Monthly Archives: July 2015

End Of July update

lesbian01
In the image above, Sybil talking about her homosexuality to Grace

July was a very bad month for me because of the heat. I think I’ve never worked so few since I went indie! However, for my collaborators it was a very good month. It was the month where I paid them most of any other months ever. I am broke now 😉

Jokes apart, it was good because means a lot of content was made. I have several projects at a very good point, lots of text written and some great artwork being drawn right now.

Cursed Lands

I’ve read the Amazons intro for Cursed Lands, and it was really cool to read the protagonist traveling to the Citadel to meet Karen and the young Loren’s trainer, Leena:

“The path to the Amazon domain is treacherous and narrow.  The Amazons know how to make a territory naturally hostile to invaders, I’ll certainly give them that.
The craggy rock path makes it easy to follow the narrow path without slipping, but I find myself constantly forced to adjust my balance along its uneven surface.
In the distance, I can see the fortress.  With its high walls and imposing towers, it appears intimidating, or at least as intimidating as a distant structure can.  At least I know I’ve found the right place.  There’s no way that this structure can be anything other than the Amazon citadel.”

Queen Of Thieves

The Tiberius otome route was finished, and I am very pleased by the writing so far. Each love interest (male or female) feels really unique and different from each other.

giantsnakes

Coding-wise, I’m “still in the catacombs” 🙂 which means I’m still coding/designing the catacombs levels (level 5 out of 9). I hope to be finished with that by end of August, and then there will be the robbery missions.

As I said already on Twitter/forums, much depends on how things will go, if artist can finish the CGs scenes in time, etc. If everything goes smoothly, which would be VERY UNCOMMON, the beta of this game would be out before end of year for sure. If some things go badly (late artist, writer, somehow I can’t code well, etc) would still be early next year. So even in worse case the wait should be over. (I hope these won’ be the last famous words! lol)

Loren 2

I don’t talk much about this game, mostly because is still very behind. However, at least the story is making good progress now. The main plot is at chapter 2 (out of 4), but of course is only the first draft, and there are still all the side-quests missing.

We’re focusing on getting the main plot done first, and then adding later the various side quests and camp talk.

The art is done, but we could add some more CG scenes as the story gets written. We have already planned some, involving Loren and Myrth, and other characters 🙂 They’re not romance CG of course, but story/key moment CGs. Some are still sexy/cool/cute though!

Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense

Writer is finishing to put everything in Ren’Py format, it’s taking a while since the game turned out to be very big (over 200k words!). Meanwhile the artist is doing the cards art, which are turning out very good:

flamertankforce_wall

The biggest problem in this case is the coding, hopefully the coder can resume working on the card-framework next month, since that would speed-up the development a lot! Also I was planning to reuse the same framework for Undead Lily…

And what about Undead Lily?

If you follow me on Twitter you spotted the various art updates I’ve been posting. For those who missed them, no worries. Check the “group” pictures below of the good heroes (later changed to the “order heroes”):


the “good heroes”, old style
newheroesthe new style, order heroes

Beside the fact that old heroes were only waist-up, while the new version is fullbody, you can notice the BIG difference 🙂 The old ones were more fanservicey, but fear not since you can choose for each character what version to display. And the ending CGs will have an optional very hot version! You know when an artist can draw human anatomy so well, would be a pity to not take advantage of such skills… right? 😀

I had several more updates for Never Forget Me, Roger Steel, and more. I just talked about those games since they could be, in theory, the closest to be released next. Oh, also that yuri game that MUST NOT BE NOMINATED BECAUSE IT’S CURSED… you know what game it is! well, it’s at very good point too!

Heirs & Graces – Eloy

eloy

Here is the last of the four main love interest of my upcoming yaoi-only dating sim Heirs & Graces, Eloy. Introduction by the writer follows:

Eloy, or Lord Shiraan if you’re being formal, is a noble from Grandtree. However, he rarely bothers acting like it. While he’s perfectly capable of putting on the typical airs when he has a mind to, Eloy doesn’t really buy into formalities and usually finds engaging other nobles tedious at best. He prefers it when people are themselves, even if that means their negative traits are readily apparent.

Unlike the other nobles that have come to visit Lord Sandor, Eloy isn’t interested in inheriting anything. He genuinely likes Lord Sandor and considers him a friend. Actually, Lord Sandor is one of Eloy’s only friends because of the elf’s tendency to get on people’s nerves. This is very intentional on Eloy’s part. One of Eloy’s favorite things to do is mess with people. He loves setting up scenarios that put people on the spot just to see how they will react. Eloy earns a lot of hatred for this once people catch on to what he is doing, but he honestly doesn’t care. He doesn’t go out of his way to make friends and just continues doing whatever he wants like he always does.

Eloy tends to be a bit restless when he spends too much time in one place so he does a lot of traveling. While he rarely goes home, he does spend a lot of time at Lord Sandor’s mansion. This isn’t because he has issues with his family– though by now they’re probably a bit embarrassed over how easily he shirks his responsibilities. Eloy simply finds Grandtree a little too laid back for his tastes. He’s too interested in what is going on in the world and likes humans enough to want to be around them regularly. To top it off, he just isn’t as into nature as one might expect an elf to be and thus, has no real desire to live in a forest. While Lord Sandor’s mansion doesn’t have much to offer in the ways of entertainment, spending time with Lord Sandor is more than enough to keep Eloy there.

A real bastar-ahem, funny guy, isn’t he? 😉

Dead But Alive – Beta version 1.0e

The new update for the zombie-VN Dead But Alive is now available! It adds a bunch of new features and bugfixes and also a “visual novel mode”:

DBA_visualnovel

 

Because of its size, if you have still the previous beta version installed you can optionally update it using a patch file.

For more information, visit my forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewforum.php?f=46

Dead But Alive – Beta

Told you the game beta would start soon, didn’t I? 🙂

You can view more info about the game and check some more screenshots at the temporary page here: http://winterwolves.com/deadbutalive_southernengland.htm

While I have a download link for the demo in the page above, remember to check the forums. Indeed, like in previous beta testing, we’ll post in forums patch/updates as we fix bugs/add features (like the new male romances). The game’s official forums are here: http://winterwolves.net/viewforum.php?f=46

Finally, some useful info about the game:

  • As already said, the game is Windows only. Sorry about that!
  • The demo is quite big (355mb). We tried to compress it as much as possible but the game is in full HD, and it has various little characters animations…! So wasn’t possible to reduce the size lower than that.
  • Like Loren, the game by default is censored. However, if you go in the game installation folder and remove the censored.txt file… voilà! 😉
  • During the combat minigame you can press F1 to get some quick help. If you don’t like it, you can pick auto-combat. You can also change the difficulty of the combat in the game options.
  • Since the game wasn’t made in Ren’Py, there is no rollback or autoskip feature. There’s the possibility to skip the dialogue up to the next choice using the CTRL key though.

That’s all for now! In the next days I’ll also put up the poll in forums for the two extra male romance options 🙂

Dead But Alive – The Cast

deadbutalivecast

As you can see from the image above, the cast will be varied both in gender and ethnicity.  Let’s see all the characters now.

carolineName: Caroline

Background: Growing up on a farm, Caroline is used to working with her hands and has a basic understanding of machinery and weapons. The remoteness of her farm means she and her family were kept out of the worst troubles, digging in until the viral outbreak cleared up. It was on a trip into town for supplies that the military commandeered her vehicle and Caroline was left stranded. She is keen to get back and make sure everyone is okay.

Player can have a romance with Caroline.

EricName: Eric

Background: Eric is a former bouncer and body builder, eventually finding a talent for fixing machines and training as a mechanic. Bullied in his youth for his skin color, Eric took an intense interest in becoming stronger in order to defend himself and those around him. Despite his large frame, he is a gentle person with a spiritual side. However, he feels strongly about racism and has ended up in trouble more than once by reacting to it.

Player can have a romance with Eric.

JennyName: Jenny

Background: Jenny is a student from Germany, visiting Bournemouth for a couple of months on a work placement programme. Warm and friendly by nature, Jenny is always pleased to talk to people, and not just to practice her English. With no news about the rest of the world, Jenny chooses to believe her family are safe from the Zeds and that help from abroad is on the way.

Player can have a romance with Jenny.

LucyName: Lucy

Background: Lucy joined the UK police force just a couple of months back, despite the disapproval of her parents. She strongly believes in justice and morality, even in the face of the apocalypse. While fighting the zombie uprising, she was separated from her unit and managed to escape – the fate of her fellow officers remains unknown. Lucy dislikes killing the Zeds unless absolutely necessary – they were once people, and she still hopes there might be a way to cure them.

Player can have a romance with Lucy.

GeraldName: Gerald

Background: Gerald is a retired NHS doctor. Long before SHTF he lost his wife to an illness he failed to diagnose, for which he is still blaming himself. They had a daughter, who is now living in Leeds. He has not heard from her since the SHTF and is not sure he could take losing the last of his family.

RenateName: Renate

Background: Renate is a retired teacher and widow. She moved to Bournemouth from France twenty years ago to marry her husband, Bernard, and has remained here ever since. She has no desire to remarry, happy in the company of her friends and neighbours, always willing to help those in need. Her charm hides a sharp wit and she is not afraid to stand up for herself.

SteveName: Steve

Background: Steve served in the British military, but was dishonorably discharged due to a couple of racist incidents. Outside of the military, he has mostly been unemployed. He can be difficult to deal with and tends to speak his mind. While his attitude frequently gets him in trouble, his combat training and sense of self preservation just as frequently get him out of it again.

TomName: Tom

Background: Tom is a former police officer with experience using a range of firearms. When the SHTF he left his unit to look for his family, but unfortunately he arrived too late. His mother was turned before he could get back and attacked his wife and children. Finding them turned and having to put them down has left him traumatized. His recent behavior has become more aggressive, a cause of some concern for those around him.

AlexName: Alex

Background: An art student at Bournemouth University, Alex has no career aspirations and no idea what to do with his life. Aside from sketching and drawing, his main interests are video games and circuit training. Alex would much prefer shooting at zombies on his console rather than in real life, but he is coping better with the apocalypse than he realises.

NickyName: Nicky

Background: The middle child of three, Nicky often feels unnoticed by his parents as they focus on his teenage older brother and his baby sister. This has left him with a tendency to go off on his own, and frequently gets into trouble. Separated from his family when SHTF, he is anxious to find them again – assuming they made it to safety.

MikeName: Mike

Background: A former gulf veteran, Mike knows how to handle himself. Since returning from the Middle East, he’s found ordinary life quite dull and misses the camaraderie of his unit. Since the SHTF, Mike has rediscovered some meaning in his life – he almost enjoys the danger, though he tends to bond better with those around him with combat experience.

CarlName: Carl

Background: Carl is a former professional ranger, employed by a local landlord to manage the hunting on the estates and lead tourists who paid a lot of money to shoot roe deer. He has a vast knowledge of hunting and guns, which makes him a valuable addition to any team. However, his antisocial tendencies make him hard to work with and frequently cause friction between him and his team mates.

EmilyName: Emily

Background: The main character’s teenage daughter. Their relationship is somewhat strained since the accidental death of her mother some seven years ago, but she can keep a cool head in a crisis. Some of her parent’s military organisational skills have rubbed off on her and she tries to be prepared for anything.

Before you complain there are more romanceable women than men: we know it, but we’re trying something new this time. We want to add two missing male romances during the beta, depending on the choice of the community. So once the beta is out, expect a poll to vote for the two male romances.

The “candidates” are Steve, Tom, Mike & Carl. Before making the poll, we’ll do another post describing the kind of romance you’d play with each one!

Announcing Dead But Alive – Southern England

Before you think “what, he has started yet another game?”, this game is not being developed by me, I am only publishing it. Also, this is not an announcement that “work has started on a new game”… but that the game is almost done! 🙂

Most likely in the next few weeks I’ll be able to start the pre-orders and beta testing. But what is exactly Dead But Alive – Southern England?

As the name clearly suggests, it’s about the zombie apocalypse. If you follow me, you know in the past I mentioned in my forums I wanted to make a zombie game. Well, a few months ago Highcliffe Media Publishing pitched an idea I thought it was cool, so decided to publish it. I might still do another zombie game on my own, but as you know, I have so many games going on that it won’t happen anytime soon.

Luckily, there’s this game now 🙂

The game pitch

Dead But Alive is a zombie survival adventure/simulation set in Southern England. A simple camping holiday for a former ex-military officer, looking to rebuild his relationship with his/her teenage daughter, suddenly turns into a fight for survival in a world devastated by the undead. Separated from his/her daughter, he/she must lead a small, ragged team of survivors, build a camp, scavenge for supplies and try to stay alive, all while trying to track her down. The game features a non-linear storyline with moral choices on despair, commitment and sacrifice.

status
the game “status screen” from which you can decide what to do each day

managegroup
besides the normal survivors, there will be some “VIPs”, like Caroline… yes you can romance her!

map
the map will feature different locations, each one with bonus/malus

As you can see from those screenshots, the gameplay will be very straightforward for those used to zombie/survival games. The main goal will be simple: scavenge for supplies, improve your camp and try to survive! It’s addictive and easy to learn, but it won’t be easy… And of course it includes more than 120,000 words of storyline.

Obviously, I made sure that there are romance options! 😉 So in the game your main character is “genderless”, meaning that the game plays from first person view, and your gender is never explicitly mentioned. This means that when you romance a male or female character, if it’s a homosexual or heterosexual relationship it’s all about how you imagine your character.

Another thing that you can clearly see from the art, is that this time it’s not anime. We thought a more serious style for the art was a better idea for this setting, so we’ve decided to not make it anime artwork. It’s lovely handmade and in FullHD.

This game does not use Ren’Py and porting it to Mac and Linux would have been very expensive. That’s why we’ve agreed to only make it available on Windows for now. Depending on how successful it is, we might make Mac and Linux versions later. Theoretically you could get it to work with Wine. We haven’t tested this though.

OK I think I’ve said enough about the game for now. Of course, I will do more posts about it later. As I said, game beta/preorders should begin shortly, so watch this space and/or my social networks for the announcement! 🙂