Amber's Magic Shop sneak peek

This week was really busy working on the monkeycoder VN engine, burocratic/financial stuff and webdesign. Yes it wasn't really a great week even if togeter with a new writer (who seems really good) we managed to lay out the first draft of the main plot outline for Loren sequel - not the expansion, but the sequel that will be out not sooner than next year.

Why do that now? because the artist was free from previous tasks and also because making the art for the first game took almost 10 months, so better start in advance!! :)

Speaking of writers, and about the title of the post, unfortunately yesterday got an email from Lorelei, Amber's writer, who told me that for personal reasons she can't continue writing the game. I am sad but I wish her luck in her projects. They're doing a very interesting BxB game called Break Chance Memento, check the official website.

I've already got several submission from writer, I'm going to decide very soon who's going to write the game. Meanwhile check two juicy sneak peek (if you follow me on twitter you already saw them):

See the full gallery on Posterous

In the first image you see the possible romances. From lef to right: Daniel The Wizard, Stan the Noble, Bernard the Bounty Hunter and Ruby...the vampiress! :)

In the second image, you see other secondary characters: Lynn the herbalist, Manuel the adventurer, Vin the witch, Amber with the new look, Haros the wizard, Roy the noble (Stan's father) and Thomas who is Ruby's little brother.

The game will be a life/dating sim with a potion-making gameplay element. I thought about turning this into a RPG too but... I need to breathe :D maybe will add a resource / ingredients gathering minigame, but in general will be a dating/life sim.

As you noticed there are 3 GxB and 1 GxG romances, but each one has four different endings! Yes, because the game is based on the concept of Light (Good) and Darkness (Evil). Based on your choices during the game, you'll end up with one of the 4 possible "alignments": True Light, Light, Dark, True Dark, and the game endings will reflect that.

It's definitely a "serious" game with adult themes and some shocking scenes. The art for the game is almost all done, so I'm eager to have the plot fully written so I can code it :)

Spirited Heart Girl's Love is out!

See the full gallery on Posterous

Spirited Heart Girl's Love is finally out! Well, to be honest since I started this project only about 3 months passed, but seems an eternity...! I'm really pleased by the result, each girl has a very different personality, goals, and behavior. I am also happy because the race you choose really has a big impact over the story (even more than in the original game). It's particularly evident in some characters, like Leah or Reid: playing it with an Elf character will be a very different experience than playing it wih a Demon one.

The original game and the expansion now are a unique installer: I decided to adopt this system so is easier for the users, using the one-time online activation system already implemented in my latest games. This way if you want only one version of the game, you can buy it, but if you want both versions you can buy at once (with 25% discount) and enter the email one time to get instantly both versions activated without any need of extra downloads.

As promised, if you already own the original game, you can get the expansion for 50% off. For more informations, visit this page:

http://www.winterwolves.com/spiritedheartgirllove.php

if you enter the email you used to purchase the original game in the input field below the game description, you will get a unique discount code, valid for a one time 50% discount on the standard price.

 

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! :)

Spirited Heart Girl's Love: the demon girls

Here we are at the latest blog post regarding Spirited Heart Girl's Love, where we meet the two demon girls, Reid and Hade.

The first video is about Reid. She is without doubt the most sexy character of the game, by her appearance (very undressed as you can see) and for her behavior. I particularly like how the player character personality changes a lot the relationship in this case: both the human and the elf will be disgusted by her actions, while the demon will be actually envy of how she (apparently) manages to obtain everything she wants using her charm. I also like the ending of this romance plot, when you discover Reid's real motivations and ... oops, I'm saying too much! ;)

Lastly, it's the turn of Hade, probably the most original and together with Yana one of my favorite characters of the whole expansion. There's nothing better than the video below to show you her personality. When I told the writer about her, I said: she is a sort of medieval/fantasy geek. And I think the result is excellent: she is a genius beyond equals but also a very fragile person with serious problems having social contacts. I think one of her "bad endings" is one of the best pieces of narrative of the whole game, even if very sad!

So all is left is to... release the game! I am currently waiting for some ending voiceovers and also final scenes, not real CGs since are pencils to display over the parchment like happened in the regular game, but still will need about one month of time. Meanwhile I'm hoping on next friday blog post to finally announce The Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook pre-orders... ;)