Category Archives: Never Forget Me

Never Forget Me official release

Let’s get straight to the point: Never Forget Me is now officially out! You can download the demo, find more info and purchase it from here: http://www.winterwolves.com/neverforgetme.htm

And now a short “postmortem” about the game and a few considerations.

The game idea

The game basic idea came to me last year, I thought that could have been fun to explore the married couple life, something very different from what the usual dating sim do. In practice, start the game where most other dating sim end! And then I thought that the perfect game to do this was a sequel to Always Remember Me.

For this game, I wrote the storyboards myself, since I am quite attached to those characters and this story. The first game was quite popular, also thanks to a series of videos by the famous youtuber Dodger. Will she cover also this game? who knows, I hope so! 🙂

Of course, being about the married life there was a basic problem: you couldn’t pursue several romances! (well, at least in theory…)

So I had to think how it would work, and I opted to let the player choose at the beginning of the story which romance route they wanted to play:

The other characters might appear on each route, but only as secondary/minor characters. The main focus would be the one you picked.

The gameplay

Then I had a big problem: what kind of gameplay? Originally I wrote the game as a pure visual novel, with the endings determined only by the choices. Each character has 10 scenes, with a choice in each and two options.

Based on your choices, you’d get 5 endings: 2 happy, 2 sad and 1 neutral.

Please note that while obviously people will want to get the happy endings, I think that even the sad ones are somewhat meaningful or interesting to play. In one sad ending for Eddy for example you learn how to stay away from men interested only in their career, while in a Hugh’s one you could learn that you need to fight to get your hard work recognized, even if the boss is your husband, etc.

Every path has a specific theme, as described in the game page.

I decided during the last month of development, to try adding also a scheduler/stat-raising gameplay. By completing the game in this mode, you would unlock two extra bonus epilogues: a happy epilogue and a normal epilogue.

Even for the stat raising, I wanted to try something different from the usual: the big difference in this case is that beside raising the character’s associated stat (like in most other games) to get the 100% relationship you also need to complete “goals”. The goals are randomized a bit, based on each love interest, and they are based on raising the OTHER stats.

For example, Aaron main stat is Romance. But to complete the goals, you’ll need to raise the other 3: Diligence, Culture and Creativity. Each goal will have different requirements. Some are also influenced by the Social/Energy values at the end of each week. This way, there’s more variety of gameplay and also a bit of strategy I think. Time will tell if people liked this idea or not 🙂

Conclusions

The game is just out so of course I cannot know how it will do, etc. During the beta it was doing “OK”. However, this game also took me only 2 months of storyboarding (done last year in February/March) while I was waiting for other games to be done. And another 2 months to script/code.

In summary this could well represent one of the infamous “smaller games” (for my standards: it’s still bigger than many other games! about 90k words and 8 CGs is not bad!) that I want to make, to ease the wait for the bigger ones.

Never Forget Me beta + Future romance games

luis

First of all Public Service Announcement: my upcoming otome game “Never Forget Me” is now in beta. The only thing missing is the official game main menu and the theme song. Everything else is there and should be working!

For more info, check the forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=3937

Expected final release should be end of month or November at the latest, depending how testing goes (however being a visual novel/dating sim, most of the mistakes could be typos or other minor stuff!).

And now I wanted to talk about a topic I find interesting to me:

Romance in future games

After Heirs & Graces release on Steam, there was an interesting discussion in the community forums. To be honest, I expected a much worse reaction, considering the game topic (yaoi/gay only dating sim). I just deleted a couple of obvious stupid threads but not much.

Anyway, here’s what I’m going to do in future games, regarding the romances.

Finding an audience

The most important thing for an indie dev, is finding the audience, the niche. Either you try to make a game in a popular genre (platformer?) but in that case you have to compete against many top indies (and the chances of succeeding are small) or you can try to cater to a smaller but loyal audience. That’s what I’ve always tried to do.

The question is: there’s a gay/yaoi audience on Steam? probably, but it’s very small. It’s not just Steam though: I sell the games directly, but also on mobile. The result though, is that  Heirs & Graces did much worse than, for example, C14 Dating, on all platforms.

So if I had to make games for an audience, I would stop making BxB games completely. BUT! There’s a big but 🙂 What is my goal? I think everyone should ask themselves what is their goal in life. I did it when I went indie. Originally, I wanted to make simulations and RPGs. Recently, I still want to make RPGs but also make experiments and story-based games. And regarding the stories, my goal is:

“I want as much people as possible to read my stories”

Yes, as simple as it is, that is my goal. Not because I’m arrogant and I think my stories (and those of my writers) are good or better than anyone else (they’re good though!). But simply because I want everyone to read them.

Now in the case of Heirs & Graces, I think it has one of the most beautiful stories of all my games. The father/son relationship, the fun and sad moments, etc. Not just my opinion, but basically of everyone who played the game. And here’s the problem: many people didn’t play the game because is yaoi only. And they missed a great story. This is bad, but honestly I knew it, it was inevitable, as much as some people wouldn’t play a yuri only game, etc.

What is the solution then? Well, the most obvious solution is to make games in which you can play as male/female, and have all kind of romances! On the other hand, doing such games takes a lot more time, as you can imagine. Also, usually you can’t offer 8+ romances (since you need to write them from the male/female point of view! it’s a LOT of work) and then you have complaints like with SOTW, in which people say that the game could have been better than Loren, but because of the few romances, it isn’t 🙁

Are they to blame either? No. I can understand that as male straight player, perhaps Krimm is not my kind of romance. Or as female player, I could find Jariel just too “nice” (the DLC changes things quite a lot though!). There’s no one to blame, really.

Finding a compromise

So as author I need to ask myself what is the best thing to do. As you can imagine it’s not like I can do all games with male/female main character AND 4+ romances each gender. Then we have situations like Loren 2, Roger Steel or Undead Lily where the game isn’t ready yet after 3+ years! Doh, insanely huge games takes a lot more time to make! Who would have guessed! haha

However, I think perhaps the best way is to try, whenever possible, to have a male/female main character and at least 2 romances for each gender. Sure, there won’t be as many romances as if the game was otome or yaoi or yuri only, but at least this way there are more  chances that everyone can read my stories. My main goal.

If someone thinks that having maybe only 2 romanceable characters/combos is too few for a full price game, well they can always wait and buy the game discounted later. But at least they will read the story, as long as there’s at least one romance they’re interested in 🙂

Of course, I have a lot of games I started years ago (some even in 2011… ahem) so for those, they could still be yuri only, no straight male romance, etc. Nothing can be done about this, except finish them as they were originally planned.

But for future games, especially bigger ones, that’s what I’ll try to do 🙂

Titles coming out in the next months

IMG_0096
First, a picture of Nuvola half-asleep. That’s how I feel now too!

I have several games in the works, so I thought to make a summary/point of the situation of the titles that hopefully will be out in the next months (from May to end of year in practice).

Remember that I’ll need to take a break between each release, and I also still need to do the mobile versions of PSCD and C14 Dating. And of course, there could be some unexpected issues/real-life problems that will delay me.

Because of this, I really cannot say exactly when a game is out, unless I expliticly say it in the list below. The only thing I am 100% sure, it’s the order in which they’ll come out. Let’s see:

Heirs and Graces

dingirra

I have finished scripting the main plot events, Kamal events, and I’m at good point with the other 3 characters too (though not done yet).

If I can keep this pace, I think a beta demo by mid-May should definitely happen!

reimyrth2

One thing I love of this game are the various references to the Aravorn fantasy universe (as you can see in the screenshots above). Anyone who played Loren or SOTW will notice them, and I hope it will make people happy as I am 🙂

PSCD DLC/free update

After Heirs & Graces I’ll need to decide what to do with PSCD. As you know, doing another “story DLC” was too much work, so I gave up the idea. I wanted to just add the extra romances to the base game, since they’re all done. However it means I’d waste the 24-something new cards that are already designed… so I’m reconsidering the possibility to maybe add a “free play” mode or something like that, so they’re not wasted (but at same time, I don’t need to go crazy to balance the cards for the missions). For now I haven’t decided anything yet.

Anyway, I’ll probably make some experiments and then decide what to do.

Queen Of Thieves

It’s probably my most awaited title this year! I am missing only the last 4 CG images from the artist, and I need to code about 5-6 custom missions, plus the final fight. I think everything considered it’s about 1 month of work for me (artist said should have all done by end of May).

That means the beta should finally start this Summer! 🙂

Never Forget Me

In the next 2-3 months I should get the last CG images for this game, after that, I have all the text, music and images. However, I still need to figure out a small detail… the gameplay part!

The game is structured differently from all my other dating sims, since you don’t start as single, but you choose who you ended up with in the first game, and from there the story unfolds. But it’s not like you can pursue more than one character… at least, not one of the four main ones 😉

So I need to find a way to make a stat-raiser, or better some other gameplay. I could also just release it as a pure visual novel, but if I can find an idea, I’ll try that first.

Love Bites

The storyboarding stage is basically done, and while it’s in practice the latest game that started production, I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out before end of year. The writer is very fast (and good) and she estimated that the story could be done before end of Summer.

Obviously, once the story is done there’s still to put everything together, and depends how much burned out I will be at that point. Considering all the other games that I should finish this year, I think you can’t blame me if I’ll take it a bit easier! 😉

Love Bites – introducing Brandon

intro_brandon

As promised last week, now it’s the turn of Brandon. And he’s not hiding anything either! (well technically he is, but let’s keep this blog “clean” :D)

Brandon Lawrence
Age:  22

The older half of fraternal twins (Kaitlyn is his younger sister), Brandon is a recent graduate with a degree in criminology who’s just now starting to take the first steps beyond university.  

Given his physique, most people assumed he played football while in college, but Brandon would explain that lifting weights actually helped him graduate.  His friends would teasingly say that he must be a straight A student then.

Long term, he’d like to attend law school, but that takes some serious money, and Brandon was feeling a little burned out with school anyways.  So, he managed to line up a job, but it won’t start for another three months.  

As a result, Brandon is currently living at home and hopes to find enough work in the summer so he can afford a place of his own.  

However, all is not as good as it seems.  Though everything seems to be going well in his personal life, Brandon has started to notice odd things happening around him.  Whether it was the young lady who didn’t cast the shadow…or the elderly man whose eyes gleamed in the dark.

Brandon isn’t sure whether he is seeing things, or he might be the victim of an elaborate prank.  Either way, he can’t let it dissuade him from fulfilling his short term goals…

Other games update

C14 Dating “private testing” continues, I just talked with the writer/coder and they are aiming to finish the 1st March! So it means that shortly after the public beta in my forums will begin. As always check twitter/forums to know about any news.

In the last two weeks I also started scripting myself Never Forget Me, the sequel to my popular game Always Remember Me (my very first otome and dating sim game!). I’ll talk about it in detail in a future blog post, for now here’s an… interesting screenshot!

eddyamy

Everything is going well, but I’m taking the opportunity to make a list of art missing as I script it, so even if I finish the scripting, I’ll still need to wait for the artist to do the new art. I expect the game could be out around this Summer, of course depending how the other things go.

I’ve been thinking a lot about future games (I mean, after I finish all the ones in progress now) but I’ll talk more in detail in a future blog post 🙂