“Show Me The Sales” is an indie initiative promoted by my friend Cliff of Positech and other developers. In practice is a time limited sale where you can get many indie games at very discounted prices. The games list includes:

Planet Stronghold
Evochron Mercenary
Scoregasm
Space Pirates and Zombies
Mr Robot
Project Aftermath
Magical Diary: Horse Hall
AI War: Fleet Command
Gratuitous Space Battles
Solium Infernum
New Star Soccer 5
Revenge of the Titans
Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon
Smugglers IV
Frozen Synapse

…and many more!

As you can see there are many interesting games for all tastes, including my Planet Stronghold RPG game with a generous 60% discount. I also updated the game to use the latest Ren’Py build even if this caused a few problem/bugs, so make sure you download the latest version, the 1.4c!

Even if the promotion was live since monday, don’t worry: it ends the 28th of November so there’s still plenty of time to buy the games. Now about my currently games in progress, I’m pleased to show you this:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Yes, in the gallery above you see the main menu, the credits and the gallery screen of Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook! The current goal is to have the pre-orders available at the end of the month! Stay tuned for more news.

In the photo above my cat Grillo sleeping deeply with a stuffed toy near him

Now you might wonder why I picked that title for my post? As you know I’ve always worked on many games at once, as a way to keep up with the occasional disappearances of artists. However, while this method is working well for my visual novel, dating sim and life simulation games, for RPGs is a different story. I’ve noticed that is very hard to keep focused on doing more than one RPG at once (lol, not a surprise!) so I’ve decided that, to avoid releasing poor/mediocre games, I won’t be working on more than one RPG a year!

This doesn’t include expansions or even sequels like Planet Stronghold: Warzone. When/if I can re-use most of the gameplay and rules of a previous RPG, then I believe that is possible to make even two a year, but if I have to create a new RPG from scratch… that’s not possible!

I am not talking only about the coding. The coding is a tough part of RPGs, that’s for sure, but what makes really hard to release a good one is the amount of content needed. I dare to say (and I’m sure most game developers will agree with me) that a RPG is the kind of game that requires more work of all the game genres. You need a story. You need several quests, which are basically subplots, and they need to fit in the main story and not be just stupid “kill 10 rats” quests (having some of them are OK, but not all quests should be like that). There’s need of art, lots of art. Since I do mainly 2d games, every enemy is a sprite. How many enemies a RPG have? Planet Stronghold has 40, though some re-use the basic shape changing color/weapons. Loren RPG, my upcoming fantasy RPG will have 40-50 enemies as well, but they will be all different ones! So that’s already a lot of work just for the art.

And last but not least, testing. Unless the RPG you’re making is very linear and has “casual gameplay” (very simple rules), the testing will be a major pain ! You have to take into account every possible variable and combination, and often if you don’t ,you end up with very mysterious bugs and unhappy customers (though I have to say that my RPG buyers were much more supportive than those of other games genres!).

So, what does this means in practice? that while I’ll keep artists working on Undead Lily’s artwork, I will release Loren RPG first, and Undead Lily next year. This way, I’ll be able to release two quality products. Loren RPG is at good point – even if I keep adding “just one more enemy” since a month, the plot writing is going steadly and the battle system coding is almost finished. As I announced in my forums, once the RPG framework reaches a decent state I plan to release a small alpha to get user feedback and do some testing.

As for Planet Stronghold: Warzone, the artist said that after this last convention, she will work fulltime on it. There’s need of quite some art, new enemies, a new playable character to replace the old Bellamy, and more CGs scenes for the romances. I don’t have any planned release date, my idea is to keep this game going on parallel with the others and see when is finished. As I said, since I can reuse a good part of the previous Planet Stronghold code/rules/system, this game will be easier/quicker to produce than Loren RPG or Undead Lily.

So the plan is to try finishing Loren RPG by end of this year (no guarantees) and Undead Lily for summer next year, while Planet Stronghold: Warzone might really be finished anytime between the two. Obviously, I’ll keep releasing visual novel and dating/life sim in the meanwhile, like I did this year.

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

Recently my blog posts were all focused on my upcoming otome game Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook. However, people that follows me knows I’m working also on several other projects (I’d dare to say “too many” lol). Most of them are new RPGs, though there are also more dating sim and otome games in the works, but they might be done after the summer.

Loren Amazon Princess

After a moment of hiatus, because had to decide what kind of art style to use, I finally found a new artist and I’m going to use manga art for it too. Though will be more “adult” manga art as you can see from the images below:

This is Loren, the main character of the game (which won’t be directly controllable by the player though)

Next two ones are Saren and Elenor, the two playable characters that you can pick at the beginning of the game. Like I already did with Planet Stronghold, the gender you pick at the start of the game will influence which romance options will be available to you during the game.

lastly, this is Dora, a female dwarf scout that will be one of the various characters that will join you during the game story. In total there are 12 playable characters.

There is also a male dwarf in the game though is really not cute as her He’s the classical muscular, axe wielding angry warrior with long beard.

As I posted before, for indies is really hard to find reliable artists, so you cannot really know when the art for your next game will all be finished. Though I must say that if things keep going at this pace, I could have all art needed for Loren finished before end of June, which means I can start working on it at full pace. No estimate release yet, since also depends which system I’ll use for the battles, and the story is only 30% or so done , so there’s still much left to do.

Spirited Heart “yuri” expansion

This is one of the other projects I’m working on, with the help of Aleema from Lemmasoft who is writing the yuri scenes. For those unfamiliar with the japanese term, “yuri” means girl love. I’m going to add 6 new dateable female characters to the base game, each one with her own romance subplot and personality/secrets to discover, and is going to cost $9.99. I believe is a small price to pay for the upgrade since there are lots of new characters and some are *really* interesting.

This expansion is very likely to be out in July/August since things are going well with it.

Planet Stronghold “Warzone” expansion

This mainly depends on the artist speed. So far only a few new characters from the original game have been “redrawn” to reflect the fact that in the story the time has advanced of some years. This will be an add-on, featuring new monsters, items, weapons, but also I hope to introduce a few minor gameplay enhancement, like the possibility to have a strategic map and control resources, so that you can build new stuff with it. Adding some strategy element should make the game even more replayable than the original was. Also, there will be two extra romance option, Prince Cliff – Lisa (got sooo many requests for this!) and Shiler – Joshua (this is interesting).

I really cannot know about this, however I believe in June artist should be free of conventions and in theory, I could finish this one by September or so (I hope!).

Undead Lily and The Elemental Avengers

This is also going well – though is a very ambitious game and has lots of animations/character poses (there are already 12 basic character pose with eye/mouth animations and 10 battle poses done). So while I cannot complain about artist speed, it is still going to take a while because is a big game. I really hope to have this done by next Christmas, though I’m not sure, really!

See the full gallery on Posterous

I have a few more games I’m working on in parallel, but I want to keep those “secret” for now

In the picture above, Gilda sleeping in a “wooden drawer” we had in our previous house. She seems to enjoy it

After about 2 months of playtesting, I can officially announce the release of version 1.0 of my sci-fi RPG game Planet Stronghold! It has been a very long journey, from the “classic” early prototypes with programmer art to the final result which features beautiful manga artwork and a very detailed combat system. I started the game at the end of 2009, worked on it until beginning of 2010 then paused it to release the two Vera Blanc games. And then I resumed working on it in September 2010, and I’ve listened to all the suggestion people made in the course of those last 6 months, implementing lots of features that people requested.

Hopefully this process made Planet Stronghold a better game (I have no doubts about it) and for that I want to send a special thank you to everyone who sent their suggestions, who supported me buying the early alpha versions back in september 2010, when the game was only a few chapter long and still quite rough, and who is supporting me in any way (offering free proofread, telling friends about my site, and so on).

I don’t know if the game will be a success or not, but I’ve enjoyed making it. And most importantly it helped me build a sort of “RPG framework”, so that I’ll be able to release new RPGs in future at much faster pace!

So, for those who don’t know yet what I’m talking about, check the official game trailer:

You can download a demo at the official website: http://www.planetstronghold.com and see more screenshots and buy it on Winter Wolves main website: http://www.winterwolves.com/planetstronghold.htm

If you like RPGs, stay tuned since I have plans to create several more RPGs in the next months, alongside my other projects (mostly visual novels and dating sims). And now for those who enjoy reading postmortems:

The making of Planet Stronghold

It was the end of 2009 when I thought would have been nice to do a visual novel with some “light” roleplay elements, so I started working on Planet Stronghold.

Initially I had picked another artist, but she was lazy and uncollaborative, so I “fired” her and found a much better one (more reliable and much more skilled). A typical mistake that I always make is to be forgiving with people, but the reality is that if you’re running a business, if you’re not an amateur anymore, and you need to do things the serious way. You can still be friendly of course, but as soon as you notice people are trying to take advantage of you, don’t hesitate to put them back on track, or you’ll end up wasting lot of precious time yourself and in the end have to change collaborators anyway!

So, at the end of 2009 – beginning of 2010 I had a very simple system in place. Then I took a break to make the two Vera Blanc games, but I was still working a bit on Planet Stronghold in the “spare time”. And then, I started adding features. I had the battles, and I thought “why characters must always use one single weapon? it’s unrealistic! and voilà, I added an inventory. Then I thought “if all heroes have same skills, what’s make them different?” and again, I added the Skills system. But what is a sci-fi RPG without some fancy replacement for the fantasy RPG magic? And so I added the Psionics skills!

As you can see, with such kind of games, if you like to add new features, you can basically go on as much as you want. But unless you’re mad you have to stop at one point! And indeed when I was about to implement some sort of movement system, like a tilemap I thought “wait… I need to release this game before 2012″, and so I opted for a simpler movement system.

Then I began writing the main plot which, as you probably have noticed if you just played the demo, is VERY LONG. Once again, maybe as first attempt into a new territory (for me) I made a mistake in making such a big game. Perhaps I should have made the game smaller, to test the waters first? Who knows, I know for certain that nobody can complain about this game longevity since I can say without doubt that is the longest (and also most replayable) game I’ve ever made!

From September through today, I’ve started working on the game full-time, and I decided to try the “open-alpha” and then later “open-beta” approach. If you’re making a complex game, not necessarily a RPG, I strongly recommend doing it. Some people do a closed alpha pre-orders, and that’s fine too, but I found out that by making the alpha public I got lot more feedback. Considering I’m a small indie developer, I was surprised by the amount of feedback I got, both in my forums and privately by emails!

Overall I’m very satisfied by the game – since it has already sold well during the alpha/beta stage, so means there’s some potential for VN/RPG hybrids. I could have probably done it faster using some different coding tecniques, but now at least for future games I know how to get started quickly. Also, I have to be honest, while coding it the library I choose (Ren’Py) got the biggest update of its whole history, switching from software rendering to accelerated OpenGL, and adding a new screen language format. This was a great thing, but happened right when I was stil coding the game! So I was unsure what to do, and in the end I decided to upgrade, so had to redesign some parts of the game to use the new language.

This delayed the game, even if now plays much faster even on very low-end netbooks. Future RPGs will be done directly in the new system so I won’t have those problems anymore.

Lastly, about two weeks ago I decided to try the “Steam Lottery”. Some developer friends and I have called it that way, because you never know if you’re going to be accepted by them or not, also especially because they have no guidelines, and give no explanation when your game is rejected. Since another manga game with RPG element (Recettear) was recently quite popular on Steam, I thought to try.

Obviously, they rejected it, but this time it wasn’t an immediate email, they actually asked for demo and played it! It must mean that is my best game so far, in a way or the other

I’ve finally finished writing Planet Stronghold’s official strategy guide! You can now purchase it for only $4.99 and get four unique extra weapons in the game (see picture below). The guide comes as PDF download, and once purchased it also adds four new items in the game. To get the items, you need to start a new game and make sure you’re connected to internet. After you get the activation message, you can then continue play the game offline as usual. Please Note: if for some reason you use a different email to buy the guide from the one you used to register the main game, please email me to activate the new in-game weapons!

The guide is over 50 pages and is full of tips & tricks, including:

• how to defeat the boss enemies
• the right dialog choices during the romances subplots
• which are the best items of the game and how to get them
• some “cheats” and “exploits” that you can use to your advantage

To get the guide use this link: http://www.winterwolves.com/buy.php?prod=17030044

If you’re still not sure, check the preview below (an extract from the guide) to see what’s the sort of stuff you can find inside it.

Download now or preview on posterous

PS_StrategyGuideDemo.pdf (1580 KB)

In the picture above, Grillo & Leon when they were two small kittens in my old home. They used to sleep together to stay warmer

As I’m writing this post, I’m doing the final touches to my Planet Stronghold RPG. I hoped to have the final build by now, since I set my own deadline to the end of January, but we’re almost there. In the next few days I’ll release the beta version 0.9, which will be the final build except for:

• some unproofreaded texts
• might have some plot holes or small bugs (despite the testing, there might be some small mistakes here and there)
• some missing voices

That’s it, as you can see nothing really big is missing. The final release is estimated for mid-February, though you can already buy the game now for $19.99 and save $5 on the final game price (once it’s officially out the price will be $24.99).

As the blog post title says, I’m finishing a RPG (Planet Stronghold) and starting a new one. This new RPG will be called “DIM: The Insurrection” and you can see a preview art below, with some characters that will be present in the game:

for now I don’t want to say too much, also because we’re just in the early stages, all I can anticipate for now is:

• the main character is the cute girl in the middle, named “Kareta”
• as you might notice the game features many hybrid human-feline races
• it will be completely written from scratch by native English speaker, so no more “good game, a pity about the writing” complaints
• will obviously feature battles and a spell system based on four elements + life and death
• will be written in Renpy and be available for Pc, Mac & Linux
• will probably feature some map system. Not sure yet if a tilemap or something different, we’re experimenting right now!
• will have cutscenes and less texts than Planet Stronghold. Will be a more mainstream game, not related to the visual novel world
• the battles will be more cinematic, featuring many custom scenes
• depending on the final texts size might even be completely voiced (though perhaps the voice pack might get released at a later date)

That’s all for now! Stay tuned because next friday I might even announce the official release of Love & Order. Or at least the pre-orders

In the picture above, my cat Batman taking some time off!

But I have no time to rest since this week lots happened! As you already know if you follow my twitter or read my forums, the Beta version 0.85 of my sci-fi RPG Planet Stronghold was released. So far seems people only found typos/grammar error which is good. The game has some problems running on some netbooks (I think those that have the Intel integrated videcard), so be sure to play the full demo before buying it. If you can play the game until the end of demo, you can be sure everything will work on your system.

I’ve also made a video below that highlight the new important changes of the new “aggro” system during battles:

But this week I also started testing heavily the otome/dating sim game Love & Order made in partnership with Christine Love (you might remember playing a famous game from her, Digital: A Love Story). The game puts you in the role of Dana Larose, a young secretary working for the Crown Attorney. The office setting means she’ll have several project to complete for each of the characters, that will build up the relationship with them. When things starts to go well, you might end up dating one of them and unlock one of the various endings. There’s also a mystery (a unsolved case that is not what it seems…) that the player can also personally pursue (though it’s optional).

Obviously being an alpha version it is still rough, many bugs are already squashed and this weekend I’m testing it even more. The game script is finished, and we should get new map art and the special CG scenes very soon (hopefully before end of the month), so I can say that in the end this game might even be released BEFORE Planet Stronghold!

As often happens, because something goes always wrong during game development (artists delaying, complex bug to solve, real-life problems) is almost impossible to set a fixed deadline for a game, so the solution I found is to start several games, so at least one of them gets finished! In the video below, I’m showing a short example of the kind of gameplay that you can expect in Love & Order:

That’s it for this friday. Have a nice weekend everyone: I know I will since I’ll be playing / testing this game!

In the picture above, Othello and Grillo showing a good example of what is “aggro”

If you look in Wikipedia the term “aggro”, you find the following definition:

Hate, aggro, or threat is a mechanism used in many MMORPGs as well as some RPGs by which non-playing characters (NPCs; such as mobs) prioritize which players to attack. Players who generate the most hate (gain the most aggro) on an NPC will be preferentially attacked by that NPC.

This is what I added to Planet Stronghold 0.85 BETA (yes I can finally start to call it Beta!) and it completely changed the game battles (in a good way). Already introducing different attack types made quite a difference in the past, but this change has a really MAJOR impact on gameplay. Before, enemies would just pick a random opponent, making battles a bit of a mess, since no real defensive plan could be made.

It was a simple gamedesign mistake, really. Even a seasoned game designer like me (well, 20+ games released… I think I can call me like that? hehe) sometimes make them. To be honest, is also because I was coding this damn battle engine since december 2009 and was eager to get the game out, so I didn’t pay too much attention to such “details” (which are etremely important though, the famed “polish”).

To make a game fun, you need to have a clear goal and have cause-effect game mechanics. The aggro does exactly that. Now, you can still use Harm psionic at maximum concentration and do even 90hp of damage the first turn of battle, but then your poor psionic aggro value will skyrocket and you bet that when it’s enemies turn, they’ll massacre him/her

So, now you have to do like in many MMORPG (Everquest, WoW, etc), that is have a hero that is a “tank”. A tank is a party character that usually has very high HP and / or armor/resistances to damage. Use the Burst attack option, which now has the real purpose of catching enemy’s attention (sort of Taunt in normal fantasy RPGs), to raise your tank aggro, then use psionics to buff / heal him, and use scouts to silently “take out the enemies from distance”.

I think the battles now are very fun, especially when you fight with the full party, because even if what you have to do is clear, is NOT that easy. Sometimes your tank might be running out of HP, so another class with good HP like Guardian could try to get the aggro temporarily, while your psionic healers restore the tank full health, and so on. The possibilities are really many, but now knowing that the enemies will MOSTLY (not 100%, since some enemies have class-specific special attacks) attack a specific hero with the highest aggro value adds a completely new dimension to the gameplay.

Beside the aggro system I’ve been working on the romance subplots only, so no new main plot advancement in this version. Though I’ve added many hidden things, like Bellamy that can produce grenades (one-use items that hit all enemies!) and Rumi produces lifegivers (resurrects KO heroes). Medikit now will “scale” based on your character level (higher than 6 you’ll ged medikit and ultimate medikits that restore bigger amount of HP). More weapons including some energy based sniper rifles, and many bugfixes. Another big addition is the training screen:

You’ll access it by visiting Rebecca, and lets you train by 1 four skills of any character, but each training attempt consumes Colony Energy that refills only when you complete quests, to guarantee players won’t abuse it Also the attempts are shared by the party, so you can train max 5 times at time, not 5 times each hero. I think is particularly useful to train in non-combat skills that can be useful in many quests.

So you might ask, where are the download links?? Well, I was hoping to have the version ready by today, but have still a few romance subplot to finish, and I want to have them all done (not proofreaded though!) so people can already see the beautiful special CGs when you finish some of the endings (and perhaps report plot bugs!).

It should be out this weekend though, so keep following my twitter or game forums to know when the version 0.85 will be out!

In the picture above, my cat Orpheus in front of my old home window.

This week I’ve been writing all the various romance/friendship subplots for my upcoming RPG game Planet Stronghold. I have finished 4 out of 10 possible subplots. The romanceable character are 6 in total, but the other 4 can still provide informations on their background and reward you with some powerful item/bonuses. Almost every subplot also triggers a quest, that will reward you with their permanent friendship and/or romance (if is the right gender/character combination).

I was dubious if to list the possible combinations, but since people will find out sooner or later and post them in forums anyway, here it is:

Playing as Lisa: Tom, Damien & Michelle (homo)
Playing as Joshua: Rebecca, Rumi & Prince Cliff (homo)

Yesterday wrote the Joshua/Cliff one and was fun, first time ever I write a yaoi romance subplot

My plan is to finish writing all the subplots by next week (I currently do 1 a day also because there is an associated quest to do). So by the 15th I should have version 0.85 out, which would have all the romance subplot (unproofreaded though). By end of January I should have version 0.9 which would be the complete, finished game, with unproofreaded texts and some possible minor bugs. Then the final step would be a version 1.0 somewhere in February once I fix all the remaining bugs and get finished texts and missing voices.

I’m going to write a postmortem about the game once is finished, since took me so long! Is my biggest Ren’Py project to date And now for something new, look the image below:

That charming girl is a part of a new project that will start this year, alongside many others. She is Joanne, 30 years old, very powerful magician and renowned thief! The game will feature three sisters that during the day work in a shop run by their father Sambo, but during the night they become thieves and steal stuff from the noblemen ! (reminds me of someone). Note that her left arm weird pose is because she can hold several different staves

That’s all I can say for now. The game will be a mix of a RPG, strategy, simulation and otome game! Stay tuned for more info, even if the estimate release date is Christmas 2011