Almost there!

Working on Heileen 3 has been my main focus in the past week. I finally managed to finish coding the simulation part. Below you can see the "Professions Screen":

The game will feature 14 unique "profession ending" with associate image

As you see to reach every ending you'll need to master an advanced skill (currently set at level 10 but during beta testing the value might change) and also have the required sin or virtue. Initially I didn't want to reveal them, but while playing I figured out that the combinations are so many that would have been more frustrating than fun for the player to discover all of them!

You'll be able to change your virtue/sin "alignment" through the various cutscenes in the game.

So getting the profession ending definitely won't be as easy as in my other raising sim, Spirited Heart ;) but I think will be more rewarding.

The infamous wheel of time and a chibi during the simulation

In the screenshot above instead you see what happens after you choose your daily activity: the "wheel of time" will start spinning and advance through the various parts of the day: morning, midday, evening, night. In some cases at a specific time of the day a cutscene will appear, and you'll be able to play it to change your virtues/sins or the relationship with other characters.

The simulation part is all automated, since I didn't want to overcomplicate the game too much. However there is still some strategy involved, like inviting one of the character to join you. This can give you a positive or negative bonus (or simply give no bonus). In this case you'll have to find out the best character for each activity ;)

Also, each "land activity" (those that raise the advanced skills) will have two skill requirements. For example, the activity Dancer will require two basic skills: Charisma at level 3 and Endurance at level 1. Which means that first you need to raise Charisma at level 3. The value will change as you level up, so Dancer level 2 will require Charisma at level 4 and Endurance at level 2, and so on. In my playthrough I was able to reach level 10 in one advanced skill in 258 days of in-game time.

I titled the post "almost there" because the game is really almost finished, all that is left (beside testing) is some background art and more chibis, and the addition of a few more scenes.

I hope to be able to start testing/preordering the next weekend (8-9th December) and release the game by mid-December!

Nicole's cast: Kurt Madry

It's the turn of another character introduction from my upcoming otome/mystery dating sim Nicole. His name is Kurt Madry and is a very popular player of the college football team.

You can see a few images of him below:

About his personality, he's quite arrogant and spoiled, and very successful with women.

Unfortunately for him, his grades at school aren't as good as his skills on the other fields. But for that, Nicole will be able to help him ;) An excerpt from the game story:

    "All the students in the classroom were getting ready to go when I heard someone sigh heavily. I looked over to see who it was and spotted Kurt."
    "I wonder what’s wrong..."
    "We did get our test scores back today though."
    "Maybe it has something to do with that."
    "I gathered up my supplies before walking over to his seat."
    Nicole "Hey there! Is something wrong?"
    "He glanced up to see me as he irritably shoved his books and supplies into his bag."
    Kurt "Everything sucks today."
    Nicole "Aw, I’m sure it’s not so bad. What happened?"
    Kurt "I failed the damn math test."
    "He cast the paper another dark look before roughly tossing it into his bag."
    Nicole "Ouch...I’m sorry to hear that."
    "I suppose it’s better not to mention that I thought it was the easiest one we’ve had so far..."
    Kurt "You don’t know how bad it really is."
    Nicole "They won’t make you repeat the class, will they?"
    Kurt "It’s even worse than that!"
    "He slung his bag over his shoulder and started stomping over to the door. I followed him quickly."
    Nicole "But what other repercussions are there?"
    Kurt "I can get suspended or even kicked off of the football team if I don’t keep my grades at an acceptable level."
    Nicole "That’s so extreme..."
    Kurt "It is! They don’t give a crap about how important I am to the team if my grades start to slip."
    Nicole "It’s not too late to get things turned around though, right?"
    Kurt "That’s a hell of a lot easier said than done."
    Nicole "Not necessarily..."
    Kurt "If you have a point you’re trying to get to, then spit it out."
    Nicole "Maybe I could help you out and tutor you in math."
    "He was already angry but looked at me skeptically."
    Kurt "I don’t really want to get a tutor."
    Nicole "It could help a lot though! Sometimes having someone other than the professor to explain everything is really beneficial. Their explanations practically need translations."
    Kurt "I don’t know..."
    Nicole "I’m sure I can help you."
    Kurt "But you’re so new."
    Nicole "So what? We’re in the same math class."
    Kurt "Are you really the best tutor I can get? If I’m going to deal with having a tutor, I need the absolute best."
    "He certainly sounds spoiled...

Later in the game, Nicole will also discover some traits of his personality that will seriously make her think... but you'll have to play the game to discover what I'm talking about ;)

That's all for this week! Progresses on all the other games (including Loren's expansion) are being made but I want first to finish Nicole's characters introduction before talking about something else :)

Nicole's cast: Jeff Ryan

Second post about Nicole dating sim, and this time will talk about one of the other 3 boys. If you follow me on twitter you'll remember that, somehow, I thought there were 3 boys and 1 girl to romance but I was wrong, the boys are actually 4! (but that's a good news for otome fans).

This also means that probably shouldn't work so much if I even forget how many characters there are in my games :D

Anyway, let's start with the introductions: the name is Jeff Ryan, he's a medicine student, slightly older than Nicole (he attends the 2nd year). Below you see him in various outfits and with normal and slightly cut hairs:

He's friendly, single, and you met him after attending your first class (excerpt from the game):

    "Getting to class had been a fairly simple task, but getting back to my dorm room afterward wasn’t nearly as easy. I stopped to check one of the maps, but it didn’t help very much."
    "I found myself wandering around a portion of campus I hadn’t seen when looking around previously. It was in a quiet area of the campus, so I assumed it was fairly far away from the dorms."
    "Which means it’s pretty far away from where I wanted to go..."
    "Oh well! I’ll just think of it as the scenic route."
    "I had stopped in the pathway to admire one of the buildings and all of the large glass windows it sported when someone walked up to me. I looked over at him and smiled politely."
    Nicole "Hello."
    Jeff "Hey there. Are you new here?"
    "I laughed and nodded."
    Nicole "I am, was it that obvious?"
    Jeff "Most of the students who have been here for a while don’t seem very concerned with the buildings...some of them are quietly extravagant though, don’t you think?"
    Nicole "They are! This is the medical building, right?"
    Jeff "That’s right."
    "We both paused for a moment to look at the medical facility again before he continued."
    Jeff "So what’s your name?"
    "I blinked, feeling a bit silly for not introducing myself sooner."
    Nicole "Oh, it’s Nicole."
    Jeff "Nice to meet you. My name is Jeff Ryan."

Like all the other characters of the game, you'll get to know him better and... maybe discover something! ;)

I haven't made my mind yet about doing a separate yuri version of this game, but since the main game won't be out before this fall in any case, there's no hurry after all! Yesterday also finished Queen Of Thieves storyboard and got new sketches for the final cutscenes. Loren's expansion and Roommates also made good progress with new texts for the story, so all seems to be going well!

See you next week for a new update and a new boy of Nicole dating sim!

The Roommates game

Those who're waiting impatiently for Loren expansion don't worry! We are working on it, but after my blog was monopolized by Loren for about 4 months, I decided to talk about one of my other games in progress: the dating sim set in college life called Roommates.

The setting

You play as Anne or Max and the game takes place in a house on-campus, the Latin House. Max is a singer and a rebel, his plan is to stay in school long enough to save up enough money through part-time jobs to get by without his parent's financial support, then drop out and start a ska band. Anne a small-town girl, studious but very shy and easily embarrassed, Anne thinks that college could be the fresh start she needs to break out of her shell. Her goal is to make at least three new friends while keeping her grades up.

The cast

They share the house with several other characters:

Isabella - A flirtatious Latina with a hardcore edge, she likes to party and have a good time, no strings attached. She wants to try everything at least once. Works at the coffee shop on campus. Openly bi.

Sally - A bleeding-heart, vegan activist girl with a cheerful demeanor, she's always picketing or putting solar panels on roofs or out getting people to sign petitions. She has a weak stomach for horror movies or anything with gore and can't say no to strays, even when you're technically not supposed to keep animals in your dorm room. Works on the college farm.

Rakesh - A chill Indian exchange student that doesn't let much get to him, he is an artist that believes that everything has the potential to be a canvas. Unfortunately, he doesn't always remember to ask for permission before making things into art, leading to some disasters involving other peoples' personal property. The male bi character.

Dominic - The RA (Resident Advisor, basically the person who makes sure people in the dorm aren't breaking major school rules) and a former child prodigy, he considers college serious business and disapproves of most of what the wilder members of the house would consider fun. His rule is iron-fisted, but his ability to keep everyone corralled is probably the only thing stopping the place from burning to the ground. Works as a Teaching Assistant for the lower-level Physics classes.

Plus there will be more secondary characters that will have a role on the story. 

Gameplay

The game is divided into three quarters, with two big breaks (Winter and Spring breaks) and each quarter is made of 6-7 weeks. During each week, some events will trigger and you can choose if to participate to the event or skip it (to save energy for job/studying).

There are 8 different endings in total, each ending is made of a scene CG + kiss CG, sneak peek below:

Max will be able to get an ending with Anne, Sally, Isabella or Rakesh (BxB)

Anne will be able to get an ending with Max, Rakesh, Dominic or Isabella (GxG)

Current progress

The art is at very good point, missing only the backgrounds and the secondary characters. The writing is still at the early stages (first weeks) but since it's a big game will take a while before is finished. The setting is light-comedy with LOTS of fun moments. Think something like the tv show: How I Met Your Mother, to be clear :)

The big change of my future visual novels and dating sims

I am in process of switching to a custom engine made in Monkeycoder language that will allow me to simultaneously release the games for Pc,Mac,Flash/HTML5,iOS and Android (and in theory PSVita, if I really wanted to, but I doubt it). However, it still needs to be finished and tested and will need some more time. But at this point I am thinking to create all the future visual novels / dating sims with the new engine, instead of doing them in Renpy to have to recode them again.

I decided to take this route because at this point seems obvious that none of my games will ever appear on Steam, the only way to make good money with visual novel / dating sims (or any other indie game to be honest). So to survive I am trying this new route that at least gives me more exposure through web and the various appstores, and still grants my usual direct sales as before :)

That means that the imminent new releases this year will mostly be the RPGs, including Loren expansion and Planet Stronghold sequel, since for those I can't use monkeycoder yet, building a RPG engine takes a lot of time! Speaking of Loren expansion, you can see a promo image below:

That is all for now. Have a good weekend!

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 :)

Queen of Thieves customers

In the image above, my cat Leon seems almost in a meditation pose :)

So, who will be the customers of the game Queen Of Thieves? Take a look below:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Yes, I was talking about the in-game customers! For those unfamiliar with the game (which is still work-in-progress) it will feature a shop simulation similar to the popular Recettear game. But one thing that annoyed me a bit of that game was the fact that there were only 3-4 different customer appearances :) So in my game I asked the artist to draw a sort of doll-dressing game, and as you can see, the combinations can be a lot.

The main variations are by body shape (normal, fat, old) and by social status (poor, middle clas, noble, guards, priest, wizard). And of course there are several minor variations based on face shape, hair and beard color/shape and hats.

Beside the example above, there will also be female customers of course!

The writing is being done right now and art-wise there is really not much left to do. The game will be a bit different from my usual ones, even if I haven't yet decided how I'll do the mission part. I would like to use a sort of 2d boardgame view, where you move your characters in a sort of turn-based strategy game.

I am not sure yet if I'll also include RPG battles, even if the temptation is strong, since I have lots of armor/clothing/weapons ready to use, but the playable characters would be max 3 (the three sisters Joanne, Kira and Thalia) so it would be a somewhat simplified RPG.

So in theory it could be an otome life simulation game with strategy and RPG elements :D I don't want to rush things with this one since I have anyway other games in production, so I'd like to experiment a bit with a different gameplay system. Time will tell, as always!

The other games

Meanwhile, all the other games I announced are progressing, and we're waiting for the UI/skills/items art to finish an alpha build of LorenRPG to release it to public to get feedback about the battle system. I think it could be ready next month, so stay tuned.

Promotional sale

Promo sales: this week promo sale is of the game College Romance: Rise Of The Little Brother that is only 4.99 until Sunday (included).

Numbers, numbers and formulas...

In the picture above, Batman looks broken. In reality, he was sleeping since hours...

What's about the numbers? Well, not many people know what's behind a game. It's much more complex than what you think. That is, if you do the things like a good game designer should! ;)

Numbers of a dating sim

What's behind a simple dating sim like Heileen 3 that I'm writing right now? nothing, you might say, it's just text and images, and a few choices. No, not really: the choices needs to be balanced, otherwise the gameplay would be a disaster! So, even for an apparently simple game like a dating sim, there's a lot of work behind the scenes. Check the image below:

this is the OpenOffice spreadsheet of the first 37 scenes of the game. In each row, I put a short description of the scene, and then I added a "1" when the choices possible involve one of the seven Sins or Virtues. Below, at the bottom (but is not visible in the screenshot), there's a formula called "Summatory" that sums all the values. Why? Because a well designed and balanced game should offer the player the same amount of choices for each of the seven Sins/Virtues!

So, while writing, I keep constantly open the spreadsheet, and I try to balance the game so that the player will always have the chance to  get one of the 14 possible job endings (tied to the Sins/Virtues).

I'm not going too much in the details since discovering the skill+sin/virtue combo will be part of the fun of the game, but for example, the "Nun" ending will involve having max Chastity and max Faith skill.

On the right part instead, there are the choices that will affect the 6 possible romances of the game. The labels means: Morgan, John, Jonathan, Sebastian (the 4 male characters, Sebastian is a new one) and Marie, Lora (the 2 female characters).

Numbers of a RPG!

If a dating sim is so "complex", imagine a RPG! Making a RPG without spending at least one month first designing the rules, is a suicide. Don't do that. I can guarantee that you'll be unsatisfied by the result.

Now check the OpenOffice screenshots below:

See the full gallery on Posterous

one is the condition/skill relationship for Loren the Amazon Princess RPG. How you read that? is a bit complex, but in practice:

• the first table is the warrior skills. the cells with orange background require the target to be "Staggered". Once it is, you can use for example the Gladiator "Battle Cry" (which has chances to Scare enemies), or the Blademaster "No Mercy" (which has chance to Weaken the enemies).
• the second table is the thief skills. Thieves have weak attacks, but if the target is in the right condition, they can deliver powerful critical attack using their skills. They can set a target in a specific condition themselves. For example, using the Flaming Torch on a Slowed target, they can set a target in the Burning condition too. Then, a Demonblood (Mesphit) can use the Immolation skill to deal an incredible amount of damage.
• the third table is the mages. Differently from Warrior and Thief class, a Mage doesn't need any condition pre-requisite. They can just attack using their spells, which will inflict specific conditions as you can guess (Blizzard will inflict Frozen condition, Plague inflict Poisoned condition, and so on).

The second image instead is a work-in-progress of the weapons dabatase. Some values might not yet bet final. But as you can see there's already a good variety of items! We've decided to use the following weapon division based on damage type: Edged (dagger, sword, axe), Impact (mace, club), Flail (Flail, Morning Star), Polearm (Staff, Halberd), Bow, Missile (Crossbow).

Explaining all the values will take too long, but if you're familiar with RPGs you might understand already what is their use.

This was just to show the tremendous amount of work behind a RPG, and just for the skills and weapons (there's more, balancing the classes, the enemy encounters, and so on). Now you understand why I've decided not to make more than 1 RPG a year? :D

Homosexual relationship in games

I want to spend a few words about the homosexual relationship that I plan to put in all my future games. First of all, I am honestly a bit shocked by how Spirited Heart Girl's Love announcement was mostly ignored by the press and reviewers. It's not something new for me (I'm used to that) but this time was even worse than usual.

I really hope that is NOT because of main theme (women homosexuality) of the game, and hope is due only to random circumstances (I know from past years that September is not really one of the best months to do a new game release).

In any case, everyone who played the game said that the romances are much better than the original game, and in general the players' feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and that's what matters to me. So I plan to keep adding homosexual romance in all my future games, alongside the straight options, since all I care about is what my customers think!

Fantasy or reality?

In the image above, my dog Artù (italian name for Arthur) watching my dwarf rabbit Cleo in the garden.

As those who follows me on twitter might know, I'm currently writing the scenes for Heileen 3. Initially I did a lot of research, since it's based on the pirates of the Caribbean, however I quickly realized that trying to keep it historically accurate was too much pain. And not just that, but it would have also been less fun to play for the users! So, I am just going to use that as "setting/background" but everything will be pure fantasy (for example Morgan the pirate was definitely not a kind man, and cats don't talk!!).

There's a reason why I (and I suspect many other writers) prefer to write fantasy stories. Be it classic swords & sorcery, or science-fiction, with a fantasy world as long as you plan it out beforehand, there aren't problem of inaccuracies, mistakes, wrong dates, and so on. Let me tell you, it's really MUCH MUCH easier! :)

However, I also like stories with a historical background setting, and a simple solution is to mix the fantasy with reality. In Always Remember Me, the story is set in a "unnamed warm town", like could be San Francisco, but there's no reference at all to real names or real events. In Flower Shop all the story takes place on "Fairbrook", a fantasy town somewhere in California, and so on.

There was a game I wanted to release by Halloween, but of course I won't make it in time (I didn't even start it!), which is a horror/mystery/otome game but will take place mostly in a hospital. The town could be any town in USA, and the equipment is modern, but ... there will be definitely some fantasy elements! ;)

And now a quick summary of the work-in-progress... progresses!

Heileen 3: New Horizons

That's what I'm mainly working on right now, even if the game will be out next year because the artist Rebecca can only work starting from January (except a few days in November but surely won't be enough to finish all the art!).

However, I like how the story is coming out so far, the gameplay system seems fun too (similar to Spirited Heart but with some changes) and we're also planning to have some mini-animations for each of the 14 activities! Though this mainly depends how long will take to draw the 14 different job endings, and the  6 romance endings CG (4 heterosex and 2 homosex).

Planet Stronghold: Warzone

Artist resumed working after a summer break, and currently has finished 2 romance CG scenes out of 8! There's a new team member called Milo, and a new NPC called Lakadema which is an alien with incredible powers but also very shy and fragile. You can see the images below (Lakadema image is not yet final):

See the full gallery on Posterous

As always I don't have any estimate, but considering I haven't finished writing any scene yet, for sure the game won't be out this year. Yes, RPGs take A LOT of time to make!

Loren The Amazon Princess

The plot writing is going forward steadly, we're at beginning of chapter3, and the game consist of four chapter so the end is on sight. Of course, I'm only talking about the end of the main plot, there is still the expansion to write (which I think will be around 1/3 of the main game length).

The battle system is at good point too but still need more accurate testing and probably also balancing. And all the enemies needs still to be created (have the art, but didn't plan their skills yet).

Below you can see the commander of the Amazon army Breza and the infamous witch hunter Raven (available only in the expansion).

See the full gallery on Posterous

That's all for this week!

Three years ago...

In the image above, my cat Otello looks broken! (in reality he's just sleeping peacefully)

Three years have passed since I released my first manga game, the dating sim Summer Session, made in collaboration with Hanako Games. It was July 2008, and was my first attempt in the world of visual novel/dating sims. Shortly after I started looking with extreme interest to Ren'Py, the library/tool that was used to make that game. I remember had never heard about it, the documentation was scarce, and had so many questions/doubts despite being a C/C++ coder! Questions that could be answered only by asking directly on the official forums.

After the initial "shock" though, I was quickly converted into a fan, the possibility to code in python, which was a breeze to work with compared to C, and the instant delivery on three platforms were awesome features!

Summer Session indeed was also the first of my games to fully support Linux, the first of a long series (in practice, all my next games used Ren'Py so they all support Linux!).

Around September 2008, I was also writing the last chapters for a small, ambitious attempt at making my first visual novel ever, Heileen. I always loved to write and the game was overall well received, but soon enough I found out that writing in a foreign language was something really hard for me, so for the next games I started using editors/proofreaders, until the most recent ones, where I hire writers to write the game texts for me based on my storyboard/scene descriptions (which is without any doubts the best solution!).

And here I am, three years later, still writing about Heileen, in the third installment (and very likely last) of the series. Same character, same setting, same artist: even if Rebecca told me that won't be able to work fulltime on it until January, so this means that sadly Heileen 3 will be out only next year (I hoped to release it around October to celebrate the third anniversary...).

As some of you might know, the kind of games I was making before was quite different. Sport simulations, tycoon games, wargames. However, I always loved to write and tell stories, so when I saw the opportunity I didn't think twice. Being paid to tell stories? There's hardly a better job for me! :D

Recently I tried going back to an old interest of mine - RPG or roleplaying games - and I think the first one, Planet Stronghold, was a good result. But I'm not satisfied, and even if those games are really hard to make, I want to try and make even better ones!

I sell mostly directly, and my products are a niche: I might not become famous, I might never get on Steam or any other big portal, but slowly but steadly I'm building a following of people that keeps my morale up, gives precious suggestions on gameplay, art, design and motivates me to wake up early every day to work on my games.

So, if those three years were simply amazing it's only because of you who are reading this post, you who played one of my games, you who decided to support my efforts financially. So to you, I say a big THANK YOU! :) And stay tuned, I still have many more stories to tell!

One RPG a year keeps the doctor away

In the photo above my cat Grillo sleeping deeply with a stuffed toy near him :)

Now you might wonder why I picked that title for my post? As you know I've always worked on many games at once, as a way to keep up with the occasional disappearances of artists. However, while this method is working well for my visual novel, dating sim and life simulation games, for RPGs is a different story. I've noticed that is very hard to keep focused on doing more than one RPG at once (lol, not a surprise!) so I've decided that, to avoid releasing poor/mediocre games, I won't be working on more than one RPG a year!

This doesn't include expansions or even sequels like Planet Stronghold: Warzone. When/if I can re-use most of the gameplay and rules of a previous RPG, then I believe that is possible to make even two a year, but if I have to create a new RPG from scratch... that's not possible!

I am not talking only about the coding. The coding is a tough part of RPGs, that's for sure, but what makes really hard to release a good one is the amount of content needed. I dare to say (and I'm sure most game developers will agree with me) that a RPG is the kind of game that requires more work of all the game genres. You need a story. You need several quests, which are basically subplots, and they need to fit in the main story and not be just stupid "kill 10 rats" quests (having some of them are OK, but not all quests should be like that). There's need of art, lots of art. Since I do mainly 2d games, every enemy is a sprite. How many enemies a RPG have? Planet Stronghold has 40, though some re-use the basic shape changing color/weapons. Loren RPG, my upcoming fantasy RPG will have 40-50 enemies as well, but they will be all different ones! So that's already a lot of work just for the art.

And last but not least, testing. Unless the RPG you're making is very linear and has "casual gameplay" (very simple rules), the testing will be a major pain ! :) You have to take into account every possible variable and combination, and often if you don't ,you end up with very mysterious bugs and unhappy customers (though I have to say that my RPG buyers were much more supportive than those of other games genres!).

So, what does this means in practice? that while I'll keep artists working on Undead Lily's artwork, I will release Loren RPG first, and Undead Lily next year. This way, I'll be able to release two quality products. Loren RPG is at good point - even if I keep adding "just one more enemy" since a month, the plot writing is going steadly and the battle system coding is almost finished. As I announced in my forums, once the RPG framework reaches a decent state I plan to release a small alpha to get user feedback and do some testing.

As for Planet Stronghold: Warzone, the artist said that after this last convention, she will work fulltime on it. There's need of quite some art, new enemies, a new playable character to replace the old Bellamy, and more CGs scenes for the romances. I don't have any planned release date, my idea is to keep this game going on parallel with the others and see when is finished. As I said, since I can reuse a good part of the previous Planet Stronghold code/rules/system, this game will be easier/quicker to produce than Loren RPG or Undead Lily.

So the plan is to try finishing Loren RPG by end of this year (no guarantees) and Undead Lily for summer next year, while Planet Stronghold: Warzone might really be finished anytime between the two. Obviously, I'll keep releasing visual novel and dating/life sim in the meanwhile, like I did this year.

there WILL be a Heileen 3

In the picture above, my black cat. It was the first one of my pets to be included in a game of mine. He is "Black" the cat in Heileen 1-2. We call him Batman, but for obvious copyright reasons I couldn't use that name in Heileen games! :D

Incredible how time flies. It was October 2010 when I made a blog post where I was thinking about doing a third (and very likely last) episode of my Heileen series. And now, almost one year later, I've decided to make it for real. Last year I was dubious because the main artist of the game (and of all my early visual novels / dating sims) Rebecca Gunter, is now working fulltime as webcomic author (it has always been her dream) and last time we spoke she said that unfortunately she doesn't have a minute of free time, since she is busy working on THREE webcomics at once (she reminds me of a certain indie author who has several running projects...lol).

So I started asking around, since in theory I have all the sprites needed to make the story, what I'm missing are the ending scenes. However, talking with other indies and customers, everyone agreed that is enough that the style is similar and the CG scenes should be fine. CG scenes are the one displayed as the end, as "prize". It occurs to me that none of the Heileen games had ending scenes with custom art, because at those times was just starting and had a much limited budget for each game... but Heileen 3 will have them for sure, since is the last chapter I want to make something very good.

As replacement for the CG scenes I'm going to use Loren RPG artist (who is working right now on the last scenes for that game). As you can see from the image below, the style is very similar and should be fine :)

Reading again the old post, I had lots of ideas. Obviously I'm not going to do them all, but all I can say is that Heileen 3 won't be a normal visual novel, like the previous ones. I want to add at least a simulation gameplay element, after all at the start of the story we are in a pirate ship, so... plenty of interesting options for Heileen, don't you agree? :)

I would also like to keep the idea of the Good and Evil choices that was present in the second episode, so that you get different endings based on what you do, on how you behave towards other people and which moral/ethical decisions you'll take.

Similarly to my most recent games, I plan to have both straight and homosexual relationships. In previous episodes of Heileen, you couldn't pursue many love interests, but this time I'll try to expand the number. For the straight GxB endings, Marcus and John are the ideal candidates, and for the homo GxG obviously Marie and... surprise :)

Beside improving romance, I want also to do a management section with all the characters present in the story. Each character would have a role on the ship and give you a bonus. The main idea is this: you start your search to find the other missing people, and as you get them, they join you aboard and give you gameplay bonuses. For example "recruiting" Marco will give a bonus to cooking, Jack will increase woodcutting and maybe also will give a hand during struggles... and so on. I want to keep also the quest system present in the first two games and have more variety of quests. It looks almost like a RPG, but in reality I think is more accurate to say it will be a dating sim with island exploration/colonization. Something like that, I have yet to define the details!

For the Visual Novels "purists" don't worry, I will include also a "super mega easy" playing mode, so that basically you'll be able to play it almost as if it was a standard plain visual novel!

Can the free to play business model work for story-based games?

In case you haven't noticed, the whole games market is moving towards the so called "Free to play" business model. It started in the asian countries and now it seems that it's going to be the "next big thing". On Facebook games is already the "norm".

How it works? quite simple. Instead of having the traditional time/feature limited demo and one-time fee to get the game fullversion, here you can "in theory" play for free as long as you want. In practice, the gameplay is crafted in such a way that first draws you into the game, and then when you're just about to have fun, it starts cutting off your fun by telling you how lame you are because you didn't spend 500 "virtual gold" to buy a new horse, or how the "platinum membership" would make the game much more fun.

Personally I don't like it, I tried a few games but the fact that the designer had to design the gameplay around this system restrict the gameplay innovation. Indeed this system works well mostly on RPG (MMORPG) or strategy/simulation games. But what will happen to story-based games? Visual Novel, Dating Sims or maybe even just FPS with a good story like Max Payne or Assassin Creed?

I really don't think is possible to successfully implement this in a heavy story-driven game. What would you do, show one chapter at time and ask for a small microtransaction every chapter? why don't just ask people to "pay upfront" the amount and be done with it? or in a dating sim for example, ask $5 each dateable character? what would be the fun in spending $5 to date only 1 character in a game? it seems quite silly to me, especially since we're talking about very low amount of money. I don't need to make again the classic example that if you go out with friends to watch a movie you easily spend in drinks, fuel, and extras x2-3 times the amount of a regular indie game ($20) and have fun for one day, instead of weeks or in some cases months.

And in all other F2P games you can play free, but in practice the experience is so awful that either you pay nothing, play a few hours/days and quit, or you decide to invest your time (and money) in the game and then you'll easily exceed $20 ... by a lot! That's fine of course, everyone can do what they want with their money.

But speaking about a possible implementation of F2P in story-based games, my answer it's still: no. I really think it wouldn't make much sense at all.

Also I really don't believe that in few years ALL games (even RPG/strategy games) will become F2P. There are many downsides to that (being always online, annoying multiplayer experiences, the worst value for money as player, lots of maintenance as developers, possible hackers attack, and I could go on) and in general not everyone wants to make a game that has severe gameplay/game design restrictions. At least, I hope! :)

And now enough talking about the game business and here are some news about the current games in development!

Spirited Heart Girl's Love

That's how I'm going to officially call the Spirited Heart expansion. I will also change the purchase options: you can buy either the "normal" version or the Girl's Love for $19.99, or if you have already bought the original game the expansion will cost $9.99. If you don't have either and you buy them together, the final price will be $29.99 (so still only $9.99 more than the normal version). The game will expand the original one with 6 different (and unique!) dateable girls and also the endings reflect your race now (even for the males). So if you were disappointed by Frebo ending in the original game, this time pick a human or even better a demoness and you'll see that will be better :)

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Spirited Heart expansion is at very good point (all plot is finished) and will be surely out by August if not sooner.

Loren The Amazon Princess

Things are going well: I decided was time to ask the help of someone that knows coding better than me, and we're building up a RPG Framework so that I can reuse it for future titles. As you can see from the gallery screen below, the game interface is taking shape and we'll have a skilltree with several specializations, a full inventory with many equippable slots (yes I changed my mind about the inventory!) and a very good quest screen, with the possibility of having sub-quests (so more powerful than the Planet Stronghold one for example).

See the full gallery on Posterous

While things are going forward at good speed, because this game will use a completely new system will need good testing and also the plot still needs to be written in good part, so it's very unlikely that I'll have even just beta preorders before September (and even that is an optimistic date). Much will depend on artist/writer/coder speed as always!

Finally, I want to leave you with a nice graph showing all the romance possibilities of Loren RPG:

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 :)

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/

Always Remember Me competition!

Today I am officially announcing the game Always Remember Me with a press release, and also starting a karaoke competition.

Do you like anime? Manga? Video games? Music?? Win a free copy of 'Always Remember Me' video game by doing your best performance of the Cristina Vee theme song! Check the official game video below:

The contest rules are very simple. Go to this page: http://www.winterwolves.com/alwaysrememberme_competition.htm

1. Sign up for Winter Wolves newsletter (you can unsubscribe anytime) - this step is essential since we'll announce the winners through the mailing list, so if you're not subscribed you might miss the winning notification!
2. In the contest page you'll find download links for the karaoke track and the lyrics
3. Record your best karaoke vocal performance of 'Remember Me' song. MP3 or YouTube / Facebook video links are both acceptable formats (though videos are preferred).
4. Let us know about your work. You can find email / contacts info on the competition page, but if you made a Youtube or Facebook video the best way is to post a message about it on winterwolves facebook page
5. the competition deadline is 31st May 2011 at midnight GMT. So you have one full month to send your entry!

Judging:

Entries will be judged based on quality of musical performance, production, entertainment value and overall quality.

Prizes:

Top 3 winners will win a free copy of the game 'Always Remember Me.'

Top 3 first prize winners will also have their song or video featured on Winterwolves website, in the official game page.

 

And now, lets see what's coming in next months...

Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook - work in progress new screenshots!

Of course, the next game to be released in collaboration with Sakevisual is Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook. As you can see from the beautiful pictures below, chibis are going to dominate the life/dating sim world! :)

See the full gallery on Posterous

For now all I can show is those two screenshots, but from mid-May I should also be able to start uploading some gameplay / scene videos on youtube. Stay tuned for more news also about my other games (roleplay, sports sim, strategy)!

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 :)

Computer Games forever!

First blog entry!
Just a brief introduction. I am a strong believer in freedom and possibility to express yourself without any constraints (within reason of course).
Because of this, and being a game developer, I'm fond of computer games. I don't think consoles (iPhone, XNA, etc) are a solution to creativity. They might be a good commercial channel, but I'm not really interested into that.
I'm interested in being able to make any game I want, for Pc, Mac and Linux.

What kind of games, you might be wondering? Well if you don't know my games I recommend you to check my websites:
http://www.winterwolves.com
http://www.tycoongames.eu