Monthly Archives: November 2014

Thank you

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A nice picture I managed to catch with my camera while taking a walk outdoor!

I’m writing this post on Thanksgiving day. Here in Europe is not a big festivity like in USA, though I really like the idea of it. Being thankful for something, thanking someone, is a good thing to do.

So here I am, thanking you! 🙂

Yes because if I’m still indie after all those years, is mainly thanks to you. My entire life (and those of my wife/pets!) would be very different without your great support, doesn’t matter how big or small.

But I’m going to thank you not just by words! 😉

I’m doing a special promo sale, with all my games 50% off until the 2nd December!
(except Seasons Of The Wolf obviously, since was just released).

You don’t need to enter any code, the discount is automatic for the whole duration of the sale. As always, by buying direct you help me (I get a bigger cut than with portals) and also you get the games DRM-Free + Steam key anyway.

Short status update

I’m making good progress with the various games in the works, but as always I have no idea when they’ll be out.

I often get people asking me: “when game XYZ will be out?” 🙂 It’s cool since shows that people are waiting for my games, but always remember: as soon as I am confident that I can start * at least the beta testing * in a specific date, I’ll be the first to officially announce it in the blog or the various social networks. So if I don’t say anything, means that I don’t know myself!

When several people are involved in developing a game (like all my games do now), is normal to have delays and to be unable to know when everyone will finish his/her tasks.

Anyways, if I had to make a guess, I’d say that 2015 might be “the year of yuri”, since beside Nicole yuri, I also have another yuri-only dating sim in the works (the infamous “Summer In Trigue” which I’ll officially announce later) and all the other games that could be out include female love interests playing as female main character.

This is another way to thank all the yuri fans who followed me through the past years 😉

PSCD – meet Mira

mira

After a break of a few weeks, back to introducing the PSCD characters. And what character! 😉

Name:  Mira Patras
Nation of Origin:  Greece
Service Branch:  Civilian Consultant

Description:
As one of the youngest Nobel Prize winners ever, it was a foregone conclusion that Mira would make her way to Planet Stronghold.  The numerous anomolies and mysteries have drawn scientists like a moth to flame, and Mira is certainly no exception.

There are many demands on Mira’s time, however.  A true polymath, she has provided valuable insight into numerous fields, whether it is geology, or robotics.  It is known some of her research was instrumental in Lucius’ construction, for example.  This also causes a bit of exasperation for the military since as a civilian, Mira isn’t as bound by military doctrine as a soldier would be, and they worry she may inadvertantly leak some critical research.  

What initially brought Mira to the planet were reports of excessive gigantism among some of the animal species, and upon her arrival, witnessed this firsthand as a giant grub attempted to consume her transport shuttle.  Instead of frightening her off, Mira was inspired to  stay.  After all, if she could discover the source of this enlargement, it might then be replicated among other things such as food bearing crops.

Mira is also a bit of a media darling as various outlets vie for her attention.  Some of these include invitations to anchor her own show, or various movie roles.  While she makes time for inteviews, Mira usually declines these entreaties as they would. There were many broken hearts when she refused the lead role in the remake of ‘Attack of the Giant Amazon.’

Needless to say, she is one of my favorites. Not because of the piercing on the lips, or the blue eyes. Or her sexy alternate outfit. No, really, not because of that… 😀

Jokes apart, I really like all the character design of this game! And I’m also pleased by the progresses made by the writer so far.

SOTW DLC and other games in progress

SOTW Steam testing is going well, can you believe that we found some more small bugs? haha the work on a RPG is never done! They were all minor things of course, but needed to be fixed 🙂

I can also confirm that we’re going to work on a DLC for SOTW. Only 20 days have passed since the official release, but I’m confident enough that it’s worth doing it. The DLC will happen after the end of Act 4, but of course before the various “alternate endings” (since they talk about things happening far in future).

I’ll manage to keep the existing characters so keep your saves, but I think will also offer the possibility to “start anew” just for the DLC, automatically leveling up the characters to level 25-26 and picking your romance, so people don’t necessarily need to replay the whole thing!

The DLC will focus more on the story/lore and the interaction between the player and the various romances. Is a RPG, so of course there will still be battles, but not often as the main game!! Of course everything is still in early planning stages, since the DLC for sure won’t be out before next Summer/Fall (as always, depending on how the other various projects go).

Queen Of Thieves is going well too: the artist is making the new characters with his “new improved style” and what can I say? just take a look for yourself:

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Therjalla the elf healer is going to be one of the female yuri romances of the game

So, Myrth from Loren has a formidable competitor it seems! 😉 Jokes apart, also pleased by the new writer’s speed. I have no release estimates of course but if both writer and artist keep going at this pace, the game will be out sooner than I thought.

See you next Friday…the Black Friday!! 😮

Seasons Of The Wolf official release!


Yep, the “supposedly – small – RPG – game” is finally out! 😀

I made a few minor bugfixes since the soft-release, updating the game to version 1.0.5. though the only real problem was a bug when replaying the game after you replayed one of the ending romances from the gallery screen.

A short post-mortem

I can’t make a real post-mortem since the game is just out since 15 days, and even if had a very long testing/preordering stage, it’s not enough to draw any conclusions. However I can safely say that if sales continues this way, the game could beat Loren’s success, which wasn’t really something I was counting on 🙂 Of course, IF the sales continues this way, which might not happen. I think by the end of year I’ll have a better idea if doing this crazy huge RPG was a good investment of my time or not.

Honestly I wish I had made the game with less features. Less than 12 skills each character. I wish I made less than the 300+ battles in the game or the over 115 different enemies. Maybe I should have avoided some extra sidequests, or the isometric map. The unlockable quest/location bonuses. Some hidden areas to do grinding. The huge amount of background images (more than double Loren’s). The art quality, using 5 artists at once (never happened with any other game). Or the theme song and full epic soundtrack. Adding still romances despite all the amount of content, and two CGs each romance (a kissing scene, and an ending scene).

Why, you ask? because it was hard to price the game, considering the time/money invested on it. About that…

Steam release and pricing

I was unsure what to do until today, originally I had planned to sell the game for $29.99 also because of the crazy amount of time I’ve personally spent on it, however… considering many players play my games mainly for the romances, in the end it didn’t seem fair to them.

For those who like more gameplay, I think it’s a great deal at this price since will keep you busy FOR HOURS! Seriously, I have some testers who spent over 50-60h on it, of course in Hard/Nightmare difficulty mode, completing all the achievements/quests 😉

As for Steam, just today the game was accepted, but since I don’t want to rush things will add the game there in January (I need to do all the achievements, testing, etc). But at least now you know that if you buy direct you’ll get a free key because the game will be on Steam soon!

Differences vs Loren

I want to stress this again: the game is much more RPG/combat focused than Loren. There isn’t the same amount of romances or “camp talk” dialogues with each character. It is a bit more similar, gameplay wise, to my first RPG Planet Stronghold, even if of course much more polished.

So if you’re looking for something like Loren, you better wait for Loren 2, or Roger Steel which will be much more similar to that game (as I often say, more VN and less RPG). If instead you want more RPG gameplay but still with a story, then this game is for you. As always, there’s a free demo to try before you buy.

Overall, it was a “small game” that somehow turned into the biggest game I’ve ever made. It’s not necessarily a bad thing of course 🙂 but I need a break badly from such big projects, so don’t expect any new RPG like this one out in 2015. I mean, I will probably start working on Roger Steel next year for example, but the actual game won’t be out for sure before 2016. Even SOTW was started in Summer 2013, and the first beta was out in Spring this year…making good and long games takes time!

Mobile release

What about mobile? I’ll start working on it, but is really a bad moment now with Christmas and everything else (really busy!). I will TRY to do the mobile port in time, but might slip into January. The mobile version, beside obvious testing, needs some changes to the interface to be more playable on touch based devices. Also, it’s probably going to be quite slow on low-end/old devices because of the isometric map. Anyway, as always will use in-app purchases so you can play/test the game first and decide if is worth spending your money on the mobile version.

The upcoming games

Meanwhile, next year you’ll enjoy Nicole yuri for sure, then there’s a big amount of games in progress: Heirs and Graces (the yaoi only dating sim), another still unnamed yuri only dating sim (check this poll in forums if you want to help give it a name!), PSCD, Queen Of Thieves, Amber’s Magic Shop… and I’m probably missing something! 😀

Lots of active projects! As always I will finish the one which is more advanced, so I think PSCD is the one more likely to be out soon together with Nicole yuri. For the others, I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes 😉

November update!

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A mockup of the character inventory screen for Queen Of Thieves

The image above is a mockup I made for the GUI artist, for the game Queen Of Thieves. Does anyone remember it? 😀

When I first announced it, was very long time ago. Yes it was February 2011!! Lots of things happened since then, and to be honest I am almost glad that I had to put the game on hiatus for a long time, since now I have the knowledge and the resources to make the game as I wanted and much better.

Most of what I said in that post is still valid. The main change in the game is that your mother is not dead but being held captive. “Oh noes, a damsel in distress!” Well yes, but to save her there are 3 other younger damsels 😉 There will be the father/husband but he will only be present to give advice and run the shop.

Artist resumed working on it, currently he’s adding 3 new female characters since I’m going to have also yuri options (not as DLC, but all in one). The romances are 6 for each gender, in practice each girl will have two romance options. Obviously, this will make someone unhappy (why Joanne can’t date Fredrick! Why Thalia can’t date Tiberius! etc) but is normal, so I’m not too worried about that 😉

It’s another “experimental game”, since for the first time you control all three the characters. It will be strange maybe, sort of “The Sims”, in which you kind of play as God and decide their fate (including the romances). I am still thinking how it will work in details regarding the romances, currently it works like this, at least the first scenes (click to enlarge the storyboard):

storyboard

Tiberius for example (the guard captain): can be romanced by Kira and Joanne. But only by ONE of them. In the game, you’ll control all the girls, but depending on your choices, only one of those two will get the romance. This means that in theory, there can be only one combination in which each female character gets 1 romance each. In all other cases, there will be two.

However, considering I have to rewrite the game from scratch (the current writing was 3/4 done but the quality doesn’t match my recent much higher standards, so I have decided to redo it), I could change that, maybe just have one romance each girl, since I don’t want this to become “yet another monstrous game that won’t be out before YEARS” 😀

As for the gameplay, I am thinking to reuse the one from the SOTW maps/dungeons, maybe with some changes. There will also be two other “mini-games”, I still have to decide how to  code them. I’m in the design stage in practice, so while I’ve resumed working on this, definitely doesn’t mean will be ready anytime soon!

Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense update

matrick16x9 copy
It’s fun to see the original artwork and the revamped version of the same alien race!

Above you see the Matrick from Planet Stronghold 1 (the RPG) and the same alien in a new style, the style of PSCD. They’re very different but both cool 🙂

The writer has written a good amount of the initial missions, and also planned the whole storyboard. Of course, even in this game are still in early stages, since there isn’t yet a single working mission 😀 but hopefully I’ll have something to show in the next weeks!

Finally, about Seasons Of The Wolf, the soft release is going well, with only some minor bug fixes/rare bugs and improvements done in the last couple of updates. So really I’m quite happy how things are going so far! 🙂 Definitely next Friday I’ll officially announce it.