Category Archives: love bites

Love Bites bonus DLC: Introducing Ashley!

Surprise, surprise! I’m proud to announce that we’re working on a bonus DLC for the game “Love Bites”. And the best news is that the DLC will be included for free in the base game!

The DLC will add Ashley to the pool of the romanceable characters. Since both the writer and I loved her (for the appearance and personality as you’ll read below) we decided that would have been a pity to not add her. Like the other love interests, she’ll be available both to Kaitlyn and Brandon.

Now I can of course imagine that some people will be disappointed that there’s only one extra female, but also for technical reasons (like there simply wasn’t enough space to add more characters in the scheduler! and other things) we can only add one more, and after some recent events (cancellation of Nicole yuri, long time since I made a BxG game) I think if I had to add one character only, it should have been a female.

However, we might explore Love Bites world again in future, maybe in another game, and we’ll make sure to include some handsome boys too. Everything depends also on Rebecca’s (the artist) availability since she’s very busy.

The DLC writing has been already finished, but it still needs to be scripted and tested. I hope to have it ready next month.

And now, Ashley’s character introduction follows below:

Ashley Harrington

Age: 26

Ashley is a soft-spoken, gentle woman who is much tougher than she looks. She has a deep abiding love for nature, and animals in particular. As such, Ashley is pursuing a graduate degree in environmental studies, and hopes to get a job as a botanist afterwards.

However, school is far from cheap, and to curb some of the soaring costs, Ashley works as an exotic dancer. The job is a means to an end, but her family is less accepting. This bothers the normally upbeat Ashley more than she likes to let on.

In such instances, Ashley takes solace in the nearby woods, spending entire weekends communing with nature alone. An avid outdoorswoman, Ashley knows the best parts to go camping, the best place to pick flowers, or the tastiest patch for berry picking. In the great outdoors she feels truly at peace…which should come as no surprise as she is also a werewolf.

Unlike movie lore, most werewolves are not cursed, but born that way. While her bestial side didn’t come as a surprise since her older siblings are also werewolves, Ashley has a hard time reconciling her animal nature with her human side.

Unfortunately, many people can sense when there is a predator in their midst, no matter how well-hidden, and this means Ashley has found it hard to make any close friends, let alone lovers. Those who aren’t put off by her, find they have a friend for life.

This isn’t to say Ashley hates her wolf nature, far from it, but she is learning that sometimes she has to let the wolf loose…or else, it will do so of its own accord, especially when the moon grows full.

In those instances, Ashley will usually head for the woods. While more than capable of defending herself, she’s also learned she isn’t the only person with a secret to hide.

During one incident in which a drunken, belligerent patron decided he could take advantage of a fellow dancer, Ashley intervened…and nearly lost her arm in the process to a young woman with black and purple hair. The woman said she wouldn’t allow Ashley to hunt among her charges.

Things might have escalated, except the dancer came to Ashley’s aid, pointing out how wrong the raven-haired woman was. Embarrassed, the young woman fled, but from that day forward, Ashley kept a closer eye on her friends and coworkers.

Love Bites postmortem

Only a few months have passed since Love Bites’ release but I can already draw some conclusions about it. I’m planning to do a postmortem also for Cursed Lands later this year.

A smooth experience

As I posted already when I announced the game official release, the whole development experience went really smooth. I already knew about the work ethics of both Miakoda (the writer) and Rebecca (the main artist), but considering they both had some serious real-life issues along the road, it’s even more amazing. But everyone involved did a good job, from Matthew (the musician) to Aleema who did the GUI and trailer, the person who scripted it, etc.

When such things happens, a game gets released in a reasonable time-frame. Yes, I know that since the announcement (February 2016) to official release (May 2018) there are two years, but honestly it’s not such a long time to produce a quality game of a good size like this one, in which you can play as male or female (Nicole took more or less same amount and you can play only as female for example).

No stat raising

This was also a new choice for me, and thinking back, I should have done this sooner. In practice I already saw many complaints for some of my past games (Nicole, Roommates) in which several players didn’t really enjoy the stat-raising part, despite being a classic of dating sims. However, reading all the feedback, it seemed clear that for the vast majority of players, not only it wasn’t a required feature, but was preventing them from enjoying the story!

Keeping my theory of the “vocal minority” in mind, I still wanted to try to not have a complex scheduler and NO stat raising at all and see what happened. It went well!

I’m not saying that I’ll never do games anymore with stat raising, since in certain situation it can work, but for normal dating sims probably not. More complex games in general like raising-sims can benefit from stat raising, in particular to unlock specific scenes or gameplay features (new job, new class, new area, etc) but for games where the main goal is to advance in the story and unlock romances, probably it’s not such a good idea.

No erotic stuff

This wasn’t really a possibility since this artist doesn’t draw adult stuff, so even if in future we’ll do more games with her art, they’ll feature  sexy content at best. Personally I still love the art style and in some cases even if there’s no frontal nudity the CG can be beautiful (if you played the game and saw for example Nadia/Brandon romance you know what I mean).

Still, I was a bit worried that this could have an impact on sales/public reception, and instead it went well. I mean, I can’t know if it also had an optional full nudity patch what could have happened 😛 But I’m still happy about the results as they were.

Conclusions

I am very happy how everything went and the game was a success in my point of view. Of course considering the rising competition and the fact that non-porn VNs on Steam have really a hard time, but especially all those things considered, it could have been a disappointment. Instead the game did better than some titles I relased back in 2016 and I was positively surprised 🙂

Love Bites is officially out!

Special thanks to Aleema for the awesome trailer video above. For sure the best trailer I’ve ever done for all my games!

You can find out more and purchase the game here: http://www.winterwolves.com/lovebites.htm

This game is a perfect example of a project where “everything went smoothly”. I know, it’s rare in the real world (and even more in the game development world!) but happens when you put together reliable people!

Brainstorming / planning

Miakoda, the game writer, had just finished writing the epic PSCD (over 240k words of text) and I wanted her to do something smaller (even if Love Bites is definitely not “small”, but you know how it goes, right?) and most importantly, simpler for me to code. I knew I would be doing more RPGs and complex games after PSCD (indeed I did Queen Of Thieves and Cursed Lands! Two RPGs, and now I’m working on a third, Planet Stronghold 2).

So I definitely didn’t want to have to deal with some more games with complex gameplay at the moment, and after some quick brainstorming, we decided to go with a game involving supernatural, horror, and romance. Seems a good combination!

Artwork

At the same time, I got in touch again with Rebecca Gunter, the artist who did my first games (Heileen and Bionic Heart series) and despite the very busy schedule, she said would have time to do the art for a new game.

Personally I love her style (might also be because I’ve a sentimental attachment to them) but if I try to be objective for a moment I think perhaps her best skills are with males, and I think yaoi fans will like this game in particular… even if both the females (Sabrina and Nadia) are hot too! The only downside is that she doesn’t draw full nudity, but you can’t have everything.

Writing

On the writing side, I think the game features the right mix of seriousness, jokes, and sexual innuendo. I also think the use of the “inner voice” (during the game, as your curse grows stronger, you start to hear a voice telling you… to do “things”…) was a brilliant idea by Miakoda and really adds to the game “something more”.

Gameplay

As mentioned above, I wanted to keep things simple. Originally I was going to use a weekly planner similar to Roommates, but then after some preliminary testing, and remembering well what people told me, I thought…”why?” 😛

So I reviewed everything and kept things simple. I didn’t bother to add a “visual novel mode” in this game simply because there’s no need. Yes you can trigger some early endings, and yes reaching a certain amount of money will play a slightly different text endings and so on, but overall you can definitely finish the game without going crazy with stat raising like my other dating sims.

This choice was almost universally well received and I think I’ll keep doing this also for future games: either I have some gameplay that works well with the story, or there’s no point in going crazy with coding when it’s not needed or doesn’t work well, just for the sake of it.

Conclusions

As you can guess I’m really happy about how things went with this project, and the previous one (Cursed Lands) as well. If you asked me in Summer last year I’d have never imagined that I would have two games out in the first half of 2018! Next stop is Planet Stronghold 2 and then, finally I’ll start working on Loren 2 🙂

Corona Borealis: Noah

Noah originally started as a secodary character but then evolved into a proper otome romance 🙂 I’m sure that Jill looked at him and thought “aww the classic shy guy with glasses, should be a romance option”. Yes, I’m 100% sure that this is what happened! This is also the last character introduction for this game.

Noah’s introduction

Lacey’s introverted and awkward twin brother. Unlike his sister, he is rather pessimistic and reserved. Sometimes it seems like there’s something amiss between the two, but it’s difficult to know for sure. He spends most of his free time inside writing and sketching in his notebook.

Very good news guys!

People following me on social media already know it, but just in case you missed it: Love Bites beta has started! More info in my forums: https://www.winterwolves.net/viewforum.php?f=47

As always the beta version might still have bugs, however in this case since it’s a dating sim, all the game content is ready. You can play and reach all the endings, unlock all achievements, etc! 🙂

Cursed Lands should also be officially released shortly, the theme song was made but I also wanted to do the video trailer and the person who usually does them couldn’t work, so I had to find a replacement and this added a bit of delay.

And regarding the next title I hope to finish this year, Volleyball Heaven, the romance CGs are being made right now (the lineart is basically ready but they need to be colored) and the game writer is doing a final review/polish of the story. Starting next month the scripting will begin, and as usual I’ll post screenshots during the development on twitter/tumblr so if you’re interested remember to follow me there.

Of course I’ll still keep working on Planet Stronghold 2 as well but honestly I expect to be able to release at best an alpha demo this year.

This week was my birthday, and I realized once again how lucky I am to be able to do what I do for a living. Thank to you all for your support!

Corona Borealis: Lacey

This is my favorite character of the game… no particular reason 😉 Haha, once again Deji skills impressed me, I really like both the look and the outfits (because seriously, they’re just incredibly cute!)

In case you forgot, this game is more “tame” compared to my most recent titles, to be clear you can expect a yuri route similar to the “secret” one of C14 Dating, more on the cute/friendship/romantic side.

And now here’s Lacey character’s introduction directly from the writer:

The overly friendly cashier and dining room attendant. Incredibly optimistic, it seems nothing can put a damper on her good mood. She immediately takes an interest in June and goes out of her way to make her feel welcome. She loves to talk about her fiancé, Mason.

Update on other games

Good news: the Cursed Lands beta testing is proceeding very well, so much that I decided to put the game in “soft release mode”. It means that it’s feature complete, all the content of the final game it’s there, and I feel it’s reasonably stable! While there might be some bugs left, they’re very well hidden (this usually is when I get max 1-2 bug reports a week, instead of 10/day! lol).

Regarding Love Bites, the story is 99% done, the writer just finished both Nadia paths, so once the scripter sends the files to me, I’ll proceed with testing myself the final romance route of this game and then begin the public beta. I think should be towards end of month or early next month! 🙂