We’re about halfway through 2019! Of my initial “new year goals”, I’m happy to have relased Corona Borealis and being already in beta testing with Planet Stronghold 2! As I wrote in the beginning of the year, I noticed that if I can both write and code at same time I can make progress very quickly on the RPGs, and indeed I’m about halfway with PS2 content (of course I have worked on it more beside what’s already in the beta version).

As for Volleyball Heaven, there isn’t much left to do, but honestly I also took a break from it to focus on the RPG. As you can imagine, there are many things going on behind the scenes, so for example sometimes I have real-life things happening that prevent me from working while other times I know I’ll have stuff happening on month X, so that I want to focus on coding/writing a RPG when I know I’ll have the time and necessary peace of mind. This is basically what happened.

The good news is that the same writer is also working on finally finishing Summer In Trigue as well, so this means that I’ll relase two yuri-exclusive games between this year and the next. Finally, I’d say! 🙂

Other games and various ramblings

I have already talked about this in the past, basically I love doing my kind of games (visual novels, dating sims and VN/RPGs). However as player I also like other kind of games, and besides it’s not easy to always write new stories. So basically I’m here again thinking about which other kind of games I could do, because as artist/creative person I want to explore new ideas/territories as I already did in the past.

One of those “different games” (different compared to my usual ones) for sure will be the card game of Undead Lily, which will have the name changed but for now I refer to that game like this. I already hinted about this in forums but what I’m going to do is have a separate story-mode vs campaign. How this will work?

In practice the regular campaign will be mainly gameplay-focused. There will be a story yes, but it will be short. Like cut-scenes between battles and such: everything is still a work in progress of course so I haven’t made my mind on the details but for sure on the kind of writing involved. So a full experience BUT with less story and more gameplay.

The story mode instead will be mainly focused on the story (obviously lol) and relationships/romances, with the possibility to play the game as “pure visual novel” (a choice you won’t have in the campaign mode).

I think this way it will work much better, because people who want to see the story can play the “story mode”, while the others can just dive straight into the gameplay with some short story around it.

I made this decision based on feedback I got from PSCD (usual card games players aren’t necessarily fan of long stories) and also for another reason: this way I will be able to release the beta testing of the campaign sooner and independently from the main story, since like with PS2 I will be coding/writing it at same time and in general there will be much less writing needed!

Conclusions

Assuming everything goes super smoothly (which has never happened before!) ideally I’d be finishing PS2 this year, and maybe Volleyball Heaven. Then next year Summer In Trigue and the “card game version” of Undead Lily, and finally begin the work on Loren 2 to finish it probably in 2021 or something. One day I’ll talk about why was such a bad move to do that sequel with so many characters…!

First of all, let me thank everyone who already bought Planet Stronghold 2, and of course those sending in bug reports or giving me feedback. As I said many times in the past, I won’t be implementing everything I get asked (depending also how hard it’s to implement) but if I think an idea has potential, I’ll be happy to add it.

I have already added A LOT OF THINGS to this game, as much as that it’s definitely the most complex game I ever made (see previous post for the crazy amount of new features) so this one is for sure the last feature I’ll add, but it was worth it.

You’ve got mail

One of those suggestion was alongside “I wish there was a sort of in-game messaging system” and while it’s not a full featured email system (you cannot reply to messages) I think the final result is… interesting!

In practice, beside the normal scenes, you’ll get from time to time messages delivered to your private room. In the example above, clearly a stupid message from Milo (but what did you expect from him!?) but there will also be serious message or romantic ones.

Since in the game you can start with many pre-existing romances, I did my best to add romantic scenes, but certain romance route feature a “difficult relationship”. Cliff & Joshua for example have hard time seeing each other because they’re always busy (but this will change in chapter 3) or Rumi/Joshua will also be a complex relationship, because officially they’re not engaged anymore, but in reality they still have feelings for each other, at least until you don’t decide to “break up for real” in chapter 3.

As you can imagine I need to write those romances in a very different way from the others, so this message system will also be useful for that. A well written romantic email (even if it’s short) can do wonders, as it does in real life (a single ‘I love you’ message is more powerful tha anything, right?).

Overall, I’m pleased by how things are going with Planet Stronghold 2. As I posted in forums I don’t plan to have a demo for it, it’s not a final decision since I could probably do one at the end of development (right now would be too distracting), but I want to try and see how it goes. Considering over 90% of sales comes from Steam and there’s no demo there…