Even my cat Gilda is waiting impatiently Loren RPG release!

It has been a long week. I spent it testing, adding lots of small details, and so on. This process is was is commonly known as “polishing”. I am trying really to make the game the best I can, but of course I also want to release it soon!

As the post title says, the three main things missing were vendors, quests and random encounters. So far I have implemented only the quests (more below) but the vendor is at good point too, while for the random encounters very likely will need to implement the map first.

In the image above, I added a tooltip with a detailed explanation of all the 3 base attributes, to help the player decide better how to spend the attribute points. The basics are quite clear though: Warrior need Strength, Thieves need Skills and Mages need Will

Another thing I recently added are the quest. The code was already done, but I added a simple but efficient screen to inform the players when they got a new quest, like in the image above.

Quests are useful especially in the beginning to “boost” the experience of players, since the battles without many skills lose a lot of their charm. So I wanted the player to level up quickly at least in the beginning, so they can learn new skills. The level-up speed is something I need to tweak and will take some time as well.

I did also many minor changes to the party information screen. I enlarged the number of party portraits displayed at once, so you have to use less the up/down arrow to scroll between the various party members. I am also planning a short tutorial for each screen, including this one. The battle tutorial is already implemented instead, but will need some feedback (I think might be too long).

What about the other games?

Fear not! Heileen 3 is going forward very well, the total plot is already 81,000 words and there are still Marie and Lora’s romance arc missing, so will definitely be a long game.

I also should get new art and texts for the various other projects (including some that I’m keeping secret), but as you know until Loren’s Beta is finished, I’ll be working almost exclusively on that!

One thing I can announce though, and is that I had the chance to hire again Loren’s artist by pure luck for a limited amount of time, and I had him work on Amber’s Magic Shop art. So finally I’ll be able to get the art for that game!

In the photo above, Gilda and Leon sleeping “head to head”

I was hoping to announce the start of the beta pre-order for my fantasy RPG “Loren The Amazon Princess” but alas, I am going to delay it by a few weeks. I’m hoping by mid of February to have the full chapter 1 finished.

Below some screens of the vendor (WIP) and the battle with a 99% final layout:

See the full gallery on Posterous

What’s left ?

You might ask what exactly is missing? The biggest part of the game is done, but there are a lots of small things missing. To be clear I could release the beta at the end of this month, but it would miss a several interesting features like:

• working vendor – the vendor code is still half-done, and even if the coder probably could finish it in 3 days, it would be greatly untested. Also I would need to define the vendors inventory, check what kind of items they might have available, and so on!
• side quests – I’m thinking what to have as side quests. In the game, there are already side-quests but they appear later in the game, in particular in the expansion when you can choose if to recruit Sauzer, Mesphit and Chambara. I want to add a few more, nothing complex since the game is already VERY long, but still…
• map system – it will be a simple map system like Planet Stronghold (nothing complex) but still I am missing the art and good part of implementation (like random encounters, and so on)
• battle effects – there are SOME battle effects done (nothing fancy!) but when you have 80+ skills to do, it starts to be a LOONG task. I don’t want to spend much time on this, because it doesn’t make sense to make lots of efforts for a 1-2 second animation, but still I don’t want it to look like a total crap

So as you can see, nothing really ESSENTIAL to the game, but I don’t want to rush out the beta, and have people test an already outdated version, since I will add most of the things above.

What about the grinding?

The term grinding, as defined by Wikipedia:

“Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or boring tasks not pertaining to the story line of the game. The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over again to advance their character level to be able to access newer content.“

As you might know, I make heavy story-based games. However, Loren is the first game that has a very solid RPG gameplay. It’s much deeper, detailed and also complex than Planet Stronghold. And you can reach up to level 30 (I decided to lower the level cap from level 60 !).

I know that some people hate grinding, while other consider it an essential part of RPGs. Of course, not an excessive grinding, but if the battle is well done, it’s cool to kill monsters to gain more experience and unlock new skills.

In my case though, it also helps the game. As much as I can test it, and even if I offer different difficulty levels, I cannot know every single player skills. So even if I give out more experience points at Easy difficulty level, I cannot know if it will be enough for everyone to win the battle with Jul in chapter 4 of the game (it will be a hard battle!).

A solution is to leave some zones of the map with “wandering monsters”, so that if the player is stuck in a battle and cannot seem to win it, he can visit those places and fight some grinding battles to gain more experience and level up. As consequence, he can retry the previous battle but with a strongest party, increasing the chances of winning.

I think done this way, grinding is not a bad thing anymore, but is a sort of “approved cheat mode”. You can win most battles at your selected difficulty level? Good. You can’t? Try playing in a easier mode. You still cannot win that specific battle? Try grinding a bit, and then come back with a strongest party and kick the enemy’s ass!

The other games

I know recently I’m completely absorbed into Loren and haven’t updated much the other games progresses. This is because Loren is a very long and complex game to make, and I want to finish it soon. However don’t worry, since after it’s finished I’ll release some new dating/life sim, including Heileen 3 (probably this summer).

Here’s a picture of Marie with the “new look”. I find her very cute:

And she is a romance option

In the image above, my cat Orfeo (italian for Orpheus) on the bed.

Today I want to talk about some differences between “old school” and “modern” RPGs, since I’m working right now on Loren Amazon Princess that is what I would define a “old school” RPG for some aspect, while “modern” for others.

Below a gallery with some preview images, showing several aspects of the game:

See the full gallery on Posterous

One of the main differences between oldschool and modern RPGs is the turn-based / real-time mechanics. Most modern RPG use real-time. Unfortunately, I was kind of forced to use turn-based because making a real-time game needs lots more animation/art, and in general is harder to make.

I still have a battle movement order though, which is dynamic. If you see the column on the right, shows the movement order, and as you hover the mouse on the possible actions, it gives you a “preview” of how your decision will change the order. So beside the power/effects of a skill, you’ll also have to ponder the delay that the same skill gives. Sometimes for example, is better to use a skill that does less damage but lets you kill two goblin thieves already injured, than “waste” a skill that does more damage but pushes you back on the movement order list.

Another difference is auto-mapping. In my game I don’t have dungeons with map, so there will be just a main map of the world, with easily accessible places. But I remember some oldschool RPGs that didn’t have an automap, and you had to write down on paper the map of the dungeon. Seems crazy thinking about this now !

The user interface is also something that was greatly improved over old RPGs. Last year I bought Temple Of Elemental Evil, and was shocked by the clumsy interface: no mouse over, so simple button to change view/move object between players, and so on. Most modern RPGs use a “shared inventory”, that means all player have immediate access to all item owned by the party. If someone has an item equipped you usually need to unequip it to put in the pool, but before every item (even unequipped ones) was carried by a specific player, so the user had to do a much bigger amount of clicking.

The vendor / items comparison wasn’t automatic like now. In most new games, you have a way to immediately see if an item you just looted is more or less powerful than the one you’re carrying. Before instead you had to look at all the statistics and decide for yourself! It was crazy, right?

Also, with a RPG featuring only one character is quite easy, but if you have a party things starts to get complex: what if there are two warriors in the party? you need to tell the player if the new longsword you just found is better or worse than the weapons equipped by both warriors. This is the problem we’re facing right now with the loot and the vendor in Loren Amazon Princess game!

The difficulty level is also something that changed radically over time. Most old RPGs were very hard, while modern ones offers at least several different difficulty levels, so people that just want to have easy combat and progress in the story, will be able too. In Loren there are three different difficulty levels, and they have a big impact on gameplay rules. At easy level, enemies are easy and the elemental resistances have a marginal impact on battle. At hard level, enemies are tougher and the elemental resistances have a key role: hitting an enemy vulnerable to fire with a fire-based skill will have a much bigger impact.

Lastly, the level progression was completely different. Even if I have to say that JRPG were always different from western RPGs, but in general leveling up after the first early levels was a big achievement. In AD&D games, already getting from level 5 to level 6 could take a LOONG time! Recently, beside the already mentioned JRPG, even in modern MMORPG like Everquest or WoW, you’re going to see the levelup screen much more often.

In Loren, I have decided to use this system: each character has a main class (Warrior, Thief or Mage) and a specialization (unique) class. Each class has 5 different skills, and each one has 3 levels of power. So as you see, each character has 30 different skills that can learn. So I have decided (though this might change during testing of course!) to have a level cap of 60, and give a skill point every 2 levels. This way, at level 20 you could have learned all the skills for every character, but at the basic level of power: so will add some more strategy since the player will need to think which skill to raise up to the maximum power level?

Every level up instead you get 3 attribute points, to spend on Strength, Skill or Will attributes. Will write about those three attributes next friday since the explanation is long and beside… by that time I might be about to announce the open beta preorders! (crossing fingers)

In the picture above my cat Gilda sitting over a “hot water bottle” (hope to have found the right word!).

Yes because at the start of the year, for the first time in the last four years, I got the flu and high fever! So I had to momentarily pause my work. At the moment of writing this post I still don’t feel really well, but at least it’s an excuse for typos/grammar mistakes

I think this was a sort of warning. In 2011 I worked like NEVER before, but since I’m human, in 2012 I plan to take things more relaxed. Don’t worry this doesn’t mean I won’t release any games or slow down incredibly! But thank to the effort of the previous years, I’ll be able to release new games reusing good part (or almost all) of the code I’ve already written, speeding up the process.

This is a commonly used tecnique, even in the top AAA games. Making a new game from scratch is one thing, but doing one with already a solid code base, even if of course needs to be changed, expanded, redesigned, is much faster, believe me!

Loren The Amazon Princess uses a new RPG Framework, but luckily the big part of it was written in past year by Michael (also known as “Anima” in some forums). There’s really not much work left, and what I have tested so far seems to work very well apart some inevitable minor bugs. I spent most of this week redoing several times the battle screen layout.

In the image above, an almost final GUI layout. But as the user “Foxfeeder” rightly pointed in my forums, it’s a pity to use those small portraits, when I have such well done waist-up images of all party members and enemies! So I’m going to tweak/change it again next week as soon as I can resume working.

Planet Stronghold: Warzone will obviously reuse the first game code, but with some improvements that will have a big impact on gameplay, like area of effect Psionic Powers. Even in this case luckily, I did most of the update last year, so there’s “only” the story to write and the item/enemies. Still quite a lot of work, but should be done before the year ends (don’t want to say this Summer even if I hope to)!

As promised, above you see a “sneak peek” of Joshua possible romances. What do you think? I believe the sequel will satisfy everyone and every tastes

Nicole, (the Mystery/Otome game), Amber’s Magic Shop and Roommates (set in college with all romance options available) will use Always Remember Me interface with some changes, so that each game will feel somehow unique. In Nicole I plan to put some clue system, in Amber there will be a potion brewing simulation, and in Roommates you’ll be able to take different jobs based on some of your statistics.

Heileen 3: New Horizons will use a scheduler similar to Flower Shop games. There won’t be any farming simulation, but other mechanics. Some coding will be required, but at it’s core is a Visual Novel, since the first two games were “pure” Visual Novels I didn’t want to transform it into something too complex. There will still be stats, relationship system and other things though

In the image above you see Sebastian, the “new entry” and 4th male dateable character of the game. The artist Rebecca will be working during January-April of this year on the art for the game, I saw the preview of the romance CG for John – Heileen and is very interesting

The “New” Games

If you follow me and knows all the various games I’m working on, you might have noticed that from the list above is missing both Undead Lily and Queen Of Thieves. That is because they are the games which will require more brainstorming, coding, and testing, since will use very different gameplay mechanics:

The Queen Of Thieves will use in part a map/life sim, but also several new gameplay methods. I have already in mind some interesting ideas for it, but I think will either find a coder for it, or if I need to code it myself will take some time…

Undead Lily is almost finished art-wise. It’s missing only a few backgrounds but all the character art is done. However, I have an idea on how to make it, but I am almost certain that it cannot be done with Ren’Py (maybe using some black magic with the Sprites class… but I don’t know how!). So I might even do this game with Flash or some other language. I had started making it already but I paused it, since I want to make the game the best I can.

In the photo above, my cat Gilda sleeping in a plastic bowl

In the image below instead you see the almost final main menu of my upcoming fantasy roleplay game “Loren The Amazon Princess”. Please note how I wisely placed the Buy Now text

Current Game Status

Jokes apart, the game story is nearing completion, even if there are still many things left to do, mainly finding typos and checking the flow. It’s going to be a very LOONG and detailed game. Without doubts, my biggest game under every aspect: story, characters, art, sound effects/music, gameplay, longevity (you can play as male and female, and there’s a big variety of party members to select).

For the first time I also used an artist to do the GUI (windows,buttons, icons), and I must admit that it was worth it. Special thanks also to Aleema who helped with tweaking the GUI as well!

The Game (Many) Features!

Every character has a main skilltree (the Class, which can be Warrior, Thief or Mage) and a specialization skiltree which is unique to each character. In the image below you see the Berserk Skill description of Ramas, the dwarf berserker warrior that you’ll recruit early in the game.

The quest system is also more complex than Planet Stronghold, since you can have quest and sub-quests (or steps). In the image below you see the main game quest “Find Queen Karen” (Loren’s mother) and also the first step, that is going to the town of Grimoire to gather more informations.

The game will have a map system and also lots of items, divided into weapons, armors, potions/scrolls/useable items. Each item will be divided into sub-categories like happens in most RPGs, for example you have cloth armors (usable by Mages only), light/medium (usable by Thieves) and heavy armors (usable only by Warriors). Same thing for weapons. You can also have items that can be used only by a specific character.

I have added already over 200 items in the game database, and will add more in the final version!

Of course, there’s no need to say that the game has a lot of romance options, including all the possible combinations (straight and homosexual of all genders)! You can advance the romance talking to characters while in the camp, and also during the main plot. The writer Aleema did an awesome job in the character interactions/romance paths!

The Battle System

So I’d say the only thing that still needs lots of tweaking is the battle system. Not the rules or the skills implementation which is at good stage, but the layout. Right now there are 8 vs 8 battles, but as the coder remarked, they could be too long. My idea was to have the player fight epic battles against “hordes of undead”, so having 8 enemies would be cool. In particular for the mages and their Area Of Effect spells! However, perhaps I should limit the number of party members, since controlling 8 members every battle could be too much: I am thinking to limit it to 6 or perhaps even 5, and keep the 8 enemies instead.

Also, I won’t be able to use the same display view of Planet Stronghold, because of the bigger scope of the battles, so the battle might use the view of a sort of card rpg game. Getting feedback on the battle is one of the main reason why I’ve decided to release the game as beta pre-order (see below).

The Soundtrack

The game will feature another custom song by Cristina Vee & Matt Myers. I have it already but for marketing reasons (we’ll launch the song also on youtube and itunes) I will add it to the game only on the official release day (so pre-orders won’t have it). Trust me when I say that is one of the best pop-rock song I’ve heard this year!

The Release Plan

Those of you that follows me on twitter already know that I’ve decided to release this game in beta pre-order like I did for Planet Stronghold last year. However, differently from Planet Stronghold, I won’t be able to sell it initially at a cheap price, because I put too many hours and invested too much money on this, sorry

So the game when will enter the pre-orders beta will be regularly priced at $24.99, while the expansion will be likely priced at $9.99.If things go as planned I’ll start the pre-orders stage in January – however is more likely the END of January.

The expansion instead will be released about 1-2 months after the main game. All the people that buy the game during the preorder phase though will be able to play it in exclusive before the others, and will also receive some extra items inside the game as reward, and possibly other “goodies” (suggestions are welcome!)

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.

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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.

In the image above, my cat “Micia” back in 2002. She was living with my parents now, and she died last week, at 15 years old. It’s kind of sad since she was the first cat I rescued and officially adopted. I want to remember Micia with that funny picture of her in the bath tub

Now, speaking about my games, some interesting news:

First of all, I updated both Vera Blanc games, added a new “visual novel mode” (that eliminates the need to solve the minigames) and put on sale until Sunday for 4.99 each. So if you haven’t already, check the demos here:

http://www.winterwolves.com/verablanc.htm

Four new projects!

I’ve started 4 new games. Yes, four! I’m crazy, I know. But as you know I’m now using external writers, so I’m “only” writing the scenes and doing the games storyboard. Obviously I won’t release all those games this year, also because I expect some of those writers to quit/disappear halfway, like usually happens…
Of those 4, only one has already some art ready and is the Queen Of Thieves game, which will be a fantasy RPG/lifesim (though I have yet to think about the gameplay in detail).
The other 3 are: “The Hospital” a horror game, “Amber’s Magic Shop” another fantasy lifesim/potion making game with both good/bad endings, and “Roommates” a more light themed game with college settings.

All the game titles are temporary names which might change.

The Queen Of Thieves game

Is being rewritten by another person, which hopefully won’t disappear from one day to another. I am sorry for previous writer since she was doing a good job, but I can’t keep chasing everyone, especially if they don’t email for 2 months ^_^;

I want to push this game hard since as I said is the one where I have most of the art done (still need to be finished though) and it could be one of my next games to be released, alongside with Loren and Planet Stronghold: Warzone.

Amber’s Magic Shop game

As you have noticed, recently I released mostly light-themed games and all of them had happy endings. While I like them of course, I also like games that offers sad/bad endings. Sometimes, a bittersweet ending or even a sad ending can be more rewarding (story-wise) than the more “classic” happy endings.

So in the fantasy life/potion sim game I’m writing right now, I’ll have bad endings, since the overall game setting is dark fantasy. I wanted to try with one game to see how the public would react, since honestly I’m a bit tired of writing only happy ending games! Besides, there will be happy ending even in this game, alongside with the sad ones.

The Hospital game

This is a kind of an experiment, I admit it. I have absolutely no clue how a horror VN game can sell. It will be probably shorter (and so cheaper) than my other games, and still have some romance options as well, but obviously quite different from my other light-themed games. The game starts and you wake up in a hospital bed, with no memories of who your are…

(I know, not the most original start, but the rest of the story I think it will be!)

The Roommates game

I got lots of feedback from people who wanted a game with college/light setting. I am designing one right now, which will include both male and female main character. So you’ll be able to play it as GxB, GxG or BxG, BxB. In practice, all relationship tastes included!

Loren RPG framework status

We made lots of progresses this month so far. Right now, we’re waiting for some new icons/UI for the equipment screen and then we’ll be able to post a public alpha preview, which will be very useful to find some possible nasty hidden bugs. I tested the battle a lot, but I only recently added many new items, and I also want to start creating some new enemies, so is likely that some bugs could pop-up.

In the image above you can see the equipment screen mockup, which obviously is not final but just a work-in-progress.

Obviously my other games like Heileen 3 and Planet Stronghold: Warzone are progressing as well, with the former getting lots of the 100-scenes done, and the latter almost all the romance CGs finished.

As you can see from the photo above, I hired a very skilled coder to help me working on the future RPGs

Jokes apart, I really hired a coder, but for Loren Amazon Princess (since Planet Stronghold Warzone will re-use the same battle system with some interesting new features like area of effect psionics).

I know I already published some skilltrees, but when the new coder arrived we decided to revamp the plannet battle system with a new, greatly improved one. Check the WORK IN PROGRESS image below:

The main “battle flow” will work in a similar way as Final Fantasy X battles, where each action adds to “wait time”. So no more Action Points, though the basics are the same. On the right of the screen there’s a list with the moving order, and when is your turn, you’ll decide what action to do. Clicking on your currently active character, or an ally, will open a menu with the “friendly actions” that you can do (like Heal another party member, or use a potion, and so on). On the other hand, clicking on an enemy will open the menu with “hostile actions”, like attack the enemy or use one of the various special skills / spells that you have at your disposal to crush your opponents!

Each action will add a wait time. So for example drinking a potion will be such a quick action, that you will be able to move again the same character immediately, though “behind the scenes” some “seconds” of battle passed. If you perform a more complex action, for example use the “Pinning Shot” skill of the “Hunter” subclass, your character will need much more time before he/she can act again. The list on the right will update in real-time when you hover the mouse on the skill, so you’ll have lot of time to plan your strategy. It’s already working quite well, in the test battles I often paused wondering if was better to use a quick, but less powerful move to finish one enemy, or instead choose a more slow move but that would hit all the enemies in front row.

Yes, because differently from Planet Stronghold, there’s also tactical disposition on the battlefield! There’s a front-row, and a back row. If a character is using ranged weapons, can hit anyone in front/back row. But if the character is using melee weapon, he can hit only enemies in the front row. Also obviously Warriors will have more HP, while Thief and especially Mages much less, so putting them in the front row won’t be a great idea! This means that you’ll have to choose your party formation, and right now we’re thinking to have glorious 8 vs 8 battles that will offer a great fun, and will let you use most of your party members (there are 12 in total that you can recruit).

Loren Amazon Princess RPG skilltrees

I’m also particularly happy about the various skills and how the interaction between the 3 main classes (Warrior, Thief and Mage) will work. But this is a complex topic and will require a completely new blog post (and new flowchart to explain it), so for now I’m going to stop here. The skilltrees are basically 99% definitive this time, there might be some that will change slightly during testing to balance better the gameplay, but in general what you see in the PDF is going to be the final version of all the skilltrees.

First of all, Ayu of Sakevisual just told me she is attending a convention today, and Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook is going through the final stages of proofreading/balancing (it was a bit too difficult). So… no pre-order links yet, though keep following twitter because I could post them during the weekend

Second, I’d like to introduce you a friend of mine, called Undead Lily. You can see the first promo trailer below, which introduces a bit the story and the first two characters, Undead Lily and Mantras.

As you can see, this is probably my most unconventional game I’ve ever made. A undead girl, ex burlesque dancer, that in the afterlife becomes a superheroine? Yes it’s bizzarre, and you haven’t seen the other characters!!

On startup, you can either take a short quiz to “shape” your character, both the personality (Good, or Evil) and also the starting statistics. Yes because Undead Lily and The Elemental Avengers, while not a super detailed RPG like Loren Amazon Princess, is going to have a RPG gameplay element. You can see the work-in-progress for the character creation screen below:

The game plot-wise is at good stage, with all the romances for the “Good” version finished. As for the gameplay I’m still in the brainstorming stage, since I’d like to have a map similar to the old game Archon, divided in sectors each one linked to one of the game elements: Death, Life, Air, Water, Fire and Nature. The character would move in turn and when two teams are on the same sector a battle triggers, which is a sort of turn based tag-team battle, 3 vs 3 characters.

Obviously everything is still only an idea, since I have to see how fun are the battles done this way. What is going to be fun for sure is the dialogues and general mood of the game, with many incredible superheroes each one with a different personality. And the romances, like Planet Stronghold, will have lots of variety too: the current plan is to divide the game into two separate ones, the first one with Undead Lily as the main character and Ace as the main antagonist (so the “female” version) and then one with Ace as main character and Undead Lily as antagonist (the “male” version).

You can see a flow chart of all the various romance options below:

As you can see there’s something for every taste! And of course, the release dates I wrote on the flow chart are going to be inevitably missed!

See you next week for more news about the upcoming games.

See the full gallery on Posterous

At least the pre-orders! No I didn’t went insane because of excessive work (even if it’s not a remote possibility after all!). I’m talking obviously about The Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook, which we’re currently testing and polishing. I know in the past I posted the game will be out soon, but this time is really soon. Before starting with pre-orders there are only minor things to do, like adding sprites and some backgrounds but all the assets are ready. So we only need a bit more time to put everything in the right place and test it so that every ending can be reached.

As always, follow my twitter / blog / facebook / google plus for the early announcements! For those who yet haven’t played the first game, during this weekend we’re running an amazing promotion: the first title, Flower Shop: Summer In Fairbrook will be available for only $9.99 ! Spread the word and if you haven’t already, buy the game and play it to get introduced to Fairbrook and its people!

Other news…

Queen of Thieves art is also progressing really well, below you can see Kira, the Warrior. Again, there will be lots of possible character customization available in the final game.

Planet Stonghold: Warzone won’t be “an expansion” anymore but a real full-length stand-alone title. I worked already on improving the Psionic Powers by adding Area Of Effect (hits two targets) and mass target (hits all targets). This both for the offensive and defensive Psionics, which means now you can do a “group Heal” to your party or also a “group Harm” to the enemies. Just beware that the enemies won’t like this sort of thing and they’ll aggro against your poor Psionic very quickly