In the blog title, I paraphrased the famous game “Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego” The reply to the question Where On Earth Is Undead Lily could be “she went on hiatus for a year or two but now she’s about to come back!”.

Yes, because finally all the backgrounds for the game are finished (that artist was busy doing Loren GUI and other things, so wasn’t his fault), and even if I asked the original character artist to redo the final romance scenes, work on the game can start already.

I’m still in the planning stage for now, but I really think that I’m going to make it a bit different from the original idea. A tag-team battle, arcade style wouldn’t really be simple to do in Ren’Py, and since those games are all about the animations, it’s definitely not a good idea. So I’m just going to make it more RPG-esque!

In the game there are 12 characters, 6 “evil” and 6 “good”. That would be already enough to do a classic party-based RPG. However, since there won’t be a real exploration but more like a sort of big “map” where you move your units each turn (who remembers the old game “Archon”?), I think I’m going to make it similar to a collectible card game, where each character can learn to summon creatures to help them in battle, starting from low level ones to big powerful ones.

So the idea for now is to allow a party of max 2 superheroes, each one able to summon several “elemental minions”. Or maybe only 1 superhero each battle, as always will have to see while playtesting what is better.

Anyway that’s the initial idea for now

I’ve been also experimenting more with the “topsecret” RPG set in Aravorn. I had a brilliant idea (modestly MOUHAHA). Take a look at the screenshots below:

As you can see, the position on the battlefield will have a big impact on the gameplay, and the Thief will have a special bonus vs the Warriors being able to always attack without penalty any enemy, no matter their position. This small change should lead to interesting decision during the battles, and finally give some use of the thieves in the front line.

I had other ideas like some random special zones on the battlefield that would give bonus/malus (like a rock area that increases defense, a mud area that slows character down). But have yet to see if they’re easy to implement. Anyway as you can guess I’m having some fun experimenting!

But that is just a side-project. On Planet Stronghold 2 side, Anima is going forward coding the new RPG framework that will be awesome, with lots of new features, while Aleema is doing her great job as always writing the story. I can’t wait to reach the demo stage with this game to show it to everyone

My cat Tofu is trying to communicate with you using telepathy! She wants to inform you that there’s currently an indie mega sale featuring 32 titles here:

http://www.showmethegames.com/sales.php

many good games for all tastes. I put both my RPGs, Loren Amazon Princess and Planet Stronghold with a 50% discount using the coupon “SHOWME“.

It will last until 18th May!

This year I’ve already released two games: Heileen 3 Sea Maidens, the yuri version for  Heileen 3 released last year in December, and Bionic Heart 2.

But there’s no time to rest on my laurels! The show must go on! etc etc.

Roommates

So I’m very excited to announce that Roommates script is 99.9% finished (just some minor tweaks and some gameplay phrases to add). The total word count is about 130,000 which is definitely not bad. It also will have a lot of replayability, since for the first time in one of my dating sims, you can play as male or female main character!

Unfortunately, there is still quite some work to do. The game will feature a full original soundtrack PLUS a theme song for it. I’m quite excited about that, since the theme song perfectly fits with the light-comedy setting of the game

On the art side, I am expecting some extra romance CGs that between my writer and me were referred as “the beach sex scenes”. So as you can imagine they will be quite “steamy”

I’m also missing all the 26 backgrounds, and the artist I picked (who already did a great job on Nicole’s backgrounds) can begin working on them only in July. So as you can imagine, the game is very likely to be out in August/September, a bit later than I expected, but at least this will leave us a good amount of time for editing, testing, tweaking gameplay and so on.

Nicole

I finished Darren’s path this week, and Kurt’s one is being proofread right now. The soundtrack is finished (with 7 different tracks) and art-wise I am missing four extra scenes for the “normal romance endings”, but artist guaranteed she can do them in one month. There’s still some other art left like the GUI and chibis, but shouldn’t be a major cause of delays.

So I still believe the game beta could be out at end of June, or mid-July at the latest. We’ll see!

…and I haven’t forgot about the RPGs!

I know that a good amount of people who follows me now is because of my last RPGs. Well don’t worry, I haven’t forgot about you: I am definitely going to try finishing another RPG soon. Planet Stronghold 2 looks like will need more time than I thought, so that’s why I’m playing around with Loren RPG framework to experiment with it, using a different layout, higher resolution (1280×720) and simpler interface which could work also on touch-based devices, as you can see in the work-in-progress image below:

For what game you might ask ? Well maybe Loren sequel won’t be the only RPG set in Aravorn to be out in the (near, hopefully) future…

So, I thought that making games is like making a puzzle. You need all the pieces to finish it, and like puzzles, there are pieces that fit immediately, and others that take long time before you’ve found the right spot.

Gameplay design

A bit is for gameplay design reasons. I had to experiment a lot with the RPGs, but even for simpler games (at least apparently) like dating/life sim, quite often I have to tweak the screen layout and system for days or even weeks.

For example you might remember the old look of the scheduler for Nicole from last week post. Now look at the new version below:

Much better now! I eliminated the top title and made the photos look like Polaroid so four could fit on each row, and the text doesn’t overlap the image anymore. Small changes like that might seem obvious but still take time to design and code.

The real missing parts/pieces

But the most important thing, is to have all the needed pieces/parts/assets for a game!

I am doing several projects at once (probably too many) but there’s a reason for that: in every one there’s something missing. Nicole is missing some chibis and some extra artwork. Roommates some artwork, the main soundtrack, some writing. Planet Stronghold 2 is still missing a good amount of writing, some art (the talk poses) and good part of the RPG framework, plus GUI work.

In some cases is people’s fault, in other simply the job takes time to make, or is my fault because I waited too much to hire the right person for the job or planned the project badly.

But no matter the cause, every indie is in this situation, unless you make games that you code yourself using pixel-art / poser to do the graphics. In that case you might be able to do everything on your own, like I was doing in the beginning. No delays ever except for my own, but the results were much worse, since obviously I’m not a good artist nor a great writer!

So I wrote this post to say that even if a game is 90% done, sometimes that last piece of art, music track, writing scene, gameplay tweak, might cause big delays on a game release. That’s why when people ask me when a game will be out I always use the conditional “it SHOULD be out…”

This year goal

I realized that we’re already in May, so at this point, as I said to a recent interview I did a week ago, my main goal is to release one RPG this year! Since I have the feeling that with the first Loren game everything went smoothly, all pieces fit together very easily, but I didn’t notice it until I started working on new RPGs and difficulties started to arise

Meanwhile, here’s a short video of Nicole so you can get an idea of the art and writing. The GUI artwork is still temporary placeholder of course!

That’s what for example pushed me to add the Social Boss Fights in Bionic Heart 2. By the way the official video is now on youtube, see it below:

And is why I’m trying to add a simplified (it won’t be Sim City of course!) colony simulation metagame in Planet Stronghold 2:

As always they’re early work in progress screenshots, but you can get the idea of what we’re trying to do. I think will be interesting to integrate the colony sim with the RPG gameplay. While we’re still working on the details, there will be some influence of the RPG part to the colony sim and vice versa.  Of course playing in Easy mode will reduce the overall difficulty, while playing in Hard mode might be interesting since you’ll have to balance both the RPG and colony building simulation aspects.

Many quests will be directly linked to the colony expansion (like acquiring new blueprints to build new building), so it will also work plot-wise.  You can see now why Planet Stronghold 2 is taking so long, it’s definitely an ambitious game!

At same time, I’m trying a new GUI/gameplay system on the dating sim Nicole:

instead of the game map like Always Remember Me, I’m going to try using a simplified interface, showing “pictures” that are places you can visit. Then each place will offer a variety of actions that change based on the plot, time of day, day of week, like Always Remember Me.

I’m going to try to experiment also on the plot: I thought today that rather than having a “alone ending” if you fail to romance anyone, the game will end in a different way… since there’s an abductor in the campus, the final scene will see our poor Nicole being kidnapped (of course without revealing who it is, so doesn’t spoil the fun).

More scary than the usual otome games? well for sure, but I think will be very interesting…mouhahaha

First of all the big news everyone (myself in particular, since was getting burned out!) was waiting for: Bionic Heart 2 is finally finished!

You can get more info and download the free demo at this page: http://www.winterwolves.com/bionicheart2.htm

I am working on a small update that will enable a “HINT MODE” so that you’ll get some hints before each boss battle, though to be honest most of them are easy enough, but there are a couple of harder ones towards the end of the game (Tom/Luke and in particular Julia/Tanya last boss fight). Meanwhile, please visit my forums to get some tips and a full walkthrough.

The official game video isn’t ready yet, I had it done already by the end of March but decided to change a few things, I hope to be able to upload it next week, along with the official PR and newsletter.

Roger Steel is back

After some delays, the sneak peek of the steampunk RPG Roger Steel are back in my forums! Check here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2961

More RPGs in the near future…

Even if the next games to be released will likely be the dating sims Roommates and Nicole, rest assured that I’m not going to stop making RPGs! Planet Stronghold 2 still needs more time, but meanwhile I am planning some surprises, including an unannounced RPG and resuming the work on Undead Lily, which was put on hiatus early last year, and while is a more light/casual RPG it should still be fun to play. More news about those projects after the Summer though!

iOS madness

A not-so-good news instead is that I’m having insane troubles trying to validate/upload the Heileen port to iOS appstore. I’ve been talking with 5-6 different people, all expert of iOS, showed them a lot of screenshots, and everyone said that “it should work” (last famous words).

But as a matter of fact, after ONE WEEK spent on it, I still couldn’t validate/upload Heileen. Now before you think I’m a dumb newbie, I really tried EVERYTHING, and I suspect is something really screwed up at Mac OS/Xcode level (wouldn’t be the first time I heard of such problems). Maybe will just hire someone to do the submission, I can’t afford to waste one week of my time just for that!

So for now, I am not sure IF/WHEN I’ll be able to publish any games on iOS. Meanwhile, Bionic Heart 2 is already available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winterwolves.bionicheart2

Bionic Heart 2 update

First of all: Bionic Heart 2 beta testing is basically over, I’m waiting a bit more but if you waited until now to try it because you were afraid of bugs, don’t wait any longer! Check the official forum thread here with the new download links.

Lots of things have changed from last week, I had a sort of enlightening when I completely changed the game logic code. Before, the logic jumps were scattered all around the 100,000 words script, making very hard to understand the game flow. So I tried another approach: I concentrated all the logic code in 10-15 lines, calling each scene from it. It was the decisive move, since all the remaining bugs could be fixed very easily after that!

I wonder why I didn’t think about this before. Probably was a bit burned after all ^_^;

Nicole update

A work in progress screenshot from the game

I am making good progress with Nicole too. Main menu track is finished, Darren’s script is done, and I’m testing / adding the various sprites right now to the game. In the screenshot above you also see one of the new chibis representing Nicole’s status (like in Always Remember Me).

Of course everything is work in progress but I like the direction so far If the writer can finish all the otome routes by end of May/mid-June the game might be out in early July for sure!

Planet Stronghold 2

Progress are being made too, now that I’m done with other projects I’m starting to discuss with Aleema some interesting plot twists At same time artist should be able to finish the enemies and start with the camp talk poses during this month.

Roommates

The script is almost done, and the theme song preview is great, I like it There’s still some delays because of background images and some extra CG scenes to be added to the spring break event in the game, so for now I don’t want to say any deadline since I’m not sure myself either.

Heileen on iOS!

Since yesterday was my 39th birthday, I gifted myself a iPad mini. Why? to test the first Heileen build for iOS:

it was ported using Monkeycoder by a developer friend, and so far seems to work well. I still need to test it and submit the game, so will probably take another month before appears on the appstore.

The plan is to keep porting the other games, except for the RPGs that would require much more time/effort. Also, because of Apple’s policies will probably need to censor somehow the more “steamy” games, since I don’t want to risk to see my apps removed or worse.

As always if you want to make sure to not miss anything, the only way is to get the games directly from my site

I would like to be able to sleep peacefully as my two cats above! The reality is that in the past month it has been quite stressful, for various reasons, personal and job related.

In particular, I recently had to drop the idea of making the “two independent parallel plots” feature of Bionic Heart 2. It was definitely too much. I tried to fix the numerous plot bugs, with the help of some people but we failed. Then asked Aleema, my trusted Loren writer, thinking that maybe it was my faul, that I was just “burned” by all the recent work. But even her gave up! So at least it means it wasn’t just me.

Thinking back about it I don’t even know how I thought I could make that work. It’s a total nightmare since the game is already super complex even played as “normal” visual novel, with lots of path/branching and variables to take care of.

By coincidence, this week appeared on a games site the flow chart of the Walking Dead game by Telltale, which I enjoyed a lot last year. Immediately, I noticed how simple it was. Yet, playing the game I had the sensation of much more freedom of choices!

So in practice, to the end users doesn’t matter much if there are really 150 parallel plots. Nobody except a few people are going to replay the game from beginning to see them all. I remember when I did a survey a few years ago, only 10% of people said that they try to unlock all the endings.

I think that for all future games, I’d rather make the story longer, and use other gameplay/narrative “tricks” to give the illusion of freedom (because even in the multiple path games, you still don’t have complete freedom, is just an illusion).

Anyway, what does it means in practice for Bionic Heart 2? I thought that by removing the parallel plot thing, all problems would be solved but I was wrong again. Testers in forums were finding lots of new plot bugs! The game logic is still to complex, with too many branching points, jumps, and so on. For every problem fixed, two new ones would show up. This was going to be a neverending story…

The solution is something that I should have done from the beginning: I’m going to reorganize all the scenes in a simpler way, still providing choices like in all my games, but with a more simple logic behind it.

Nothing is going to be missing from the original script (maybe a few parts of some scenes, but I’ll try to keep as much as I can) but simply I will make it so that behind the scenes doesn’t become the huge, complex mess that made me (and two other people) lose 2 months of time (the game should have been out last month).

I think I should be able to finish it in 2 weeks max, maybe sooner. I really want to get out this game as soon as possible!

a relaxing image of a sunset on the Mediterranean Sea I took several years ago

Happy Easter to everyone! Hope you’ll have a peaceful and relaxing time with your family/beloved ones!

First of all you can celebrate with a 40% off discount on all my games using the coupon EASTER until the 3rd April. It doesn’t work for preorders (Bionic Heart 2 in practice) and for bundles which have already their own discount schemes in place (though you can still buy single games at discounted price, like only Spirited Heart, or only Heileen 3: Sea Maidens for example).

Regarding Bionic Heart 2, I should have some news very soon, and of course a playable beta. As always will announce it first on my twitter or facebook and in my forums.

News about Nicole

This is very likely to be the next game to be finished, at least I hope There’s only the writing missing, and once that is done will probably take me 1-2 months max to code everything, since the game will reuse the Always Remember Me gameplay.

I also remembered that I never made any sneak preview for that game… unfortunately I can’t show much because might spoil the story (it’s a mystery game) but I put together something nevertheless:

Once I have the female romance images will do the same of course Stay tuned for more news about this game and Roommates in the next months.

Regarding RPGs, there are many discussions going on in the forums. Work is being done on Planet Stronghold 2, featuring a new RPG system that is quite innovative I think (for more info check this forum thread).

And for everyone’s happiness, Aleema is going to include a codex in the game:

Everything is still work-in-progress but as you can see, is looking good

Third, it’s been a while since I last posted a cat picture and did a progress report of all my games, so here we go:
In the image above, my cat Tofu looking at the snow from her little wooden house

As you know I have always several projects going on at once. Let’s make the point of the situation. I’ll try to order the games in the orders they’re likely to be finished, but of course it’s not a definitive list:

Bionic Heart 2

As you know everything is ready, but there are some serious plot bugs. Hopefully out at the end of this month, at least the beta testing stage!

Nicole

The otome version is at a very good point. It has all the characters/background art, and it’s only missing the soundtrack (but that can be done in 2 months) and the writing. After that is done, I’ll need to put together the gameplay, but shouldn’t take long since will mostly reuse the one already coded for Always Remember Me.

Roommates

Even this game is at good point, but since is very big, it will be probably out after Nicole. Story-wise there’s the last part left to write, but then we’ll need to playtest/edit everything so that’s still a lot of work. All the backgrounds are still missing, though I have already contacted a person to do them, and we decided to add several more CG images for the Spring Break event where most love-stories will really begin to flourish

Then there’s still the soundtrack to do, which very likely will also consist of a theme song, since one of the characters of the game (Max) is a singer in a band.

Planet Stronghold 2

This is a very ambitious game, so while a good amount of work is already done, like all the romance scenes, we will add more enemies and probably camp talk images like those that will be present in Loren sequel. The RPG framework is also being rewritten completely and will take some time because the coder want to make it more flexible than previous one (so it can be adapted and reused for future games better).

The other games

Even if I don’t have time to post regular updates, progress is being made for Amber Magic Shop, Queen Of Thieves, Roger Steel and all the others