My cat Gilda is looking at the future with optimism
This year was a bit of a rough year for me (though obviously, it could be MUCH worse in general!). The main problem was all the events that happened in real life, and that influenced this year releases (or lack of).
The year is not yet over: but if I compare it with previous years, in 2012 by now I was about to release Loren’s expansion after releasing the main game. In 2011 I had already finished Planet Stronghold, and other cool games like Always Remember Me.
Sadly, it seems that this year I’m going to miss the “release of a new RPG” milestone 🙁
Anyway, the future looks brighter! Read below.
Nicole status – almost done!
Nicole seems very close to completion: I have all boys route finished and the mystery path done by 60-70%. There are still several scenes missing, and also some art, but I think worse case in October the game should be out with all the promised content and gameplay changes (if you’re curious check my forum thread here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=39&p=19101#p19101).
Roommates update
Yesterday I also got all the backgrounds for Roommates! Even if I’m considering adding a couple more. The new “steamy beach sex scenes” (which aren’t porn, but very hot!) are at good point too, about halfway done. If things go as planned it could be out around Christmas or early next year 🙂
Undead Lily and the return of CCG
There has been a recent interest/return of CCG, which stands for Collectible Card Games. I also have some cool memories of one of the first games I made, several years ago, called Magic Stones, which was indeed a sort of mix between a RPG and a CCG.
Together with Roommates writer (who will write Undead Lily too) we started brainstorming the creatures list for Undead Lily.
A sketch of the Sylph creature
There are going to be 12 base creatures for the 6 elements, plus other cards (spells and some extra combo creatures). Writer counted 114 different creatures cards, so there should be a good variety!
Some of the creatures include: Griffon, Harpy, Mermaid, Shark, Ifrit, Salamander, Giant Mole, Purple Worm, Tree-ent, Giant Ant, Ghouls, Vampires, and more. I’ll post more previews as I get them.
Obviously I’m talking about a game that will be out not sooner than next year Summer or later 😉
Seasons Of The Wolf update
This week for various reasons was unable to work at all on SOTW, but I plan to get back on it next week. I was planning to have a sort of battles preview at end of month but that probably won’t be possible, since I want to redesign a bit the skills, adding a few more variety. In practice now there are 5 skills each, with 3 degree of power. So you could say 15 skills each character, but in practice is 5 unique skills each one with 3 power variants.
I was thinking instead to eliminate the various power levels, or use them only for non-scaling skills. For example, if we take two healing skills:
A) Healing Balm – heals 30% of character’s total HP
B) Minor Heal – heals target character by 25HP
For B we could have Major Heal that heals 50HP, while for A, as the character HP increases (presumably by leveling up) the spell power will automatically increase.
The writing and art production is going well, and I think that for sure in October I should be able to show something (sort of alpha version, to get feedback on the battle system changes).
Greenlight
Speaking about RPGs, in case you don’t know, recently Valve Greenlit a lot of games, and for the first time my RPG Loren Amazon Princess is around rank 85-86 in the top100. Still a long way to go, but now would be a good moment to vote for it using the link below:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92923628
No need to say that getting a game on Steam would mean I could afford to invest a lot more in my games, making them even better 😉
hi, excited about all your upcoming games!! i’m thinking about buying a new laptop and wanted to know do your games play on windows 8 laptops with the touch screen? thanks!
My games aren’t compatible with the Windows 8 appstore, so if your device can’t run in “desktop mode” you won’t be able to play any of my games (as well as many other good games). Win 8 is not the problem since on desktop computers you can still run my games but if the laptop doesn’t have the desktop mode, I wouldn’t buy it (you’d miss a lot of games, not just mine).
thanks for your advice! 🙂 i’d rather not miss out on yours and others great games so i definitely want to look into getting a new laptop with desktop mode!
Hi! I bought a new Android tablet and wanted to buy Loren and castle n’Mar for relaxing a bit these Christmas. Unfortunately I can not find the expansion in Google store. Any plans to release it?
thank you
The version currently in the store includes the expansion too. I’m going to update it in the next weeks with the new music and in-app purchase to buy them separately, but for now is “all in one” 🙂
Than you mate!
You should make it more obvious because is possible to lose customers like that who will wait for the expansion to be released as well before they make the purchase.
Going to buy it immediately. Merry Christmas! 😀
Thanks good idea, will write it in the description 🙂
One more thing.
I downloaded the demo of Bionic Heart and it doesn’t include the voice acting. The full Android version does include it or not?
For the mobile version I didn’t include it since was over 180mb with the voices X_X
And what is the problem with that? Bard’s tale has 3 GB+ download content. Tablets are the best platform for visual novels. They feel so natural to them, as if reading a comic book. It’ s a pity one of the best English visual novels to have a crippled version for that platform 🙁
Haha thank you for saying best English visual novel 😀
I’ll look in next days if I can update that 🙂
Definitely, Bionic heart is one of the best, since I don’t have played each one out there to say which is the bestest 😉
I’d played it back in 2010 or so I think, in my Linux box but now I want to replay it again and after that the sequel in my android tablet. That’s why I feel that the version without voice acting feels crippled.
Seriously, give us Android users, full versions of your games. Tablets in our days are complete pcs. I connect mine to my 50″ TV with 5.1 sound system and the experience is wonderful. Plz don’t cripple our experience, give us voice acting in both bionic heart and Loren. It will benefit both you as a seller and us as customers 🙂
Full voice acting in a game like Loren is IMPOSSIBLE, it has 250,000 words and all the main character voices would need to be dubbed twice (male/female). It would take 6 months of work and I’m sure all users would prefer that I make another game instead. For simple visual novel is much easier instead 🙂
In that case yes, I’d prefer another game as well, but in the future it would be nice if the tablet versions of the games are of the same quality even if they come later than sooner.
I don’t know why I never see your games in Linux sites, but I believe you neglect this market. With SteamOS before the gates, I believe Linux is the future of gaming. So, because I like your games and because you are gonna add voice acting in Bionic Heart for Android 😉 I spread the word a bit:
http://gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-cheapskates-corner-22-mini-halloween-special.2653#11651
I wish you the best for 2014.
Kudoz from a greek friend 🙂
Thanks 🙂
I actually don’t neglect the market since I have Linux versions of almost all my games (something that not many other indies have).
As it is now, Linux is a VERY SMALL percentage of my buyers, lower than 10% (same for all the other indies I talk about, is a very small fraction of their games revenues). But I hope that with SteamOS as you say things will change! I am not a fan of Windows at all, especially after Win8 that was the most unusable OS ever made IMHO.