Category Archives: strategy games

The wind of change

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IMGP9596
Need to give credit to my wife for the nice photo above!

And now after writing this title, I have the good old Scorpions’ song stuck in my mind!

“Listening to the wind of change” or better listening to the critiques, to suggestions by other more experienced indie, and listening to my heart 😉

Between this and last year I have learned a lot, and I’ve decided that (after the current “batch” of games is done) it’s time to change:

  • no more “insanely huge epic games”. I know, I know. Everyone would like very big, long games (even if honestly I haven’t finished yet some AAA titles because… they were too long!). Anyway, I’ve realized it’s not possible anymore, with the exception of a few titles like could be Loren 2 and Roger Steel (big RPGs) to make games too big. I’m talking from the story point of view. I want to have a good story, but also add more gameplay. When I talk with more successful indies doing the same kind of games, I’m often surprised to see that their wordcount is always not even half of my most recent titles!
  • story based on the gameplay, and not vice versa. When I will make more “hybrid games”, apart of course the usual VN/Dating sims/RPGs, I will first decide the gameplay and then craft the story around it, or at least design them at same time. This is even more important for “experimental games” like PSCD was. In that case it was a mess (because of first coder quitting) but in general for my own games it’s not wise to have a story written and then have to code the gameplay around it. The result can’t be good. So, first design the gameplay, and then have a story to complement it.
  • much clear separation of genres. One of the strong points of my games (based on what OTHER people say, so it’s not my opinion) has always been the mix with visual novel and other gameplay genres. Well, there will still be this. But if the two genres don’t work well together (like visual novel and card games) doesn’t make sense to mix them, better have two separate games. Or if I still want to have story and gameplay, the story cannot be 200k word long, 10+ romances, etc. It’s just not possible to do that in the current climate, to have a huge story AND good gameplay. I should price the games over $30, and that’s honestly not going to work anymore right now, so it’s not really my choice! So instead of that, a card game for $9.99 and a story-based game for $19.99 for example (just a simple example of what I mean).
  • less grinding, more fun. For the dating/raising sim, one of the major complaints of my past games was the grinding. I’m definitely going to address that. For the record, I don’t consider grinding using a scheduler like Roommates. More like the various activities in Nicole to reach the required stats. Love Bites should be a good example of a dating sim with stat raising but not grinding. For the RPGs instead, I’m going to leave it. Since many RPG players like to grind! 😉
  • gameplay-only games. I had already announced this, and it’s also related to future card games. I’ll make more (not just card games, even other genres) games like this to be sold at cheaper price, since I think is good to have a bit of variety over the dating sims/RPGs/VNs.
  • shorter but full of branching story-games. As you know I want to make a CYOA/old gamebook style game in future, illustrated with pictures. Well, that one won’t be 100k words, but even if it’s only 50k words will have a lot of branching. After all Bionic Heart has one of the highest review rating on Steam of all my games, and it’s just a little more than 50k words! Of course, I won’t write the games myself, only the storyboards.

OK I think I’ve explained enough! For many games that will be out (even next year) the things above won’t apply since I started them time ago, so they will still have maybe some grinding or be really “too big” (but of course since the text has been already written, it’s not like I’ll cut it down!).

But in future, doing the things above, I should be able to release games more regularly, and some of them cheaper than usual (which in the current climate seems very important) and even if the word count might be lower, the overall fun (and critic/players reception) will probably be higher. At least that’s what I hope, we’ll see!

For those wondering about the progress on games, I made a sort of estimate release schedule in my forums, which I copy paste here:

END OF MARCH
– launch C14 Dating on my site “soft release”. Probably on Steam towards end of April or early May
– finish all the QoT romance coding (not much left)

APRIL
– Forsaken and artist should finish the last scenes/CG for QoT
– I will take a look on Heirs & Graces and probably code the gameplay and start the beta maybe (though could be delayed to May)
– decide what to do with Undead Lily gameplay, possibly a RPG. Make a detailed storyboard this time :)
– probably do the PSCD extra romances free add-on (though could slip into May)

MAY
– Heirs & Graces beta
– Queen Of Thieves beta

JUNE
– hopefully release of both Heirs & Graces and Queen Of Thieves, but this last one could be delayed to July

JULY-AUGUST
– it’s likely that will be too hot to work as usual, plus I might want to take a break considering the insane amount of releases this year! I might do a few prototypes for new games though

SEPTEMBER
– Love Bites beta (though it’s just too early to say it now)

That’s all for now! Happy Easter by the way 🙂

Future card games and update

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Future card games

dancing

So about 10 days passed since I released my card game PSCD. It was my first card game, and as you can imagine I was unsure about the results. If I compare it to my latest game, the RPG Seasons Of The Wolf, I can see that PSCD revenues are about 3 times less.

But it’s NOT bad as it sounds! First of all, SOTW was based on an existing world, so many players who liked Loren could potentially like that one as well (especially since I now I am implementing a “VN Mode” for it as well!) and was a RPG. It was also $25 vs $20.

Regarding PSCD, since it has also a story, and many of my players buy the games for the story, I won’t have any real data until the game is on Steam where a bigger audience will judge it (even those who aren’t much into stories but like more the gameplay). It will probably be around March.

Anyway I was saying that even if the sales ratio remains the same, I need to take into account a very important thing: time/money spent. As for money I spent a bit more on PSCD than SOTW (but not by much) but regarding time…! I spent 10 months coding SOTW back in 2014, while I spent 3 months (and not even all of them full time since I was following other projects) doing PSCD.

So this means that even if PSCD keeps selling at 1/3 of SOTW, it will still be a better ROI for me 🙂 Yes because as you can imagine is better for me to work 3 months on something, than 10 months.

This means that I will probably be doing more card games, besides the already planned Undead Lily. As always I’ll use the same base engine, but probably modify the rules a bit, since I like to experiment every new game I make.

C14 Dating update

Now to the best news of this week: it looks like that C14 Dating might be out very soon! I don’t want to say any date yet, but really I think maximum next month the beta should start. The final release depends on the beta as always but since it’s not a complex-gameplay game, it shouldn’t take long. Currently the coder is finishing/testing the various minigames like the one below:

c14minigame

Queen Of Thieves update

Progress on Queen Of Thieves have been made this week as well: all the otome CG images are done, and I almost finished coding the last part of the robbery mini game. While there’s still some writing left (and probably some more art/adjustment needed), even this game looks like could be ready for this Summer 🙂

otomeromances

Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense postmortem

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So first the great announcement: Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense IS OUT!!!!!!!
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 😀

To get the game or try the free demo, visit this page: http://winterwolves.com/pscd.htm
Like always, buying direct will grant you a free Steam key when the game will be out on that platform (probably around March, not sure yet).

It was basically done since early January, but I wanted to wait to get some extra voices added for some cards. I think it was worth the wait, check some previews:

A postmortem aka “The Miracle”

The story of PSCD is a very troubled one. It all started back in autumn 2014, when I had the crazy idea of combining the tower defense gameplay with a visual novel. Yes you read it right: originally the game was to be a tower defense game! :O

Then for various reasons, I gave up the idea (I had to use a custom engine, learn new stuff, etc etc, doing those kind of games is harder than it looks). So, what could I do? Already the whole base plot was written by Miakoda, the game writer, and I had to find something that could fit. I had this enlightening moment: since for Undead Lily I wanted to have a collectible card gameplay, why not use it also in PSCD?

This way, once the coder had built the system, I could have used it at least on two games (more in case it was well received). I’m a big fan of making engines/frameworks and reusing them, as you can see with what I did with Loren’s framework: I reused it on SOTW (adding 31298 new features! lol) and I am reusing it in a different way for Queen Of Thieves as well.

Anyway, I had made my mind. Unfortunately, the coder couldn’t work until August on it. The situation was a bit weird last year, since I had so many games in production, and SOTW was a “relative flop” (would still be a good seller if only I hadn’t used 10 months of my own time coding it!!). I needed to get at least one game out, since as you can imagine until I release the games, I can’t recover the money I’ve invested. At some point, I can’t keep investing in new games if I don’t release anything new! 🙂

Of the other games, while they were making progresses, none was really advanced as PSCD. The other one, Queen Of Thieves, was at good point but still missing all the scripting and romance CGs and there are MANY of those 😉

That hot Summer, and the Fall/Winter rush

Seems a porn movie’s title, doesn’t it? haha nothing like that though! Summer 2015 here was insane, with temperatures over 39°C (and I live at 800m on sea level!!!). As result I couldn’t regularly work for almost 1 month and half. Then, at end of August / beginning of September, it cooled off and it all started.

As of the 1st September 2015, PSCD was just a prototype of the deck building screen.
By the end of that year, PSCD was basically finished!

I think it was an amazing achievement, to do such a game in 3 months!! Of course I already had most of the writing and art done, so I am talking about the coding part on my side, but still there were so many things that could have been gone wrong!

Thanks to some dedicated forum users (among them I want to mention Franka the master of CCG, and Troyen who is always willing to help with typos/proofreading) I was able to test the game, and I also made a very smart move adding a “VN Mode”, so everyone could play the game, even those interested only in the story/romances (and there are really some interesting ones in the game!).

The work done by Anima (the coder) and Miakoda (the writer) together with Dennis (main artist) was amazing. Without their help I surely wouldn’t have made it!

What is even more fun, it’s that this was the latest (or maybe one of the latest) game I started, and was the first to be finished! And surely not because it’s small, rather the opposite: 200k words of story (not including the DLC!), complex optional gameplay, lot of romance CGs and ending CGs!

It is also the most expensive game to date I’ve made, and I think it shows (the quality of art, music, everything put this among the best games I’ve done I think).

Conclusions

I can only draw a conclusion from this experience: if you are motivated, and work with people who are motivated/professional as well, nothing is impossible. On the opposite, if you work with amateurs/unmotivated people, even doing the simplest task becomes impossible.

I don’t know yet how the game will do in the next months: I hope well enough, since beside recovering all the money/time I’ve spent, I really enjoyed designing the cards and the gameplay in general. And I have already Undead Lily that will use this system. But I hope in future I’ll be able to do even more card games beside that one 🙂

The Queen Of Thieves – Lord Raul Capello

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raul
And now, the last character introduction for Queen Of Thieves. If you thought that Tomas Jingoli was bad, read Lord Raul’s profile…

Lord Raul Capello, ‘The Tyrant of Ahkra’

Raul is the latest head of the powerful and wealthy Capello family. They have ruled the city of Ahkra and the surrounding country for nearly twenty generations. As the next heir, Raul was raised to be merciless in the execution of his responsibilities and to brook no compromise with any of his opponents. He had maintain the pre-eminence of the Capello family at all times even if it meant trampling over the innocent. Any costs was worth protecting the strength of the family and, by extension, the country itself. Raul took to these lessons easily and quickly gained a reputation for being ruthless even by his family’s standards.

When he took over the running of the country, he quickly started stamping down on any perceived rebellion whether real or imagined. To maintain his armies, he increased taxes and began hoarding the money to pay for the many ‘projects’ which he believed would ensure that his country would be forever the strongest and most prosperous of all. While he was bringing in all this money, he was sure to send some of it to the nobility to keep them on side as he knew upsetting them could destroy his rule. This led to the poor complaining that only they were suffering from his taxes but he ignored their please. They did not understand he was ensuring their future prosperity and only cared about themselves.

In person, Raul comes across as a rather charming albeit intense person. He is utterly convinced that his actions are correct even if he can see they are hurting others. There has only been one person he has truly loved in his life and that person broke his heart by rejecting him. He has remained single ever since, apparently uninterested in finding himself a wife. The lord claims finding a woman would distract him too much from his grand work but others suspect he might have something, or someone, else that is distracting him from the important task of creating an heir.

PSCD update, and card games vs RPGs

credits
One of the many changes: showing the enemy bounty value directly on the battle screen

So even this week I did yet-another-insanely-big update to PSCD. Seriously the changelog is pages-long!! 😀

I must confess that it’s a sort of deja-vù, it brought me back memories of last year when was going insane with SOTW. But in reality, it’s not that bad. The “self-contained” nature of the card games makes it a bit easier.

Don’t get me wrong, the PSCD system is really complex, for sure the most complex framework/engine ever made for my games (and I dare to say of all Ren’Py games, since I’m the only one using it to make unconventional games! lol).

But if I compare it to a RPG, I don’t need to worry about several things:

– characters level up. I added an upgrading system on my cards, but is only 3 levels.
– skill balancing. Each card has an ability, but it’s fixed. Compare it with a RPG, in which the party skills can change based on players choices or skills will unlock with certain prerequisites!
– inventory/items. Doesn’t matter if you have a RPG with 10 inventory slots, or just 3. Still, players can swap the items and lead to different results & combos.

I’ll stop here but you understand what I mean. Doing a card game is easier than a RPG (luckily!). I’m working hard to meet the January deadline, but I think in the next weeks I’ll slow down, since I feel a bit burned out, and I don’t want that to happen again (it happened after SOTW last year and early this year).

achievements

In the last 2 days for example I coded all the romance CGs, achievements, gallery screen and jealousy scenes, and tested them all. It was relaxing and fun, because the jealousy scenes of this game are awesome. Here’s a screenshot:

boyfriendsHaha I love their grumpy/angry faces! and Alex’s shocked one… 😀
(also, what is Rigel going to do with that big pipe wrench? watch out, Alex!)

The Queen Of Thieves – Tomas Jingoli

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tomasjingoliThis week is the turn of another secondary character, one of the “bad guys” (very very bad!), General Tomas Jingoli (I foresee an interesting boss fight with him in the game).

General Tomas Jingoli, the ‘Kin Killer’

Born the bastard son of one of the noble families of Ahkra, Tomas was cast out as an embarrassment along with his servant mother. He was raised a peasant well aware of his noble origins and how they had spurned him. It made him angry and that rage simmered within him for all of his young life. Leaving home as an adult, he joined a mercenary company passing through the city and left to fight across the world in more battles than he could count.

He returned many years later to find his father’s family out of favour with the latest ruler of the country and he saw an opportunity. Entering the castle, he pledged allegiance to Raul and promised that he would cleanse his family of all disloyal members. He failed to mention that he was a bastard son and not an actual son of the Jingoli family, but such facts he deemed unnecessary to what he planned to do.

Entering the estate of his father, Tomas roved through the manor and slew everyone he came across. None could stand against and in the end every member of the household, servant and noble, laid dead at his feet. His display impressed Raul who immediately appointed him as the general of his armies and ordered him to pursue the Queen of Thieves that the Jingoli family had previously failed to stop during her latest robbery.

Tomas is utterly consumed with the hatred and rage that fed him his whole life. Even with the object of his hatred dead, he cannot let go of the anger inside him. Every slight, real and imagined, has to be answered with lethal force and it has led to the point that even his most trusted men live in utter terror of him. Despite that, no one would dare cross him and so, for now, all of Raul’s soldiers are completely obedient to Tomas Jingoli, the Kin Killer.

PSCD update

For those who don’t read the forums or follow me on twitter, I made more updates on PSCD. You can already play several missions/scenes beside the free demo now 🙂

As always the best way to download the demo is from my forums: http://winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3745

npcmissions

Besides the main plot missions, I have also added over 16 NPC missions. They’re specific missions with one of the various characters present in the game (including Remi/Alicia), as you can see from the screenshot above.

You’ll get 3 random NPC missions each time, so not all at once like in the image (it was a test I did during development). They’re mostly for the gameplay-fans, though there are also some small scenes in each of them (but really small, not like the team talk ones).

So far everything seems on schedule, the theme song is done (and it’s beautiful, can’t wait to show it to the public) and the video trailer is already being made. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the January 2016 release of the final game seems definitely possible 🙂

After the base game is out, I’ll probably take a break and publish one of the dating sim (very likely C14 Dating!) and then get back to work on the DLC. After that, I’ll resume working on Queen Of Thieves, and other games (depending on their advancement status).

Speaking of C14 Dating… have you seen how beautiful the new CGs are?? no? here’s a sneak preview:

CGs_sneakpeek