First of all, in case you haven’t been following me on socials and you missed all the spamm- ahem, promotion I’m doing, I have launched my new Kickstarter for the slice of life yuri visual novel Christine’s Care:

After a rough start, at the time of writing we’re very close to the base goal, but I hope we can reach at least the first stretch goal which will add a one-night stand scene with Donna:

Marlon, the muscular MMA fighter girl has already been added to the base game (and that’s probably what boosted the KS after a slow start).

In summary now we have in the base game the following love interests: Hannah, Liz, Marlon, a bonus triad route with Marlon and Liz, and if the first stretch goal is reached, even a one-night stand with Donna. Not bad for a “smaller game”. The story draft is already past 100,000 words as well!

Please visit the Kickstarter page and check the various updates, since I posted a lot of spicy stuff in form of sketches or sneak previews that you don’t want to miss!

Loren spin-offs idea

As you probably know I’m also working on my next big RPG game (which in this case also has town sim elements) Thieves Of Dingirra, and started thinking about the other Loren’s spin-offs left to do.

The current plan was to do 3 more games, with 4 love interests each, 2 “old” romances and 2 “new” romances. But then, I started looking at ToA: An Elven Marriage results, including lurking in forums to see what people thought of it.

In practice, by having only 4 romances, you can’t offer enough variety to players. I mean, if I make one of my “shorter” (still over 100k words lol) games, like the recent Lilith, because are all yuri, you have many love interests. But if someone is into yuri only (just an example, same thing works for yaoi fans or otome etc) even a big game like An Elven Marriage has only Lydia as love interest!

So I think the average sales of that game were mainly due to that – not enough love interests. I thought that by having much longer love stories could compensate it, and indeed many people loved the “romance extension” of Myrth and Rei storylines, but in the end for people who only play a specific route/romance combo, the rest wasn’t enough.

And so while brainstorming with other devs and fans on my Discord I thought: what if instead of doing 3 more games with 4 love interests, I do 2 more but with 6 each?

The idea is to remove the story set in the Amazon Citadel with slaves revolt, which is a good idea for two reasons: first it would be very specific, and I think hard to write or justify the presence of other characters inside the Citadel the whole time. Second, such a setting would have worked better for a simulation than a RPG gameplay.

So that’s an interesting idea, which I could always pursue later in another game with a different cast, or even same characters but using another artist to have more freedom (as you probably know I have the art needed to finish the sequels but Loren’s artist doesn’t work for me anymore so adding more characters/scenes is complicated).

It would leave us with two games, split like this:

Reign Of War

The next planned spin-off, in addition to Jul, Breza, Draco and Mesphit, there would also be two new characters: Selith (the half lizardwoman) and Odurat (half-orc).

Reign Of Peace

The last planned spin-off (I might change the name since the witches have a prominent role in the story), in addition to Loren, Karen, Amukiki and Chambara, there would also be two new characters: Samaras (originally a vampire, now I changed into something else) and Nook (shaman).

This way each game would have 4 bisexual characters (Loren, Amukiki, Mesphit, Chambara, Jul, Selith, Odurat), 1 gay (Draco, Nook) and 1 lesbian (Karen, Breza). Each game would offer same amount of love interests/romance combos.

Going from 4 to 6 love interests would mean more writing of course – but not that much, and I think from the marketing side each game it would benefit more (because it would be easier for potential buyers to find something for their tastes). Plus, it would mean the games could come out sooner – I know some people are eager to romance again their favorite characters from Loren!

Conclusions

For now all of the above is just me thinking loud, but the more I think about it, the more I think it could be a good idea. Of course, first I have to finish Christine’s Care, and next year Thieves Of Dingirra, so there’s time!

I’ll do my usual “end of the year review” blog post later this month, so for now that’s all!

There are periods of life where noting seems to happen, and others where everything seems to happen at once. So let’s start in order.

Last week, the 24th October, I finally released Tales From The Under-Realm: Lilith on Steam. I already talked about this game in previous blog post, so now here I’ll share some stats, comparing it with my previous release, House of Chavez.

They’re two very different games though – so it’s hard to compare them directly. HoC has gameplay, it’s an adventure / visual novel with two different endings/variations. Lilith is a straight visual novel, with more branching and endings. I just share the stats in case could be interesting for someone.

I took a very different approach this time: while for House of Chavez I followed all the general advice, with TFTU: Lilith I focused on the game. For HoC, I posted on socials daily for 6 months (all socials including instagram, sometimes on reddit when the mods wouldn’t instantly delete my posts). For Lilith I posted only weekly. I didn’t even bother posting on reddit. I took part in the Steam Next Fest, that brought a miserable 400 WL more (I won’t do it next time).

HoC launched with about 4000 wishlists, while Lilith with 1280. Yeah I know, ridiculous amount, but I made a specific choice to focus my efforts on the game, rather than marketing, to see what would happen.

With HoC I went with a 10% launch discount for 2 weeks. For Lilith, I did no discount. I think first time since 3-4 years that I launch a game with no discount, I thought 10% less on a $15 game wouldn’t make a big difference, even if it’s true that without a discount there isn’t this “urgency” to buy the game.

I censored HoC trying to make sure it wouldn’t end on adult only, while for Lilith it was pointless – that game had too much adult stuff. Checking stats, I got a LOT of visitors from the adult only hub, so perhaps it was a good move?

Overall in the two weeks before and in the launch week :

House of Chavez: 123146 impressions and 16522 visits
TFTU: Lilith: 165223 impressions and 10086 visits

So yes, with HoC I had more visits even with less impressions (maybe the art / capsule was more attractive?). The sales are currently that HoC sold about 9% more than Lilith, but is such small amount that it could be random.

My conclusion is simple: launching a game on Steam is even tougher now, and getting wishlists as well. Still, I cannot possibly justify spending all that time on socials only to make 9% more sales on a launch week!

Next project: Christine’s Care

I mentioned in previous post that because Thieves Of Dingirra is a big game, I might want to do a smaller game first while I keep working on it. And that’s what’s going to happen! I’m going to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Christine’s Care :

The protagonist is in the center, with Liz on the left, who is in a submissive relationship with another character, and Hannah on the right, a young woman disabled after a car accident.

Check the following link to see more about the game setting and story outline: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/christine-0

I’m introducing a new art style and more inclusive romance options, including a relationship with a disabled character. I know this can be challenging, but I’m committed to representing diverse stories. If you’re someone with a disability and are interested, I would value your feedback on the story before it’s finalized—please feel free to reach out!

Goodbye to Micia

The last news is not a happy one, even if it wasn’t unexpected due to her age and poor health conditions. We had to put to sleep our oldest cat, Micia.

A shy stray cat that my wife used to feed every morning, only recently she took courage and finally lived indoor. She was at least 18 years old (she was already here when we arrived).

Her will to live was really something unique, despite her poor health due to age. Rest in peace.

I’m pleased to announce that TFTU: Lilith beta is now available on itchio!

This game features:

• a succubus protagonist!
• Evelyn from After Midnight as love interest (this “feature” was requested soo much! lol)
• a crazy variety of outfits and CG scenes (20 CG, but with variations can go up to 24-25 CGs)
• comic-style art for certain scenes, adding a lot more content (36 CGs !!!)
• using animated video directly with Ren’Py in the first scene
• having optional one-night stand scenes with 4 more secondary characters!
• And last but definitely not least, there’s a full triad romance. It’s not just an extra ending added quickly, but a relationship that develops from the very first scenes of the game!

All this for the very reasonable price of $15. Seriously, years ago I’d have never thought to be offering so much content so cheap!

The game demo will also be present on the Steam Next Fest, and you can wishlist the game on Steam if you prefer.

And now some curiosity / behind the scenes stuff.

Deciding the story

While the first game was about Hazel being captive, and the relationship she developed with either her cellmate or her “torturer”, and the second was a murder mystery, I wanted again to write something completely different.

I decided to go for the “roadtrip” setting. This way I could explore many places of my fantasy world (Grimoire, Shacklesplit, Dingirra, Icesilia, Mount Kronos, etc) and also imagine how they could have changed now that the wizards are in power. Indeed, the game is set far in the future—by far the most distant point in time I’ve ever placed a story within my fantasy world.

It was also fun to have so many references to my other characters, including Rowinda, the grand-niece of the original crazy Rowinda from Seasons of The Wolf, one of my favorite characters of all time. But also the return of Amber, who is now queen of Icesilia. And there are also a couple more recurring characters that I won’t reveal since I don’t wan to spoil the fun.

The adult content

This has always been a sort of issue for me. Not because I’m against it, not at all. I’m for freedom of content, and I like sexy stuff too personally. The problem is that adding that kind of content as author it’s always a bit problematic. Obviously, the game will end up in adult only category on Steam. I’ve done optional adult stuff in games in the past, but hot like in this one… I don’t think. Anyway, I hope players will play it not just because there’s that content, and also enjoy the story!

The relationships

I have a soft spot for the “enemies to lovers” trophe, and so I decided to include it in the game in the form of Evelyn and Odette, and that’s why, if you go the alone route with Lilith, they become a couple and end up together in a somewhat bittersweet ending.

But in this game I also implemented for the first time the “Flirt / Tease” dual system, and I’m very pleased by the results. Having this attitude reflect also in the more intimate scenes adds variety and adapts better to each player’s tastes.

I consider the triad route the canon ending, in particular the God’s Bet one. Indeed, Lilith trapped inside the gem (the main menu image) was the first image I envisioned for this game. If you want to know more about it and what does it means, you’ll have to play the game.

I hope people will appreciate all the efforts I put in making probably one of my biggest games, for sure the biggest one at this price point!

Note that in the beta there’s still some missing art, all “comic style” CGs, which will show up during one Odette’s flashback and in the “alone ending” (in which Odette and Evelyn become a couple). I hope to get them in time for the final release!

What’s Next ?

In case you don’t follow me on socials, I had my second eye surgery earlier this month, all seems going well, but still I am taking it easier. The next project should be Thieves Of Dingirra, and that’s a HUGE game. I plan to first release Lilith, and then see if I can do the KS for Thieves Of Dingirra the next month or not.

No worries, the game will be done, indeed I’m already working on it (such a game requires a long time to make), but one idea I had was to do a sort of prequel story, plain visual novel, introducing the characters and so on, using comic art style, which mean a lot of content. A much shorter game, that could reduce the “idle time” between releases.

Basically the choice is between these two options:

1. doing the KS next month, then maybe wait 10-12 months (it’s a HUGE game!) before the release, with nothing between (sadly, very bad for me business wise)
2. do the KS for the “intro VN”, release it in 6 months or so, then do the Thieves of Dingirra KS and then 4-6 months later release that big game (because I would still be working on it meanwhile and finish the “base game”, the KS would only add bonus features that I can add in 6 months).

I’ll see what to do – if KS allowed more than one project at once at least for “trusted” devs like me who fulfilled ALL the KS done, it would be much easier since I wouldn’t need to worry about what to do first. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated, and I can guarantee that unless something really unexpected happens, Thieves of Dingirra should be out next year!

No, not Summer in Trigue! I wish 🙂 Simply… Summer in hell. This is how I could describe my Summer in the last two months.

The plan was to begin (or better, resume) doing some preliminary work on Thieves of Dingirra while I was waiting for a bunch of art for TFTU: Lilith to be finished. But I forgot a small detail called global warming… ugh!

Here it’s hot already since several years, but this year everyone agreed that was the worst. It was a mix of uninterrupted hot days (here I had 3-4 days of rain since mid-June! and I’m one of the “lucky ones”) and extremely hot humidity. Basically temperatures ranging from 20° to 32°C, and humidity always higher than 50%, often close to 70-75%. Tropical climate I believe. I don’t like it! lol

I have a “floor cooling system”, but I didn’t want to turn it too high (it’s bad to have a difference of 10°C or more between inside and outside) and at night I was sleeping with open windows anyway.

I had much better luck than people living down in towns, but still I never imagined that, at 7pm at 800m on sea level, you would still have 30-31°C… that’s just insane!

Anyways without rambling too much, this weather completely destroyed all my plans. I managed to work a bit on simpler stuff like the narrative mechanics (I’ll have some interesting new things) and a few screens. I did work on it, so I still made progress, but not in what I was planning to – the main gameplay of the game!

So that’s what happened. But let’s talk about those new features I’m working on.

No forced choices

With this game, I wanted to break out of the idea of being forced to have a certain attitude with someone to successfully complete the romance. Why? Simple: if I know character X requires certain choices, or a specific alignment (Friendly, Joking, Forceful, etc) then the 99% of players are just going to follow the walkthrough to see the romance scenes. It’s obvious. And those who don’t follow a walkthrough, maybe will play regularly but not get the romance, and then be even more pissed!

I asked myself: what’s the point then of having 4 choices ? Why have a specific Romance button (like in Loren or several other RPGs I’ve done)? Players interested in the romance will always pick Romance choice!

So here’s the new idea: you’ll be able to raise your relationship with a character by simply visiting them. On each scene, will increase slightly. Then, the kind of attitude you want to have is your choice (literally). In the story, in EACH SCENE, there’ll be several exclusive lines that play depending on your attitude with THAT character. Yes, because if you want you can be friendly with all, but you can also be friendly with one, and forceful with all the others, and so on!

Then, after several scenes, a new Flirt option will appear which will make the MC explicitly flirt with the love interest, potentially unlocking the romance. This solves also the other major problem, of people wanting to have a friendship with a character but without necessarily romancing them.

Flirting won’t lock you in a romance, there’ll still be a choice later, but it will simply change the relationship from friend-only, to potentially “more than a friend”.

New relationship system!

This required a redesign of the whole relationship system, so I thought: why not have a full relationship system between ALL the characters? Some characters like each other, while others can’t stand a specific one, and so on. The screen below is the result:

Not going to lie, I’m pretty happy with the result! I know it looks dauting at first, but it’s pretty simple to read (it wasn’t that simple to code haha). You move the mouse over and a tooltip at the bottom will explain everything.

From top to bottom: for each potential love interest you see: name, portrait, relationship (text), relationship value (the hearts if flirting started, otherwise stars for friendship only) and the attitude you have. For example in this screen, I’m Joking with Abu, Ghamal, Di’Aab and Halima, and Friendly with Labwa and Yasemin.

Then each character has their own preferences. But wait, there’s more! There’ll be some scenes in the story that will change those values (in better, or worse). This to say that the choices won’t be purely cosmetic but they’ll influence also the gameplay.

Since I decided to have also a RPG part (but not with grinding or tons of battles, a very specific amounts of fights, all connected to the story) an overall “party alchemy” or some similar value that will consider the relationship between the current party members and give different combat bonuses.

News about TFTU: Lilith

Now that’s September, weather seems better and so I hope to make more progress this month, while I wait for the rest of TFTU: Lilith art. BTW, about Lilith, I decided to try again my luck with the Steam Next Fest, so the game release will necessarily be around the end of October! But it will be worth the wait. I’ll make another post about that game next month, with all the details.

For those not following the development: game will have over 25 CGs (with variations), plus another 30 “comic style” CGs, full triad route, pin-ups, five different endings, and much more. The biggest game I’ve ever made at $15 price point!

First of all: work on Lilith is proceeding, I have sent to editor 90% of the script, and I’m just polishing some endings right now before I sent them also the final part. There’s still a LOT of art, so estimate deadline for beta is still around end of September/mid-October.

And now, back to the topic of this post! This is both a post about my indie career and also a sort of advice. As a certain Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.

How does this apply to the indie dev world? Simple: if you’re struggling with your career, have you considered trying new things?

First a premise: I’m not saying that changing is always good. On the opposite, if you have your definite “style”, if you have already enough fans that like it, in general if you’re happy both financially and personally about “your legacy”, then there’s really little reason (if none!) to change.

But what if you’re unhappy with the results you’re getting and don’t know what to do?

Several years ago, I used to chat with a dev who was using RPGmaker XP to make RPGs. Nothing wrong with that tool, it’s a very saturated market, but you could say the same about VNs as well.

The issue was that they were unhappy, but at same time they had this total mind-closure, using always the default assets, spending little on music, never trying anything new. Because the problem wasn’t RPGMaker XP itself (many successful games were made and are still being made with that tool) but the unwillingness to change and to challenge yourself.

The four years cycle

In my indie career, this happened already many times. Curiously, at regular intervals of 4 years (not always, but most of the times). Let’s see:

2004 – when I started around this year I was doing sports, simulation, wargames. More complex games in general, using C++ and a custom library called PTK
2008 – this year things changed: I discovered visual novels and learned to use Ren’Py
2012 – things changed again: I tried to do RPG/VNs and learned python (knowing Ren’Py doesn’t necessarily mean you also know python well)
2016 – once again tried something different: my first card game (PSCD). In 2017 I also tried my first crafting game (Amber’s Magic Shop)
2020 – I did my first Kickstarter (TFTU: Hazel), and my first yuri-only game (Volleyball Heaven). Since then doing yuri games helped me greatly on Steam
2024 – my first psychological horror / adventure game (House of Chavez) and maybe… first town building sim (Thieves of Dingirra)? haha we’ll see, but more likely next year!

Changes can be radical like switching to a completely different genre, to more subtle ones like changing art style, setting, etc. It can also be using a different tool, though this is a big change and usually takes a lot of time.

There are so many things you can try in game development. Even within the same genre and engine, you can create games that are very different from each other! For example, I reused my RPG framework that I coded for games like Loren The Amazon Princess, Seasons Of The Wolf, etc to create a sci-fi game like Planet Stronghold 2. Or back in 2010, I did two visual novels using western-comic art style (Vera Blanc). They didn’t do well (although I suspect not for the style but the quality of the drawings) but at least I tried.

If you try something new, you can say “well, I tried, didn’t work.” If you never try, you’ll always live with the regret “I wonder if I tried that, what might have happened…?” I know for certain that if back in 2008 I didn’t try Ren’Py and visual novels, probably now I wouldn’t be here writing this blog post, because it was a turning point in my career (and the same I can say about what happened in 2012 and also in 2020!).

What’s next?

As I wrote, this year I released my first pyschological horror game, which also was my first VN/adventure game mix. It was well received in general. Of course, people who were interested only in… the sex stuff, didn’t like to have to use the brain to walk through the adventure part haha (but that’s why I put a full guide on Steam!).

Personally, I was a bit burned out last year after ToA: An Elven Marriage, and working on House of Chavez was really a nice change. I really enjoyed working on that game, because was different than a plain simple VN, with a map, an inventory, interacting with environment, etc etc, but not as complex as doing a full RPG. Main issue is that doing such a game requires a lot of art (all the backgrounds) and time, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to do another, though I hope soon.

This year after Lilith release I should also work on Thieves Of Dingirra, which could have (I’m not sure yet if that will be doable with Ren’Py) a sort of simplified town sim gameplay. I admit I’m a bit scared of coding that part, and worse case will be just a “regular” RPG, but I want to try adding the town sim element too if possible.

In any case, the important is to keep trying new things, also because otherwise it can get a bit boring!