So, we’re already at the end of August!

Work on Planet Stronghold 2 is progressing nicely. In case you don’t know, it’s taking me so long to update the beta version simply because I decided to release both the last two chapters, the 3 and 4 at once. While the last chapter has a shorter main storyline, it has all the romance scenes and personal quests, so it’s definitely important!

Getting personal…

The personal quests are optional (you’ll be able to refuse them if you want), but still need to be written and tested. Also, for EACH quest, there’s going to be two variants depending on your alignment with that character (loyal/rival).

What happens if you’re neutral? There will be another choice in the quest itself that will force you to be either Loyal or Rival. So we have two different fights, and then also different texts.

The main reward (usually a powerful item usable only by that specific character) will always unlock, while the variant will provide extra different bonuses (money, epic items, grenade/medikits, special items, etc).

…and getting hot!

The romance scenes, since there are 6 love interests, are taking a long time (I have planned 5 romance scenes for each character for a total of 30 !!) and I’m also putting special care in the “final romance scene” with the CG offering two versions, a suggestive/mature version and a more tame/soft version.

This time since with the suggestive option turned on you can see fully naked characters (depending on the pose you might not see some details of course) I decided to make the suggestive text version much more spicier than any other games I’ve done in the past ! While the soft version will have still undressed characters but not fully naked and the text will reflect this.

All of this, as you can imagine, requires more text (both version must be satisfying to read) so for example one of the romance scenes I wrote is almost 3000 words long!! Even if they’ll be of varying length, if we consider an average of 2k words each for 6 love interests, that’s already 12k words just for that scene for all characters!

I’m currently around 250,000 words of story, and as expected (LOL) it’s going to be another SMALL GAME ™. I remember when I finished Cursed Lands and thought about its crazy size of over 300,000 words I said “I won’t make another game as big as this one”. Last famous words…!

Release date

The downside of all this is that the game will probably be ready during the WORST moment of the year to release a new game, that is end of October/November. I will still release it on itch.io of course, but I will probably delay the Steam release until after the holidays, since I think it might be a bad idea. I haven’t made my mind yet, but it’s very likely!

It’s about time to give you an update on this game. There have been some unexpected delays due to events out of my (and the writer’s) control but finally things are moving again! Towards the end of 2018 / early this year I had finished scripting the game until the Christmas events.

Now, the final version of the script until Valentine’s Day / Easter is done, I’d say about 2/3 of the total game script is finished. I still need to code it and test of course, so it’s not like 2/3 of the game is FULLY finished. However it’s still a dating sim, not a complex RPG, so nothing compared to Planet Stronghold 2!

Breaking the Curse!

In case you didn’t know, Volleyball Heaven will become my first yuri-only released game. I had already planned another, the “cursed game” aka Nicole yuri but I got exasperated up to a point that I canceled it. I also had another one in the works, Summer In Trigue, which is going to be finished too by the same writer taking care of Volleyball Heaven (that writer will be now known as the ‘Yuri Finisher’ !).

Plus, I’m working on another “secret yuri game” but following my new philosophy of not announcing anything until I am 100% sure that the game is almost ready, I won’t talk about it for now. But even this one is coming along nicely.

In summary I want to break this curse and get forgiven by yuri fans for taking so long to FINALLY release a yuri only game. Thinking that my first (and very likely last) yaoi only game was done back in 2016, already three years ago, yuri fans deserve some justice!

Hot Stuff

I’m also curious to release Volleyball Heaven because it will be my first very “adult oriented” game. In previous games (like Loren) I had already sexy scenes but in this game is different, also the general tone of writing is more “mature”. A bit hard to me to explain. But anyway, I will work with the writer to make a “clean enough” version so that it can appear on Steam listings (which is important since if it’s marked as adult-only, it will be hidden by default, lowering the exposure).

But even the “clean version” will still be rather hot – compared to my previous games of course! Compared to some hentai games I’ve seen on Steam it will still be much tamer!

I know some people might agree (some might even say “finally!”) with my new more “adult oriented direction” while others not, but after the Google play ban, my main market is PC/Steam and on Steam if you don’t have at least a sexy version you could even not bother making a visual novel at all. Of course, unless you’re already famous with millions of followers.

Just a random but interesting data that reinforces my point: after several months Corona Borealis still sold better on my own site/itchio than Steam, and it’s a very clean game. Similarly, other “clean games” like Always Remember Me almost sold same direct vs Steam, and so on. On the other hand, every other game with more sexy content (Roommates, Cursed Lands, PSCD after the manga patch, etc) are selling between x3-x10 times more on Steam. Which is a clear indication about what people want on that platform I think!

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” – Mark Twain

As you can imagine today I’ll be talking about the future of my mobile games and… it’s not a bright one. First of all: I always made the mobile versions more to please my fans, and even if Google+Apple+Amazon together were bringing in some nice extra revenues, all of them combined still weren’t more than desktop sales (Steam+Itch.io).

However, as you can imagine making builds for 3 different platforms was a lot of work, and if I compare the time spent with money made, probably not worth it. First adapting to mobile, then testing. Every time I wanted to build an app, it was taking several minutes, which for someone used to Ren’Py instant run on desktop is a lot. Then, problems with various devices, very difficult to debug and fix bugs, having to use an external coder for iOS, people losing access codes, and so on. You got the idea.

Developing games cross-platform is good, but only if your games are big sellers. Mine obviously aren’t, so instead of a benefit, it was becoming a burden.

The censors are here!

Now for those who don’t know what happened, in the last weeks Google Play suspended my account. I can’t access my developer panel, I can’t check sales, I can’t do anything anymore. All is gone. Why? Because of repeated violation of their “sexually explicit content” policy.

Now before we go on, I’m all for protecting children against adult content. Smart companies like Valve just made an “adult only section” of their store and restricted the content, so everyone can enjoy what they want without censorship. But the thing is, my games on mobile were already censored (by myself) by removing the most suggestive images. So what were they complaining about?

If I understood correctly, beside the app content, even the store listing imagery had to be “suitable for a general audience or removed from your store listing”. Below there are some pictures that are considered not suitable for a general audience. It might be a cultural difference because I live in Europe but you can see much more explicit images on perfume ads everywhere in Europe…or just by going to the beach.

When I got the suspension I made an appeal and it was rejected, but at least in that email was listed exactly which ones of these various suspensions were the ones that triggered the deletion of my whole account (because I didn’t know at all). The real issue was with some images in Bionic Heart 1 & 2. They’re below:

Are they right or not? For someone living in Europe, even the last two pictures are nothing so explicit, but I guess depends on the country/culture. If you search for “perfume ads” images you’ll see much worse stuff that appeared on TV, magazines, billboards, etc. When you grow up and seeing naked human body is normal, it’s hard to even only understand what you’re doing wrong!

In the end though, it’s their store and they can do what they want. If tomorrow they wake up and only games in black and white are allowed, we must obey. If they decide that visual novel as genre must be banned, they can do it. Is it right, is it not? In the end, doesn’t matter.

The future

Even if both Apple and Amazon (they have an Android appstore) never bothered me with any of this, also because it’s really not clear and depends on interpretations, it might be just a matter of time. Indeed this whole thing taught me a lesson, that I cannot really trust 3rd party companies which have a monopoly over a platform/device.

I mean, with desktop games in the worst case I can still sell them myself on itch.io or other sites (even if Steam is much more friendly now). But mobile? If Google Play was my only source of income, today I would be writing a blog post “sorry I’m quitting indie dev” 😛

I don’t know what will happen in future yet, but the only sure thing is that if you’re looking to play Planet Stronghold 2, or any of the upcoming games, your best bet is to get them on desktop devices.