Today I wanted to clarify since many people wondered about Loren 2’s fate. Yes, Loren 2 will not exist anymore as originally intended: a single, huge, impossible to write and code game with 16 love interests (seriously, what I was thinking when I planned it?). But I got an idea, so keep reading and don’t worry.
Remember that Planet Stronghold 2 took me one full year (working full time on it, while I usually work on 2-3 games at same time) and it has 10 love interests. Loren 2 originally had 16 planned, so even 6 more than PS2!!
Even if I already thought to split the game in two parts, in the end everything had still to match together, since they both were still part of a single story. So I had to pay attention to plot-holes, branching, romances, etc.
Planet Stronghold 2 has some of the best reviews and overall review rating of ALL my games. And yet, it wasn’t worth it from a commercial point of view (which sadly, since I cannot pay bills with “review score” is important lol). Market change, “high” price, sci-fi setting curse or simply bad luck: one day I’ll do a full postmortem about that game, including the super-weird Steam traffic graph which might have completely broken the release exposure. Yes, you heard it well, it might have been just “bad luck”.
Whatever the reasons, the conclusion is: I cannot risk doing this again, last but not least for mental/physical reasons – after finishing PS2 I was completely burned out, in a way that it never happened before to me. To be honest, I’m still a bit burned out even right now, 3 months after the game release. Think that I even thought about quitting making games after 15 years! Yeah, definitely not an experience I want to repeat !
When you see the credits of those big branching RPGs like Bioware, you see there are like 10-20 writers (in addition to all the coders). I am alone just using some part-time external collaborators. It’s just crazy to think about it already. I cannot be so cocky to think that I can do what 10 people do and not get burned out…!
But wait! Not all is lost!
This doesn’t mean though, that I can’t make more “normal games” with the same characters! I recently spoke with Aleema (Loren’s original writer), and we brainstormed the possibility to split the old+new cast into 4 games with 4 love interests each. It’s a much better solution under all aspects, since will let us make a better job with each character and give them the space they deserve.
Yes, because even if I’m doing it mainly because after Planet Stronghold 2 burn-out and stress I know I wouldn’t want to do it again for my own health, in the end it will be even better for players because they’ll be able to finally get their games, and the smaller cast will reduce the time I need to spend making sure there are no plot holes, and at the same time give each character more scenes than they would get if was a single big game.
Indeed not having to worry about a huge cast will make development easier, since I don’t need to remember what character X said to character Y or the current world situation, etc etc. so I can focus my efforts on creating content instead of worrying about breaking existing storylines (PS2 was really crazy under that aspect!!).
A fair treatment for everyone
Just think for example that while Karen was listed in the romances, already in the draft of the original sequel story her “screen time” was considerably shorter than others. It was hard to justify her presence for longer parts in the story when I had SO MANY MORE CHARACTERS, old and new to deal with 😉 Now instead? She’ll be part on a specific new story with 3 other romances and she’ll get same treatment, as a true TOP MILF like her clearly deserves!!!!! Lol jokes apart, it’s really better even for each single romance route.
Last but not least, only because there will be 4 romances each game, doesn’t mean the other characters cannot be present in the story: they can be, but they will appear as secondary characters. Of course as always I’ll make sure to indicate clearly on each game which romances are available in the game page description.
One of those 4 games will still be about the demons’ threat and will feature Jul of course. I will be able to reuse a good amount of texts already written for the main story originally done for Loren 2. The others? They will be about different topics/settings but still feature a good mix of some old characters and the new ones.
Conclusions
I know that probably some of you won’t like this, but really, it was either this way or I was ready to cancel the game. It’s not about what I want to do or not, but is about my mental/physical health and it’s not something to take lightly, trust me.
Of course we’re still talking a few years in future because first I need to finish Curse of Mantras, but after that one I will start to work on one of those games. And this time won’t take me many years to finish and it won’t drive me crazy because they’re too big for me to do them alone! 🙂