Planet Stronghold on Steam


As you probably are aware already if you follow me on the social networks, my sci-fi RPG Planet Stronghold is now available on Steam. Above you can see the game trailer (the info at the end is outdated though, the game is also available on iOS).

I’ve already talked in the past about the game, in particular shortly after I released it, and is fun how Steam rejected the game back in 2011, and now 3 years later there it is! They have underestimated the power of the Wolves! 😉

Jokes apart, while I still consider Loren my best game, I’m quite affectionate to this one for two reasons: was the last game I wrote completely on my own (however is better if real native English writers take care of this aspect now!) and the first RPG/VN hybrid I made, which saved me from a sure bankrupt and put me back on track to stay indie for more years.

Seasons Of The Wolf Beta

Meanwhile, SOTW beta made a lot of progress in this last week. I admit I am a bit burned out because of how many bugs I fixed and how much balancing tweaks I made!!

First of all, while the stats-derivation method was delivering really well balanced fights (as expected) it had a huge problem: since everything was based on players behaviors, I had no reference for the battle difficulties. I couldn’t tweak a battle, I couldn’t lower or increase HP, Attack, Speed of the enemies because every time they would be different for every player 🙂

So, I had to discard the system after a few updates. Oh well, I’ve tried. Live and learn!

Then started to rebalance the game again, but I forgot a small detail: the level scaling was off, so the difference of difficulty between Easy and Nightmare wasn’t big (and instead, should be VERY big). So I had to rebalance the game completely for a second time!

At one point I even took a screenshot of all the 4 difficulty mode of a boss enemy to compare the differences:

balancing
The Huge Kodiak is a boss battle in a sidequest

…yes as you can guess, I went a bit insane 😀

All of this while fixing at least 5-6 major bugs daily (in first days even 10-15!!). It is good of course, and now that I have a much bigger following is even expected, but it was quite exhausting for me. Anyway, now everything seems to be working, so I can move on coding the second Act of the game.

I’m probably going to open preorders once I have finished the second act (and is in beta) so I’m at a good point of the game.

Stay tuned because next week will resume talking about C14 Dating, the new upcoming otome game 😉

17 thoughts on “Planet Stronghold on Steam

  1. Blackrising

    Glad that things are going well and more of your games will be appearing on steam. Also looking forward to hearing more about C14 Dating.

    (Though to be frank, I’m still kinda whobbling in a corner and waiting for the Yuri version of Nicole. ;_;)

    Reply
  2. Miakoda

    You know, for all that happened, I do think Planet Stronghold was pretty good, especially considering it was your first RPG 🙂

    Reply
  3. Missy

    I got it via Humble. Do we get steam keys too?

    I’m really looking forward to seasons of the wolf. Is that due later this year too?

    Reply
    1. admin Post author

      Haha it’s not “you”, is doing RPGs in general 😀 You helped with testing and it’s an invaluable help 🙂

      Reply
  4. Alex

    Congrats on -finally- getting Planet Stronghold through Greenlight (totally deserves to be there!)

    Mmmh, how’s Nicole’s Steam campaign coming along? (=> DESERVES be there too)
    Again I loved the artwork in L&O (and thus Nicole winning me over was guaranteed :))

    Again , Seasons of the Wolf is -really- shaping up to be something quite extraordinary.
    Looking forward to have played both (to bits!) and decide which one I like more ,Loren or SoTW (The snow elves are -def- fantastic characters however. Elves FTW)
    You robbed me of a weekend of Elder Scrolls Online Celso , but…playtesting SoTW was totally worth it.

    Reply
    1. admin Post author

      Nicole is at good point, not top100 but close. I think deserves to be there too since is better than ARM IMHO.

      Thanks about SOTW, I think for romance Loren will beat SOTW (just because of the amount of romances already) but as general story and gameplay SOTW will be better 🙂

      Reply
  5. Sasha

    Congrats on getting the game greenlit! It’s rather exciting to see you branching out to the different platforms.

    Despite the burn-out, I hope we see more of these RPGs from you soon–I’ve been dying for another ever since I beat everything on Planet Stronghold and Loren (though I won’t admit just how long those endeavors took me)! Not ashamed to admit I got them both on steam as well, either, and look forward to the others being released there as well in the foreseeable future.

    Though I might expire of sadness waiting for them to be released in the meantime … ! It’s so hard to find decent turn-based games to while away the time (and the romance at the end only sweetens the deal imho).

    I am curious about what the status of some of the others, like DIM and PS 2, are–mostly because I suffer from the common gamer curse of “never having enough awesome games to replay 80 bajillion times.”

    Reply
    1. admin Post author

      PS2 is still behind, the writing is not even half done and also the new RPG framework still needs work (but is turning out rather great, so I can wait for that).
      I think this year will release SOTW, and then next year… not sure yet ^_^;

      Reply

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