Monthly Archives: May 2018

Love Bites is officially out!

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Special thanks to Aleema for the awesome trailer video above. For sure the best trailer I’ve ever done for all my games!

You can find out more and purchase the game here: http://www.winterwolves.com/lovebites.htm

This game is a perfect example of a project where “everything went smoothly”. I know, it’s rare in the real world (and even more in the game development world!) but happens when you put together reliable people!

Brainstorming / planning

Miakoda, the game writer, had just finished writing the epic PSCD (over 240k words of text) and I wanted her to do something smaller (even if Love Bites is definitely not “small”, but you know how it goes, right?) and most importantly, simpler for me to code. I knew I would be doing more RPGs and complex games after PSCD (indeed I did Queen Of Thieves and Cursed Lands! Two RPGs, and now I’m working on a third, Planet Stronghold 2).

So I definitely didn’t want to have to deal with some more games with complex gameplay at the moment, and after some quick brainstorming, we decided to go with a game involving supernatural, horror, and romance. Seems a good combination!

Artwork

At the same time, I got in touch again with Rebecca Gunter, the artist who did my first games (Heileen and Bionic Heart series) and despite the very busy schedule, she said would have time to do the art for a new game.

Personally I love her style (might also be because I’ve a sentimental attachment to them) but if I try to be objective for a moment I think perhaps her best skills are with males, and I think yaoi fans will like this game in particular… even if both the females (Sabrina and Nadia) are hot too! The only downside is that she doesn’t draw full nudity, but you can’t have everything.

Writing

On the writing side, I think the game features the right mix of seriousness, jokes, and sexual innuendo. I also think the use of the “inner voice” (during the game, as your curse grows stronger, you start to hear a voice telling you… to do “things”…) was a brilliant idea by Miakoda and really adds to the game “something more”.

Gameplay

As mentioned above, I wanted to keep things simple. Originally I was going to use a weekly planner similar to Roommates, but then after some preliminary testing, and remembering well what people told me, I thought…”why?” 😛

So I reviewed everything and kept things simple. I didn’t bother to add a “visual novel mode” in this game simply because there’s no need. Yes you can trigger some early endings, and yes reaching a certain amount of money will play a slightly different text endings and so on, but overall you can definitely finish the game without going crazy with stat raising like my other dating sims.

This choice was almost universally well received and I think I’ll keep doing this also for future games: either I have some gameplay that works well with the story, or there’s no point in going crazy with coding when it’s not needed or doesn’t work well, just for the sake of it.

Conclusions

As you can guess I’m really happy about how things went with this project, and the previous one (Cursed Lands) as well. If you asked me in Summer last year I’d have never imagined that I would have two games out in the first half of 2018! Next stop is Planet Stronghold 2 and then, finally I’ll start working on Loren 2 🙂

Making an indie game is like climbing a mountain

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The weather is getting better over here, so like all years, this is the period where we can finally start doing some short trips on the mountains nearby. I always loved trekking and walking in middle of the nature in general. While I was in one of those trips I was thinking that in some way, doing indie games is like climbing up a mountain.

When I started working on Cursed Lands, my idea was for it to be a small game ™ – you can laugh obviously – however as time passed, new ideas came to mind and every time it was like “would be a pity to not do this” and “this character should definitely have a scene showing her weaker side” and so on. The result is what you can actually play here: there’s even a free demo! One of the few indies still doing them!

While it might not be necessarily true for all games, in particular small games (for real, not like my 300,000 words / 50h+ long small games!) the process of making a game is really like climbing a mountain.

Whenever I start a new RPG, for example right now I’m working on Planet Stronghold 2, I am super enthusiast. Defining the characters, setting, the general plot, thinking about plot twists, and on the gameplay side the various classes, skills, combat system, items, weapon types, etc etc. It’s great, no doubts.

Then, the climbing starts. And slowly but steadly the initial enthusiasm fades away. It’s normal, happens to everyone. I’ve never seen an indie say “it was great working on this game from first to last day”. If someone says this, he/she is lying! 😉

As time passes, the climbing becomes harder, people find bugs, give you feedback, maybe not the kind of feedback you want to hear (the game is not fun! you should rebalance all the battles! and so on) until the end is on sight. The top of the mountain, you can see it! It’s there. But… you’re tired, very tired. Because you climbed the mountain until now, and you can’t wait to finish, to reach the top and then begin going back downhill.

This is the hardest part. This is where you should stand a few minutes on the top of the mountain and wait, looking around you. Look at the path you did to reach the mountain, think back at the experience. Did you do what you wanted to do? Is the game… yes being fun is important, but even more: it’s the kind of game you wanted to make? Is there still something you could do to improve things, without stumbling on your way down the mountain (spending too much time/money?)

The downhill is when the game is released. For many people it’s a nerve-whacking process, and I’m no exception. It’s when you know if all the efforts you put in climbing up the mountain were worth it or not. Though, in the (rare?) cases where I actually manage do finish a good game, it’s really nice to hear the customer’s feedback, the compliments, and the revenues, knowing that yes, you can still afford another trip. Yes this wasn’t the last one!

If you like something an indie made, spend 2 minutes to let him/her know. Send a short email, post on their social media, write one of those infamous reviews on Steam, spread the word, do what you want, but let them know, because it will make climbing the next mountain easier.