Winter In Fairbrook is finally released! And fan art contest!

In the picture above,my cat Gilda in the snow. It's a picture of last year, since there's still no snow here!

As you probably know if you follow me on Twitter / Facebook, or are subscribed to my newsletter, the final version of Winter In Fairbrook is out, just in time for Christmas!

If you haven't played the first title yet, you can now get both for 15% off. For more info check the Flower Shop series page.

I also need to update the first title to online activation and new Ren'Py, and probably make it easier too since is much harder compared to Winter In Fairbrook.

Meanwhile, the other games in production are making good progress:

Loren Amazon Princess RPG

The plot is still being written, but I'm happy to say that counting the expansion, it will be the longest game I've ever made, even longer than Planet Stronghold. Also there are a lot of romance options, for all tastes. The only thing that concerns me right now is the battle system. I have asked the coder to make a 8 vs 8 battle. However, I'm thinking that might be too hard/confusing or simply the battles could last too long, so following the coder's suggestion I might drop the number to 6 vs 6 maximum, which should already offer a good variety in the battles.

In practice I'm wondering if the battle isn't too much "for the hardcore RPG fans" than the occasional RPG players. I have to say though that even Planet Stronghold was supposed to be a light-RPG, a visual novel with RPG elements but then quickly evolved into a full JRPG and people seemed to like it.

I guess the moment of truth will be when I'll publicly release the Alpha Version, with some battle examples, so I'll be able to get feedback on it and see people's reactions.

The Queen Of Thieves

I got more art finished, below you see Arianna, also know as The Queen Of Thieves! Yes she is the mother of the three sisters Joanne, Kira and Thalia, the main characters of the game.

Artist is working on the various kiss scenes for the romance subplots, and then will do the introduction which will be in the form of short comic. I have yet to code all the gameplay but I think I have some good ideas for it, and I'm eager to start prototyping something to see if they're good or not! :)

Draw fan art and win a free game! Facebook contest

I've setup a new contest in my Facebook page. I'm giving away three coupons to get a free game to the top 3 entries. What you need to do? Draw fan art of any characters from my games (including Winter Wolves and Tycoon Games) and submit it to the contest application on Facebook.

There's a voting system, so the three most popular fan art images will win a free game coupon! The contest will end the 25th December 2011, unless the amount of entries is too low (for example below 10) in that case I'll extend the deadline by some more weeks.

2012 will be the year of Fantasy

In the photo above, a portrait of my cat Batman.

While the beta testing of Winter In Fairbrook continues (we're only missing some typos to correct and then everything will be ready for the official release), I am now working mostly on Loren RPG and Queen Of Thieves.

Why 2012 is the year of Fantasy?

It will be because very likely I'll release Loren RPG, Queen Of Thieves, and hopefully also Amber's Magic Shop, though this is the less advanced game for now. Let's see the progress status of each game.

Loren The Amazon Princess

Loren RPG is starting to get into the final stage. Which means at least 2-3 more months, depending how long takes to finish the texts and images. It's definitely going to be my biggest game ever, on every aspect: amount of writing and plot complexity, amount of art (both on interface, character and backgrounds) and amonut of gameplay/rules/game system.

I really hope will be worth it! But anyway, this is a game I always wanted to make, and I'm very pleased by how is coming out, so I think in the end it will be worth it in any case.

Below you see some screenshots of the current GUI design. The equipment screen, where you can equip your character, and the "post battle" screen mockup, which will show some statistics about the battle and how many experience points each character made.

See the full gallery on Posterous

My current goal is to have a playable Alpha out before the end of the month, and it's not going to be easy, even if the battle engine is completely coded, still need testing/tweaking. In particular, so far I didn't test with much equipment at all, and I didn't define any enemy. Enemies can have skillsets like the playable characters, but aren't restricted by the class, so there can be lots of interesting combinations to make, but also to test, to make sure there aren't invincible enemies!

Another big part of the game that is still missing is the map system, which I wanted to make slightly different from Planet Stronghold one. You can travel from place to place, but I want to make random encounters. However, in the easy/normal mode, you'll be able to skip/run from the random encounters. I don't want to force the player to fight the random battles at easy levels, but on the other hand they might be useful to raise your characters power in case you're stuck with some main plot related battle.

The Queen Of Thieves

I really can't believe that I started this game in December 2010 and still haven't all the art finished, though is really not missing much to be art-complete. Below you see two tests I made for the game interface.

See the full gallery on Posterous

I thought it would be interesting to display the speaking characters on the side of the dialog, and alternate them on the left/right side. I am also thinking to add basic eye blink and mouth animation.

Gameplay wise I'm still thinking about how to make it, but I think will have some sort of 2d map, so will be a sort of mix between a strategy and a RPG game. About the story, each one of the girls can have a romance relationship with 2 of the 3 boys. Which means there are 6 romance subplots in total. So far, two have been finished, so we're at about 1/3 of the writing.

Amber's Magic Shop

As I said this is the less advanced game, also because the artist I had picked for it quit without saying a word. Luckily, there are many other more reliable artists around that are eager to work for me :)

The writing is still at the beginning, but I had time to think / plan the gameplay and story better, and I really like how is coming out. The game will feature two ages: teenager and adult age. In the teenager stage, your decision will change not only the starting relationship at the adult age, but also some important gameplay elements. I haven't implemented anything yet so that's just an idea for now, but I really like it and I think will work well, adding much more replayability to the game.

 

Winter In Fairbrook beta is out!

As those who follows me and Sakevisual on twitter already know, Winter In Fairbrook beta was released about two weeks ago.

You can find out more about the game and download the beta version on the game official page: http://www.winterwolves.com/winterinfairbrook.htm

You can also pre-order the game if you want to buy it - the game is already quite stable, and a few minor bugs/typos were already fixed in those two days thanks to the wonderful feedback of some early purchasers. Thanks again for all the help, it will let us make better games! :)

While I didn't set a specific date for the final release I don't think there's much more to wait, probably a week maximum to check that there are no more typos/bugs, but that's it. And don't worry, this time I learned from my previous games and made the game much easier than Always Remember Me (though the last version of that game is a bit easier as well)!

The making of Winter In Fairbrook

It was a pleasure to work with Ayu Sakata and Beatriz García in the first title, who initially was simply called "The Flower Shop", but later we used "Summer In Fairbrook" to differentiate between it and the sequel.

The game was very well received back in January/February 2010 (seems so long ago to me!) and so when in the Summer 2010 I read on twitter that Beatriz García was out of work for the month of July, I immediately asked her if was interested in doing the art for the sequel (it was kind of a rhetorical question since she repeatedly said she would love to work on another game with that setting). This time though, we decided to have a female main character, Natalie. Even if the game can be played as stand-alone, it shares many characters and continues some plots from the first title so... the best is to play both! ;)

So I was saying, during July 2010, the art production of Winter In Fairbrook started. If I remember correctly, I got all the art finished around December/January. Beatriz García had some personal issues, so she didn't work as fast as she is doing recently. And then was the turn of Ayu to have bad luck! While coming back from a convention in June had a car accident, and other various real-life issues.

I'm not saying this to criticize them, not at all (they're both my friends), but to show to everybody who thinks that making a visual novel / dating sim (or any indie game for that matter) is really simple and quick how it is in reality. Unfortunately, bad stuff happens and it can really delay a game release considerably. I can say we wanted to get the game out by the Summer, but for a reason or another it wasn't ready until now!!

We're sorry for the delay, but I hope you'll think it was worth the wait! Personally I love the setting, the art, the writing, and the general mood of the game. The ending romance scenes are really cute and full of good feelings.

I can say that it's really the perfect title to play during Winter and Christmas Holidays, so if you're thinking about an original gift for someone... think about this :)

Show Me The Sales

"Show Me The Sales" is an indie initiative promoted by my friend Cliff of Positech and other developers. In practice is a time limited sale where you can get many indie games at very discounted prices. The games list includes:

Planet Stronghold
Evochron Mercenary
Scoregasm
Space Pirates and Zombies
Mr Robot
Project Aftermath
Magical Diary: Horse Hall
AI War: Fleet Command
Gratuitous Space Battles
Solium Infernum
New Star Soccer 5
Revenge of the Titans
Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon
Smugglers IV
Frozen Synapse

...and many more!

As you can see there are many interesting games for all tastes, including my Planet Stronghold RPG game with a generous 60% discount. I also updated the game to use the latest Ren'Py build even if this caused a few problem/bugs, so make sure you download the latest version, the 1.4c!

Even if the promotion was live since monday, don't worry: it ends the 28th of November so there's still plenty of time to buy the games. Now about my currently games in progress, I'm pleased to show you this:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Yes, in the gallery above you see the main menu, the credits and the gallery screen of Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook! The current goal is to have the pre-orders available at the end of the month! Stay tuned for more news.

Sometimes Life Gets the Best of You

In the photo above, my dog Nick who passed to better life last sunday.

As the title says, sometimes real life gets in the way of indies. I won't be lying, this month has been the worst of my life so far. Earlier I lost my uncle Don Giulio, a catholic priest (but religion doesn't matter, he was a good person and helped a lot of people during his life). It has been a very important figure in my life, and in some way also helped me to become an indie.

As if losing people and pets I loved wasn't enough, the heat here (but also in US from what I've heard) has been insane since about two weeks. I bought an A/C, but even if I turn it on, the noise is too much to concentrate (I am not the kind of person who listen to music/radio while working, I need complete silence)!

Luckily, nowadays I use a lots of external people to work on my games. So even if this month I was mostly unproductive, I was still able to communicate with the writers, coders, artists and keep my active projects moving. But is scary to think how the life (and career) of a lone indie can be at risk when "the life gets the best of you".

This friday I wanted to have the pre-oders of Spirited Heart Girl's Love ready, for example. Everything is done: the art is ready, the story has been finished since July, the ending voiceovers redone. There are only a few sprites left to put in the game, test it a bit and do the various installers and upload them. Probably a day of work, but in the last 3 days was able to work on average 2h a day (and also had other projects to keep going that required my attention).

I think if today I worked at maximum speed I could have made it - but I don't like to realease things in a rush. I like to polish my games, adding small details and making sure everything works. But all those little things take time! I'm sure many of you that follow me are wondering what happened to the other game Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook. That is another example of what happens when the life gets the best of us, in this case of my friend and partner in this game, Ayu of Sakevisual. She had many problems too recently, and even if a "pre-order" version was ready at beginning of this month, there were still several smaller things out of place, so we decided was better to wait until everything was perfect.

However, talking about Spirited Heart Girl's Love, I can definitely promise it will be out this weekend - even if I can work only during the morning, in two days of work the game should be 100% finished and ready for pre-orders. So stay tuned and follow me on twitter for the announcement! :)

Winter is coming next week!

See the full gallery on Posterous

At least the pre-orders! No I didn't went insane because of excessive work (even if it's not a remote possibility after all!). I'm talking obviously about The Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook, which we're currently testing and polishing. I know in the past I posted the game will be out soon, but this time is really soon. Before starting with pre-orders there are only minor things to do, like adding sprites and some backgrounds but all the assets are ready. So we only need a bit more time to put everything in the right place and test it so that every ending can be reached.

As always, follow my twitter / blog / facebook / google plus for the early announcements! For those who yet haven't played the first game, during this weekend we're running an amazing promotion: the first title, Flower Shop: Summer In Fairbrook will be available for only $9.99 ! Spread the word and if you haven't already, buy the game and play it to get introduced to Fairbrook and its people!

Other news...

Queen of Thieves art is also progressing really well, below you can see Kira, the Warrior. Again, there will be lots of possible character customization available in the final game.

Planet Stonghold: Warzone won't be "an expansion" anymore but a real full-length stand-alone title. I worked already on improving the Psionic Powers by adding Area Of Effect (hits two targets) and mass target (hits all targets). This both for the offensive and defensive Psionics, which means now you can do a "group Heal" to your party or also a "group Harm" to the enemies. Just beware that the enemies won't like this sort of thing and they'll aggro against your poor Psionic very quickly ;)

Spirited Heart Girl's Love: the elven girls

It's now the turn of the elf girls. In the video below you can see Thym: I'm sure that many people will consider her the most annoying of the characters, since she is quite snob and spoiled. However, the romance plot with her is full of cool moments (like "impossible love"), because in the second part of the romance (when you work as maid in her villa) you discover that you have some "serious competition"... :)

Leah's path instead is very different. I think is also probably the most original character of the game. She's older than all the other girls, and I think the sprite manages to picture her perfectly, a very classy and cute person who is excessively obsessed by her age, thinking that she doesn't look attractive like she once was... Also Leah's personality is dominant, and this will lead to very interesting (and different) choices in particular if you choose the elf (she will submit to her) or the demon (she will become the dominant one, obviously!).

I also got some very good news related to my other games in development. Not only Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook should be out at end of this month, but the artist of the game Queen Of Thieves, which I announced back in February (time flies!) is finally back and he is working fullspeed to recover the lost time. Below you can admire a few of the many clothing combinations possible for Joanne, the wizard:

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!

Karaoke contest winner and Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook update

It was a while since I last posted a picture of my cats, so here's Otello in a very uncomfortable pose...! And here are the latest news:

The Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook release date

I know last week I said that on next blog post (this one) I could have made an official announcement... well, I am making one but unfortunately is not the beginning of the pre-orders ! As some of you that follow Sakevisual blog already know, Ayu (the writer of the game) had a car accident while driving back from a convention. She's fine but need to rest, so the game release is going to be delayed by a few weeks. We hope at end of this month to have at least the pre-orders though, since there isn't really much left to do!

As you can see from the portraits below, even Natalie was shocked when she heard the news!

And now for some good news:

Always Remember Me karaoke contest winners!

The winners have been already notified, I waited some days to see if Cristina Vee could make a video announcement but she's too busy right now so I'm officially posting the winning videos on my blog. I have to say that was amazed when I listened to them (and also to many other videos submitted), the response was awesome! Thank you everyone <3

Note that the winners are in no particular order. All 3 deserve fame and glory, this isn't a ranking, I just list them in random order:

For masterful singing and mixing, especially impressive use of transposition and harmony. A natural and credible rendition from a male vocalist.

For vocal creativity, spot-on harmony, and dynamic mixing. We especially loved her "lalala" melody during the introduction.

For an endearing and youthful vocal presence. Bringing earnestness and a beautiful vibrato, this emerging talent shows a lot of promise.

 

Winter In Fairbrook – Meet Ryan

This is the last blog post about Winter In Fairbook cast, and I'm pleased to introduce you Ryan, the only male character what wasn't present in the main game. As you can see from this video, he doesn't seem to take himself in much consideration, thinking that talking about his personal life is not an interesting subject. I have the impression that Natalie will have to try her best to get something out of this boy!

Anyway, we discover some information about him: that he studies biology in a college out of state, and he doesn't live in Fairbrook all year round. Since he runs the general store of Fairbrook, and that's where Natalie can buy lots of stuff including flower seeds, I'm sure that our heroine will have many more occasions to talk with him again.

Lastly I have some good news about the game release. Since Sakevisual wants to sell this one at the June conventions in USA, is very likely that a pre-order version will be available before next weekend. Of course, the best way to keep up with the latest news is to follow me on twitter or facebook.

Winter In Fairbrook - Meet Trent

Trent is Susana's "big brother" (in all senses!) and when Natalie first meet him we discover that now he works at the library, helping Marian (one of the dateable characters of the first game) in her duties. Though as Natalie immediately notices, he seems a bit too happy for someone that's working! Right, usually people who work are not in a such good mood... there must be something else! But what? ;) Sorry I think you'll have to play the game to discover it...!

With this video we have almost discovered all of the characters of Winter In Fairbrook. The only one left is the "new entry" (not seen before in the first game) Ryan. Watch this blog next Friday to see who we're talking about. I don't want to reveal too much but his ending scene (maybe because of the setting, or the situation itself) is one of my favourite of the game :)

Winter In Fairbrook - Meet Jacob

After Steve now it's the turn of Jacob! This very nice, polite, shy guy was present in the first episode as well, and he had a crush for another member of the cast... (won't say which one just in case someone still haven't played it. By the way, what are you waiting for?).

In this scene, you can already feel how innocent and good he is. Natalie seems not to understand his reasons, why he always must help everyone, why he is doing it for free... and it's just my impression, or Natalie is a bit jealous of Susana? ;)

I also wanted to answer some questions that users made in previous blog posts or on Youtube. Even if Steve scene has mouth animation, the game won't be voiced. The lip animation was added at last minute as test, so we're not even sure it will be present in the final game! Indeed today's video with Jacob doesn't have it. About the length, it's slightly longer than the first game, so if you played it you have a good idea of what to expect. The farming / flower raising sim will be easier and differently from the first title won't have an impact on the endings.

About the release date, we're trying hard to release the game for the end of this month, or at least the pre-order version, since indeed there isn't much time left...! :)

Winter In Fairbrook - Meet Steve

Here it is! The first video I want to show you of Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook is about Steve, the character who was the protagonist of the first game:

When I first wrote the main plot draft of the first Flower Shop (Summer In Fairbrook) game, Steve was the typical lazy, playboy, irresponsible boy who every girl is mad for, but very few girlfriend would want :) And it's fun to see how it has changed in the sequel. This second game is completely written by Ayu, even the plot, and when she told me how Steve would be different, I thought "that's a nice idea". Natalie (the main character of Winter In Fairbrook) meets him in a funny way, as you can see. From the first dialogues you immediately understand he is another person now: not only he tries to come to Fairbrook as often as he can, but now he really cares about his uncle Sam! Those who played the first game know how much conflictual was their relationship, especially in the beginning.

And while he still has unsolved issues with his father, he is much more responsible and helpful to the others than what it was before. I'm really curious to see how the Steve-Natalie relationship will blossom... ;)

p.s. as you might notice this time I made the usual "Friday post" one day late. I had some serious problems with PC and the only solution was to reinstall Vista. I used to brag that I never had to reinstall Windows in the last 4 years, but seems like yesterday my system had enough and wanted a "clean install". Was a good test for my backup/restore system though, since I didn't lose a single email/file :)

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!

Is going to be a hot spring

In the picture above, Lilli sleeping over some straw :)

Spring is my favourite season. The blossoming flowers, the nature that wakes up, warm but not too hot climate (at least, for now) and so on. They say that the season you like most, is the season you're born in. Indeed, next monday will be my birthday...so maybe is true! I have lots of things going on, so this post is going to be made in form of "news". First news is...

Loren to be a manga game too

Yes, after thinking about it a lot, and after seeing that the actual comic author wasn't doing a great job (sigh...) I've decided to use manga art even for this game. I am not sure yet who will do the art but is likely will be the same artist of Undead Lily, so I'll need to finish that game first (since artist still need to do a lot of art for that game).

I realized I was about to make the same mistake I made with Vera Blanc, but at least this time I changed direction in time ;)

I'm also going to change the gameplay, from card-rpg battle to some more real-time stuff and perhaps even isometric battlefield! But right now is too early to talk about it, since the game is officially on hiatus for now.

Remember Me out very soon + new title!

My new life / dating sim will be almost surely out for pre-orders next weekend! I have finished testing the romance arc of Lawrence, so there are only 3 more characters to check. Obiously the pre-order version might contain a few bugs and some unbalanced gameplay, and the texts won't be completely proofread, even if the main story was written by a native English speaker, so there are only minor things that aren't proofread.

Yesterday spent the whole day testing it and I believe is going to be a good game, the "normal" endings are easy enough to get, once you find the right dialog choices (like in my other games) but the special ones are going to be tricky. You'll need to understand which actions raises which stats, and is going to be fun to discover them all (some happens only at specifc day/hour).

A less positive note: I'll have to change the game name, since I just discovered that a movie from 2010 has the same name "Remember Me" :( Couldn't have they waited 1 more year before releasing it?!!? Anyway, I'm open to any suggestion, though I am thinking to simply add a subtitle or use something like "Will you Remember Me?" or something similar. Will suck compared to the original title, but unfortunately have to change it...

Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook out... this summer!

Technically might be out even this Spring, since Summer starts the 21st June and if I understood well, Ayu of Sakevisual wants to have the game ready by the first days of June :) You can see a nice gallery of pictures of the game below... this otome game is going to be quite interesting!

See the full gallery on Posterous

So far the word count amounts at around 25,000 words, which is not bad already. There is going to be the usual farming sim, this time with flowers instead, but have yet to discuss about this with Ayu so don't know exactly how it will be done. More detailed information about this game will come in the next weeks!

So... what's the plan again?

The new release schedule is:

Mid-April - Remember Me pre-orders
End-April -  Remember Me Official Release

End-May or Early June - Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook

I'm going to list only the games almost ready from now on, since for the others in production many things can happen that can change completely the schedule. I'm also probably going to find the time to release an add-on for Planet Stronghold sometime before next Summer! Featuring the so-much-requested romance options: Lisa - Prince Cliff and Joshua - Queen Shiler!