A crazy week

I'm writing this blog still half-broken because of a flu I got early this week. Fun because I had one around the same time last year too, even if was much lighter!

Heileen 3: Sea Maidens slightly delayed

Now first of all, as you can imagine, I wasn't able to work on Heileen 3 yuri version. I feel better but not good enough to code, which requires concentration to avoid making lots of mistakes. However, the writers have basically finished reviewing the texts, so I think the beta could start the coming week.

Spirited Heart 2 - Religious Wars

That is the provisory title. What?? :D I'm joking of course! A rather crazy thing happened though, that is the current character artist for that game refused to draw the girls for the yuri version. For "religious reasons" because he's a Christian.

I don't want to get into a debate, however my uncle was a Catholic priest and always said about homosexual people that "the important thing is that they love each other". My uncle was a better man than many others.

In defense of that artist (which I won't name), when we originally started the project, it was to be just a standard GxB game. Indeed work on it started in 2009, shortly after the first game, and since then lots of things changed (positively I think) in the content you can find in my games.

So while I don't agree on what he says, I respected his decision. What happened next?

Here comes el salvador!

Haha I'm not sure if the title above is correct but I can always blame my illness ;) So after this drawback was unsure what to do. I had already invested a consistent amount of time and money (few thousands) on that art, but I didn't want to disappoint my fans, which is the thing I consider more when doing my job.

M.Beatriz Garcia, who worked with me already in the Flower Shops series, was supposed to draw the chibis for the game already, starting this month. So I thought to ask her if she could work on the rest of the art needed for the game, and the answer was positive! :) She has no problems to draw any kind of romance, so the game will have all combos, hetero and homosexual. Of course we're talking about a very soft game, not sexy like Loren (I thought it was obvious, but...).

Below is a preliminary sketch of the 3 main female characters:

Note that they're in undergarments only because the game will allow a lot of customization in clothes, accessories, hats, and so on, like a "paperdoll". I really like how the personality of each race is already transparent from that sketch!

My name is Roger Steele

This crazy week ended when yesterday I got the first draft of the storyboard for a "mysterious RPG game" that I will officially announce in the next weeks. Those reading my forums or following me on twitter already know what it is the setting though ;) For now I'll leave you wondering who is that Roger Steele? (but don't worry the game will be playable as male or female main character).

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!

Leveling up in Heileen 3

I know the title seems weird. After all Heileen 3 is a dating sim, a life sim, but not a RPG. So what's about this level up thing? Well, first of all, in the game there will be all the classic relationship bar/values we're used to in dating sims, as you can see in the screenshot below:

The romance subscreen in Heileen 3 status screen

Before going on I want to clarify again, that the main game will have otome romances but only because the yuri version was delayed - this time it wasn't my plan to release them separately, I wanted to have them both ready on launch day, but alas had some problems during the yuri development path :)

The next screen could still be common in a life simulation or a dating sim, even if the theme is quite original (the Seven Sins / Virtues):

The Seven Sins / Virtues subscreen in Heileen 3 status screen

Those aren't bars, but "sliders". Meaning that they don't fill up, but the thumb can move towards the left if you're a "Sinner", or on the right if you're a "Saint". The values will be a requirement to get a specific ending.

What I'm talking about, regarding the leveling, is the new skills system I have designed. In my previous life/dating sims, you had a bar with a value from 0 to 100 (usually). It was ok, but this time I wanted to do something more interesting: the skills are divided into levels. So for example you start at level 1 of Wisdom, and donig certain activities you raise the values up to 100, after that the counter resets but you gain Wisdom Level 2. It works exactly as the experience bars of a RPG.

The Skills subscreen in Heileen 3 status screen

This will have several implications on the gameplay and will make the game more interesting. Differently from Spirited Heart, your skills values will never decrease, but if you had a bad day they will just increase by a slow value: in this context, even gaining values like 2-5 points is not a big improvement, considering the scale 0 to 100 and the level which will probably go up until 10 or later.

Other examples of new features include the possibility to ask one of the characters to join you in your activity, and depending on the choice you'll get a bonus or not. For example asking Juliet to do Fencing will surely be a good idea, while asking her to help you in Farming... well let's just say that you might not get a very polite reply!

Discovering who likes what will be part of the game fun and I'm sure will require me to write a strategy guide or walkthrough later in my forums ;)

One of the new background locations of the game

Right now the music of the game is being done, using only natural instruments (live guitar, etc) and the background artwork is being finished. I still believe the game should be out in the beginning of December, at least the preorder phase!

Stay tuned, and next week will talk about a very different game, Bionic Heart 2.

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.

 

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.

 

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... ;)

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:

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:

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)!

Remember Me pre-orders available!

Those who follow my blog/twitter might know that I've been working since beginning of March on a new otome dating / life simulation game called "Remember Me". I am probably going to change the game name when is officially released with "Always Remember Me" just to avoid confusion with a movie that was out last year (not for copyright reasons since are completely different things).

So, today can announce that the game is officially available as pre-order! Some of you might wonder what does it means? It means that the game is complete, but there might be some small bug, or some unbalanced gameplay or other minor text errors. But since I've been getting numerous request to play this game as soon as possible, I decided to open a beta pre-order stage: you pay and can start playing the game immediately, and if you want you can help to improve it by posting feedback/suggestions in the game's own forums which you can find here. Obviously, once you buy you're entitled to lifetime free upgrades, so you'll be able to redownload the final version without bugs.

Also the first 50 pre-orders will benefit of a generous 20% discount simply entering the following coupon code on the order page: BOIO000X9

Check the official game page - where you can find more information and download the beta demo to play the game!

I plan to have the game on pre-order until the end of the month, when I really should be able to make the official release: considering that the game, while very detailed, is surely not as complex as Planet Stronghold who required almost 1 month and half of playtesting!.

The making of Remember Me

The main game idea was born last summer, while my girlfriend was watching an episode of the TV series "Ghost Whisperer". I don't follow it so I'm not sure if those were main characters or anything, but basically there was a man who lost his memory and forgot who was his girlfriend, and his girlfriend for some reason couldn't force him to remember. I found this situation particularly interesting from the storytelling point of view, so immediately started to brainstorm about a possible otome dating sim plot.

This time I decided to outsource all the games texts (most of it anyway) to external native English speaker so there would be less grammar/texts mistakes, and I think it was a wise decision, since it also allowed me to concentrate more on the gameplay, which is much more advanced than other dating sim I made in the past. In practice, there is a full life simulation game, with several places and several activities to do, which can change based on your current energy/morale levels, on your skills, on specific plot conditions, on week of the day, and more! :D

So one of the key aspect of the game is that the players will have to explore the game world and discover all the secrets, to find the best tactics to win the hearts of the four dateable characters. Of course the "best ending" would be the one that reunites Amy and Aaron, but being a dating sim I have also to allow the player to pursue other boys :) I also think all the boys have distinct personalities, and you'll have lot of fun discovering them in the various scenes where you'll have to pick a choice to influence their relationship.

I must admit I had lot of fun coding this game, thinking about all the possible various activities on each place, and then putting together all the scenes at the right moment/place. If the game will be successful, I have already in mind another story which can use the same gameplay system :)

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!

Loren Amazon Princess game features revealed!

In the picture above, a big close-up picture of my cat Nina. I wanted her to be present in the game Remember Me, but she's quite hard to draw. The resulting sprite inside the game only vaguely resembles her... :)

Today will talk mainly of the decisions I'm making for my next RPG called "Loren - the amazon princess". But first a quick update about my next otome / life sim game:

Remember Me

Things are going smoothly - all the texts are done, and are being proofread again (even if they were already written by a native English speaker!). I have still to link all the events together, make sure everything works as it's supposed (some scenes happens only after others) and other minor things, but seems very likely that will be able to do pre-orders at mid-April! :)

Loren - the amazon princess

In the picture below, the two playable characters: Saren, the human male slave and Elenor, the elf female slave.

I am still writing the plot/storyboard that then will be transformed into script by writers. But I want to talk about the rules first. I'm still brainstorming the ideas but that's what I have so far:

1. shared inventory. After finishing Planet Stronghold, I had the chance to play some recent RPGs and... well, having a separate inventory for each character is really bad :( In this game, I'll have a shared inventory!
2. character customization. Each character will have access only to a specific weapon, like Dragon Age 2. I know this might sound limiting, but in my case I'm doing this for budget reasons: having different sprites drawn with each possible weapon is out of discussion. I think though that it makes more interesting the gameplay and gives each character a specific set of skills related to his weapon choice. For example, Loren will be a massive damage dealer: she uses two swords (dual wield power!) and does tremendous critical strikes. The downside of course is that she'll have low HP, but thankfully your player character will be a healer!
3. character creation. Again, not much freedom for race and name - for plot reasons you'll have ot be either Saren (human male slave), or Elenor (elf female slave). Also, you'll be a healer. You might wonder then "wtf I cannot even choose my class!". Yes, but you'll be able to choose the specialization skills. Even if you're primarily a healer, at low level, as you go on you'll be able to become several different things: a sort of Templar (warrior/healer) that fight and also heal a bit, a sort of Druid (wizard/healer) who can cast offensive/buff spells and heal a bit, or you can choose to keep your path and become a powerful healer. So as you see, you still have a choice at later levels
4. skill system. I absolutely fell in love with the multiple tree/branches skills! I want to use that method in this game. I have already started designing them and I'm quite happy so far about the variety and results. Each character will have a common skill based on the class (warrior, magic user, scout) and a unique personal skill set, so each character will be somehow unique :) I think this feature should make the game much more replayable since you might want to experiment with all the various characters skills.
5. romance. There will be of course romances subplots! The main one will be between Loren and your Playable Character, but I plan also to allow some other romance between other minor characters. They'll be optional like in Planet Stronghold, but I'm not sure yet they'll have specific quest too.
6. endings. I'd like also to have several different endings, I mean quite different between each other. But is perhaps still a bit too early to talk about this (also, I won't really talk about this since don't want to make spoilers!)
7. battle system. This game is more for the "hardcore fans" than casual RPG player, so I'm thinking to move from the first person view of Planet Stronghold and try some card-RPG battle view. You can see a very ugly looking (hey it's programmer's art) test layout below:
   
   
   I'm going to do this for several reasons: more epic battles, you can fight against 12 goblins if you want :D Also, more tactical choices and the position will influence the battle. The first rows will be the one in direct contact, but all the heroes in the second rows won't be directly attackable by enemies unless they have ranged attacks. Also, I can have area of effect spells/skills, and you can swap positions of the heroes, like move in the back lines if your fighter is injured to heal him, and so on. Will be much more fun I think, even if inevitably is going to make battle more complex (but as I said, I think the target market for this kind of game will appreciate it).

That's all for now, as you can see there's already quite some features to talk about ;)

 

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 :)