see the image below) that was missing on the first two Heileen games.

I'm also going to switch all the old one to the new popular online activation, with the exception of big games with voices like Heileen 2 or Bionic Heart (which would require demos of over 100mb, and it's a bit too much!).

To buy the game for only 4.99, simply head to the game purchase page. You don't need any code, but be careful since the offer expires next sunday!

What other games I will update? well, all of them, but I'm taking it slowly, so not more than one every week or better every 10-15 days. The next ones I have scheduled are Heileen 2, then will be the turn of Bionic Heart, Flower Shop, and so on.

The best way to know when the promotional sale is on is to follow me on Twitter or Facebook, since I announce the offers there first, while I update the blog only once a week.

Apart the promotional sales, I'm working hard on the various games in progress: I've written half of the 100 scenes for Heileen 3, the RPG framework for Loren RPG is at good point, and I got new art and ending images for Planet Stronghold: Warzone and Undead Lily.

And, "sometimes before Christmas", Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook will finally be released (we decided to add a bonus extra scene to compensate the long wait!).

Loren Amazon Princess new skilltrees and battle system

As you can see from the photo above, I hired a very skilled coder to help me working on the future RPGs ;)

Jokes apart, I really hired a coder, but for Loren Amazon Princess (since Planet Stronghold Warzone will re-use the same battle system with some interesting new features like area of effect psionics).

I know I already published some skilltrees, but when the new coder arrived we decided to revamp the plannet battle system with a new, greatly improved one. Check the WORK IN PROGRESS image below:

The main "battle flow" will work in a similar way as Final Fantasy X battles, where each action adds to "wait time". So no more Action Points, though the basics are the same. On the right of the screen there's a list with the moving order, and when is your turn, you'll decide what action to do. Clicking on your currently active character, or an ally, will open a menu with the "friendly actions" that you can do (like Heal another party member, or use a potion, and so on). On the other hand, clicking on an enemy will open the menu with "hostile actions", like attack the enemy or use one of the various special skills / spells that you have at your disposal to crush your opponents!

Each action will add a wait time. So for example drinking a potion will be such a quick action, that you will be able to move again the same character immediately, though "behind the scenes" some "seconds" of battle passed. If you perform a more complex action, for example use the "Pinning Shot" skill of the "Hunter" subclass, your character will need much more time before he/she can act again. The list on the right will update in real-time when you hover the mouse on the skill, so you'll have lot of time to plan your strategy. It's already working quite well, in the test battles I often paused wondering if was better to use a quick, but less powerful move to finish one enemy, or instead choose a more slow move but that would hit all the enemies in front row.

Yes, because differently from Planet Stronghold, there's also tactical disposition on the battlefield! There's a front-row, and a back row. If a character is using ranged weapons, can hit anyone in front/back row. But if the character is using melee weapon, he can hit only enemies in the front row. Also obviously Warriors will have more HP, while Thief and especially Mages much less, so putting them in the front row won't be a great idea! This means that you'll have to choose your party formation, and right now we're thinking to have glorious 8 vs 8 battles that will offer a great fun, and will let you use most of your party members (there are 12 in total that you can recruit).

skilltree.pdf Download this file

I'm also particularly happy about the various skills and how the interaction between the 3 main classes (Warrior, Thief and Mage) will work. But this is a complex topic and will require a completely new blog post (and new flowchart to explain it), so for now I'm going to stop here. The skilltrees are basically 99% definitive this time, there might be some that will change slightly during testing to balance better the gameplay, but in general what you see in the PDF is going to be the final version of all the skilltrees.

There's something cooking...

But fear not, I'm not going to cook my sweet cat Gilda, who in the picture above found a new way to use my pot :)

Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook

We're getting close to finish it. I know I've been saying this already, but there are still a few backgrounds missing, and some more testing needed, but definitely not much! Is really likely to be finished in July!

Spirited Heart Deluxe Girl's Side

Even this expansion is at a very good point. Only a character subplot left to finish and then will need to test and check everything. This is very likely to be done either in end of July or August. The sprites are not yet all ready, but what has been done so far is absolutely lovely. Check the image below:

But don't think all the girls will be like Reid, the sexy demoness dancer. Each one has her own personality and different life goals: cute princesses, fearsome thieves, anti-social genius and more bizarre characters will be present in the expansion, who is going to be as big as the main game! I think there's really a very good variety of situations in the game and even if the theme is girl's love, I think some scenes are really beautiful and everyone should play it ;)

Loren Amazon Princess

This is going to be delayed a bit, since I'm getting a complete RPG framework done by a "real coder" (that's not me! lol). This way I can re-use it for future games or add-ons (even in different settings/game worlds). I should have done this before, but as they say, better late than never! Meanwhile, right now the romance scenes are being drawn, the first ones are Loren and Elenor/Saren. Everything will happen during a full moon night, when Loren goes in a lake nearby to take a bath... As said already the scenes will be completely optional because will be more sexy than usual, and you won't see them at all if you disable the option in the preferences screen.

Undead Lily and The Elemental Avengers

The final battle poses of the last two heroes are being made right now! Though there are still all the romance scenes, and probably will also need more art for the strategic map... this game is becoming really bigger than I thought, hopefully my efforts and investment will be rewarded! :)

More news and surprises coming soon...

I'll be also promoting soon some games made by indie game developers friends, and I am also getting ready to launch an interesting promotion somewhere in July, offering several themed games that will make sci-fi fans happy. Stay tuned for more news!

Visual Novels vs Life Simulation vs Roleplay Games

In the picture above, my cat Othello who found a bizarre spot to relax in my home. He seems caged but in reality he is relaxing in that pose!

As the title says, since I have no relevant news of my various games work-in-progress, today want to make some ramblings about those three game categories: visual novels, life / dating sim and roleplay games, since are the genre of games I made the most in the last 3-4 years (since I discovered Ren'Py in practice). In the end I will assign a percentage to each skill required to make them (is just for fun, remember!).

• Visual Novels are rather easy, coding-wise. The main focus is the story, without any doubt. By story I mean: the basic setting/idea (which personally I believe is the most important thing), the characters and the style of writing. I put the style of writing as last thing, because even if I think a good writing is important, I think it's not as important as the game idea and characters. You can have a good writing, but if your visual novel uses a very common setting (high-school...) won't be as much interesting as a more uncommon/original setting. An aspect most VN developers ignore though is the visuals/soundtrack. I believe nice visuals will make the gaming experience much more interesting, even if is true that the main focus should be the story. A nice soundtrack, or even better, atmospheric sound effects would help even more to get into the story.
  So in summary: visual novel = 60% story/writing, 25% art, 10% sound/music and 5% coding
• Life or Dating Simulation are already much more complex. No matter how much branching your visual novel can have, a dating sim will be more painful to code. Take my latest game Always Remember Me: there are lots of gameplay factors to consider. Difficulty balancing can be solved by adding a difficulty setting at start of the game, but making sure that each scene plays in the right order it's not easy as it seems, and making sure there are no easy cheat/way to win by raising a statistic requires lot of time and testing. I grouped life with dating sims because usually are very similar. Almost all dating sim I've seen have much in common with life sim: a calendar, several statistics, several action/location to visit to improve them, character relationships and more. While not as complex as RPG, life sim can still be quite hard to develop, even with a powerful tool like Ren'Py. Writing is important, but in general life sim have much less texts (in some cases even A LOT less) than visual novels. Art and music are always important, but since there is also the gameplay element, they are LESS important than in a visual novel where the user will be staring at the screen reading for most of the time. In life sim the UI/interface is much more important than beautiful animated backgrounds.
  My conclusion is: dating / life sim = 20% story/writing, 20% art, 10% sound/music, 50% coding
• Roleplaying games are probably one of the most difficult kind of games to code! they have everything life/dating sim have (statistics, relationship, skills, location to visit, actions to perform) but in addition they also have a complex inventory (life sim can have inventory, but easier stuff) and obviously, the combat! I remember when I was younger, I almost ignored the story in RPGs and played them only if they had a well developed combat system. Now I pay more attention to the story but still I believe that MOST of the players care only about combat and exploration, and skip most of the writing. Art is important, but probably is the kind of games where it matters less. If you look at the various RPGmaker games or Spiderweb ones, you can clearly see that having a top quality art is NOT needed to be successful in this field. Is more about the ruleset, the battle/level up system, the skills, the quests, maps and so on. Clearly having ALSO a better art, will help, but is not an essential requirement. Same for story/writing, is enough to see how many successful action RPGs are there!
  I'd say that a good RPG = 5% story/writing, 15% art, 10% sound/music, 70% coding.

Please note that I am talking only about 2d games, so 2d RPG too, since 3d RPG are of a completely different league!

This justifies in part why took me so long to make a RPG game like Planet Stronghold vs the other kind of games. And also why I'm probably going to focus on life/dating sims in future, with some RPG hybrids from time to time. Ideally I'd like to make a life/dating sim every 2-3 months and a good RPG every 6 months (or perhaps more). That's why I put the Loren princess game on hiatus for now, since I wouldn't have been able to do a decent job while doing so many other projects at same time (lazy artists aside! lol).

Cinders visual novel

The picture you see is from a upcoming visual novel game from MoaCube, the debut title of a new development team friend of mine. They're new in the visual novel world but they're well known in the casual market, and the art style is quite unique. I've seen it in action and the attention to details is amazing, lots of particle effects going in the background. I cannot comment much on the story because the version I tried was early alpha but as the title says, is going to be based on the Cinders fairy tale.

For more information, check the game official site: http://moacube.com/games/cinders/

new otome game release and plans for the future

Good news: Always Remember Me is out of pre-order phase and now the difficulty problem has been solved. The game now on start-up will offer your two playing mode: the Hard mode is the previous one, with some minor adjustments, and is the right choice for dating sims experts. The Normal mode instead is aimed at casual players who I'm sure will appreciate the much reduced failure rate when trying the actions inside the life simulation part!

Of course you will still need to find the right actions to do, and the correct "path" for each character. Some scenes are very well hidden requiring you to be at a specific day/time on a specific place. I will probably write a sort of walkthrough on my forums later next week (since the game is just out I don't want to spoil the fun!!).

In case you haven't tried the game demo yet, check it now: http://www.winterwolves.com/rememberme.htm

(and yes, I changed only slightly the name adding "Always", to differentiate the game title from the movie).

In this week cats picture, Gilda and Grillo are sleeping peacefully together.

As indie developer instead, I can never sleep so peacefully! Numerous dangers lurk in the night... portals lowering price so much that soon they'll start paying people to play games, your server that goes down after hackers attack at midnight, some mysterious new bug appear in your latest released game and so on! But... the most feared of all is surely this: artists that disappear in the middle of development process! :D

Almost every indie I know had this problem, exception for those that use professional teams (but I've heard some problems even in those cases). Also most games don't really need much art like visual novels/dating sims, or even better just need 3d models: in this case you can commission them even from different people, since in 3d is much harder to notice a difference in style (while in 2d is immediately evident).

Anyway I'm not here to complain, but I find myself in a fun situation, where I have lots of story texts and game design ready for 3-4 games, but they're all on hold because of artists. Not everyone disappeared, some of them just took a break, others are busy doing commissions for other people (this is last time I give away my artists contacts!) , other moved full-time into comics and so on. That's why I start so many projects at once, unless you're making a game where you just need a few portraits (thinking about the RPGMaker XP games haha) is really hard to be sure that the person you hired for 2-3 months of will finish everything as planned.

I just finished 3 games this year so now I'm taking a break to see what I can do next. I think I could probably start working on the sequel of Spirited Heart. It has all the art done, but I wanted to wait until I was skilled enough to do a online game using Monkey (a new language that allows people to code games for HTML5/Flash without knowing JS/AS3). Problem is... I'm too used to Ren'Py now, and any other language looks too slow to develop with! :)

I really cannot imagine myself coding in something where I cannot immediately test the changes I just made with a keystroke to reload all the script, like I do with Ren'Py. That's just too much time-saving! The only other thing I know that can do that is VisualC, the system I was using before, but that would mean to leave out Linux from the target platforms and I don't like that, since I'd like to support my "penguin friends" :)

Speaking about that, a friend of mine, Neil (who runs a successful zombie-MMO) told me an interesting thing:

the question is, if you were to use Flash for example, would the result be anywhere near as good as with python? How much longer would it take? If it's going to take 2x longer then I'd say stick with what you know since I doubt the difference in conversions between web player and download will be more than 50%.

sometimes you really need an external point of view to fuly realize the situation, the pro and cons. That's why I always ask for advice and feedback for my games and my choices in general, because it really helps. My friend is basically right, it's not use to me to try making a game using another language if takes me x2-3 time more than just using Ren'Py and python (even if that means I need to have that damn auto-updater done!).

For now I'm still thinking how to design the game - probably there will be a normal offline part, and then a big online integration, though since I'm new to all of this I have to see how it works, and if I can actually make it without going mad :)

Meanwhile, the other projects like Loren RPG are on hold (even if the story is about 30% finished), while Planet Stronghold's add-on should  (not completely sure yet) see the light around July/August, since the artist said she would take time to finish the new images, even if she is quite busy with convention and school. Undead Lily game is also slowly progressing, but there's still a lot of art to be done, so probably won't be done quickly.

The only thing that's 100% sure to come out is Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook, since all the art is done, and will be released before the summer. More info about the game coming soon in the next weeks!

the year of the rabbit

Today was supposed to announce the release of Remember Me, but I had a last-minute problem with my dwarf rabbit Cleo that you see pictured above (nothing serious, only a minor surgery at the teeth). She's 9 years old and is quite a record for a dwarf rabbit!

So I won't be able to release the beta version of game today, but since the game is basically finished, I will spend 1 or 2 days to do some extra testing and make sure everything works as it should. Even if is just a beta pre-order I am a perfectionist and don't want to put something online in a rush ;)

As the title says, this year is the year of the rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac. Curiously, last year was the year of the Tiger, which is my sign in the chinese zodiac, but overall was one of the worst years since I was indie! This year luckily is much better, thanks also to my decision to switch from simple visual novels to some more complex life simulations and RPG games.

Well, that's it for now - check my twitter and watch this blog and my forums for the announcement of Remember Me pre-orders during this weekend!

Announcing a superheroes game!

In the picture above, Gilda in a very cute and funny pose/expression. She's adorable :)

In this other picture instead you see the "good" superheroes, led by that mysterious undead girl, who is indeed called  "Undead Lily" (cool name for a superhero, eh??). If you're put off by the nudity of some characters don't worry, in the game they'll be covered "by default" and you'll have to enable the sexy version in the options!

The game is obviously in a very early stage, meaning that actually there's only a few pictures and a storyboard, and nothing else. With this game I'm going to mix some genres again, this time a real-time RPG battle system (think about Final Fantasy) with a more strategic / simulation part where you have to manage your heroes headquarter, building new weapons, researching new stuff, and so on.

The main gameplay of this title would be something like this (I am still brainstorming, if you have any suggestion feel free to post in my forums!):

1. you would have to control a team of good and a team of bad superheroes. I think this aspect would be quite fun. In practice the starting plot condition would force the two teams to work together, even if obviously they are opponents.
2. each team is made by 5 superheroes, associated to one of the following elements: Death, Life, Fire, Air, Water, Earth (the elements will be also key component for a rock-paper-scissor mechanic in the battles)
3. At a certain point, the teams will split again. Each team will be lead by the Death character, which for the good side is Undead Lily, and for the evil side is "Big Blind".
4. Except those two fixed characters, you will be able to recruit a team based on your relationship values with each of the remaining heroes. The relationship will start neutral and change during the first phase, using the usual relationship system present my other games. Most of the choices will be mutually exclusive, since you'll be forced to have one of the two heroes for the four remaining elements.
5. This should guarantee a good replayability since everytime your choices might be different and you might end up with a different team of heroes.
6. From this point, there will be another good part of the game/story that will see you face the other team and other creatures, and this is also where the strategy part will take place: each team will have a headquarter where they'll be able to research new blueprints, build new weapons/items and train some unique superheroes skills. To do that, you'll need resources that you will gather with the fights - so in practice it will be somehow an equivalent of the crafting you see in the fantasy RPGs.

That is the basic idea I have for the game. Of course, from now until the game gets finished (I believe might be next year!) things could change a lot!

One thing is sure: I'm finding myself a lot "burned" after making Planet Stronghold, so the RPG, and simulation part of this game will be very simple/casual, like Spirited Heart for example. I think (and so far my sales data confirm this) that I make my best games when I don't excessively overcomplicate them. Considering that adding more details/stats/complexity also takes more time in coding and testing, you can see that I'm not really motivated to try making something as complex as Planet Stronghold anytime soon! :)

Every moment of your life is a simulation

In the image above, Lilli the cat sleeping inside a vase. She found it comfortable :)

See the full gallery on Posterous

Yes, every moment of your life can be simulated. Every action you do has consequences, that depends on your stats and skills. If you decide to play an action game, and you don't have enough hand-eye coordination, you'll have less chances of succeeding than someone else who does. If you don't know Enligsh, you'll have a very hard time to play my games. If you don't have internet, you cannot read this :)

Those are just some (silly) examples, but if you look at the Remember Me galery above, you can see that I am trying to simulate almost every aspect of a young lady in the modern times, even when you end the playing day and you go to sleep, it's a simulated event: you can have a good night, you can dreams, you can have nightmares, and so on. I'm particularly satisfied by how the game is coming along and I really hope that the cute artwork won't turn more "hardcore" players away because behind it there's a very complex life simulation, that can be enjoyed by any kind of player, I think.

In the gallery of pictures you can also see the new dialogue layout, which finally replaced my poorly done orange box (typical coder art) that you saw in the first game screenshots!

I'm still working on the game, and I have no estimate release date. However there are several features that are already in place:

- 8 different romance ending + 1 ending alone
- every game day is divided into several parts: dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, late afternoon, sunset, evening, night
- town map from which you can visit several different locations
- each location has several actions available that change based on: time of the day, required actions, plot status, your skills, and more (some of them will be fun to discover)
- the usual relationship system between you and the other characters in the game
- you can raise your stats doing specific actions in certain locations
- a mall where you can buy stuff. Some useless, other really useful for the game (some even required to unlock certain path with some characters)

I've instead given up the idea of doing an ice-cream minigame, because it really doesn't fit much in this kind of strategy/simulation game, and beside it has already been done lot of times, I want to make something more original, so I'd rather add more options/paths than spend my time in doing a sort of time management game.

I'm quite pleased since this game started as a simple dating sim, but it turned into something like my fantasy game Spirited Heart, but set in modern times :)