Getting covered

I'm not talking about getting coverage as indie, but getting the characters of Loren RPG covered! As you can see below, was enough a spell by Apolimesho the Archwizard to give a proper cover to those excessively undressed fantasy heroes:

...no exceptions...

Jokes apart, I decided to put more cover to some characters based on customer's feedback. Initially I admit I wasn't much convinced, I kept thinking "well, I'm an indie, so I should do what I feel right". However some friends and my writer Aleema convinced me that having an OPTION (because you can still play the game without any cover of course!) was not a bad idea. For example some users in my forums mentioned being quite embarassed to play the game on netbooks while traveling in public places, or when some family members were asking what they were doing...I pictured the scene in my head:

- "What are you doing, son?"
- "Hi dad! I'm playing an awesome indie RPG game!"
- "Oh! RPGs? You mean those games with mages, swords, dragons and... wait. What is that? Boobs!?"
- "..." (covers face in shame)

So, since there was already an option to skip the ending romance scenes, we have tied it to showing covered characters, but you can conveniently toggle it on/off with 2 mouse clicks ;)

I also got the battle voices, and made a very short video showing some of them:

I know I know that now the question is... when the next version will be out? the one with the voices? the one with many bugfixes? the one with the full plot/romance implemented?

Well, while I cannot say for sure, it should be out this weekend! As usual follow me on twitter or Facebook to be updated in real-time :)

Bionic Heart 2 prototype

During some pauses in Loren development I started prototyping the dialog system for Bionic Heart 2. My goal is to make a sort of RPG-style dialog system, similar to those seen in classics like Fallout: some choices will be tied to specific skills and on the left will be displayed a sort of scheme of the dialog, showing the various possible paths (icons represent a choice that needs a specific skill).

I'm still in the early design stages though, and since Loren has full priority I'm working on this only during the pauses. I know, working on another game when you have a free moment is a bit weird but... :D

By the way, speaking of Bionic Heart, I made the port to Android even of that game. You can play the demo here.