I’m pleased to announce that Heirs & Graces is now officially out! You can see the game trailer above. For more info, screenshots and a free demo visit this page: http://www.winterwolves.com/heirsandgraces.htm

This game is my 3rd released game this year so far. I am not being lazy this year, am I? 😉

Jokes apart, it’s not like the three games in question (PSCD, C14 Dating and Heirs & Graces) were all created this year! I started working on them long time ago. In more detail:

• Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense started in Fall 2014. Originally a tower defense game without romance, it turned into a card game/dating sim hybrid!
• C14 Dating was a project started back in 2013 (the original plot and writing)! then for various reasons was delayed until this year
• Heirs & Graces was another “side project” started back in 2014, and it’s out now

So as you can see all the three games took a lot of time to make. But there’s no shortcut: if you want something to be good AND long (all three games have a script over 120.000 words, PSCD passes even the 200.000 mark!) you need to wait!

And now, a short postmortem for this game.

Heirs & Graces short postmortem

It’s obviously too early to say how it will do, also considering I have planned to release it on Steam later (to avoid the Summer Sale that as you know happens every year).

However, so far the reaction from people and the feedback/sales I got from my own site gives me hope. I was really unsure since it is my first yaoi-only dating sim, so I had no clue how it could do. I can say that I feel more relaxed now 🙂

That said, as I explained also in my forums, I really don’t think I’m going to do anymore games with a single romance combo in future. No yaoi only, yuri only, otome only, etc. Simply because making a game it’s already a lot of effort, and people need to wait years, I want at least to try offering something for everyone 🙂

This doesn’t change anything for the games already in production of course. So Never Forget Me will be a straight otome, Summer In Trigue a yuri only, etc.

Back to Heirs & Graces, I think the fantasy setting combined with dating sim was a good move. I just realized now that beside Spirited Heart, all my other dating sims aren’t using a fantasy theme. So I believe I should do more dating sims like this.

And I’ve already talked about the “no more grinding” in dating sim, and the scheduler system I used in this game was perfect I think: requiring some strategy to pass the main plot checks, but never grindy even replaying the game several times. I must reuse this system even in future games whenever possible!

Another thing that went well with the game was the “bittersweet theme”. It might be personal tastes of course, but I personally I prefer when there are funny/light scenes mixed with more serious/sad/melancholic ones (those who already played the game know what I am referring to!).

So except for games that are meant to be pure comedy (see Roommates!) I believe adding some more serious/mature/sad scenes to the story could help overall. As long as there is some way to get a happy ending 😉