Time flies! Seems yesterday as I wrote this other post when I celebrated my 40th birthday: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2014/04/my-first-40-years-10-as-indie/

And here we’re again, 10 years later, but still going!

In retrospect, looking back at how the market was when I wrote that post, things were going rather well. My games finally were on Steam, Loren The Amazon Princess had a great reception. I had just released Roommates, my second most successful game after Loren. Mobile games were still very profitable, and I was still selling direct rather well!

For comparison, the gross revenues of that year (2014) of my direct sales (I was using BMT at the times) is higher than my past year Steam revenues!!! As I’m writing this, I can’t believe it myself, but it’s true.

So things changed a lot during those 10 years (for the worse, lol) business wise. I had my Google account banned by the “modern inquisition”. Of course, it’s not all negative! I had some more successes (like Cursed Lands, my second most popular RPG!) or the recent Tales From The Under-Realm series which albeit shorter games, have a very good ROI.

In summary I made several more games, some successful, others not. I started making some yuri games only (just recently though, first one was Volleyball Heaven in 2020!). I had my games ported on console. I did my first crowdfunding campaign. And so on.

As I’m writing this, I just got my next game, House of Chavez, approved by Steam, and I’m happy to announce that it will be out the 22nd of this month. You can wishlist the game here.

Mid-life crisis ?

Haha no, I’m not having a mid-life crisis! However, I must say that while going from 30 to 40 years wasn’t a big step, somehow I feel reaching 50 as something “different”. Even if I’m good health, I probably have lived more than half of my time on Earth. I am very grateful for my life so far. Being able to be my own boss, live with my wife far away from the polluted and chaotic cities in middle of nature has been a real blessing. I wouldn’t exchange this with all money and success in the world!

However, I’m also a competitive person (even if maybe it doesn’t look like from the outside). So I want to explore new opportunities in future. Which ones? I have no clue yet! For sure, trying new games genres or mix VN with new gameplay like the House of Chavez (point and click adventure). Perhaps also trying to do something different from games, like comics (of course with a crowdfunding campaign). Or still make story-based games but with more animation and interaction (I’m preparing an animated intro for Tales From The Under-Realm: Lilith game and it’s turning out well!). Or maybe, still do narrative games but with a different focus. I admit I really liked doing the scary part of House of Chavez, and I think I’d like to do a “real horror game”, Bloodborne-inspired. I have already a lot of ideas in mind.

But if I don’t manage to do all those things, it will be fine. I like the kind of games I do, enough people like them to let me survive, and sometimes you just need to be happy with what you have, without eternally chasing what you think will be more successful!

Conclusions

When you reach my age, you’ve seen things… ROFL OK, seriously. When you reach certain milestones, like being 50, you start to appreciate other things in life beside career and money. I have talked about my business, but right now I’m mainly thinking about how I want to live the rest of my life. I lost many pets, and several people, some were friends or other indies, and younger than me. So all those events really make you stop and think about life in general.

Indeed, I also want to start enjoying life a bit. Because of all the pets, I really didn’t take a break in 20 years, a proper holiday away from home. It was a personal choice, but I’m starting to feel the need to travel and explore the world, maybe to get inspiration for future projects.

If you’ve read until this, thanks for your patience. I hope your life is going well for you too. I hope you don’t have too many regrets (I really don’t have many!) and that the future will be full of positivity for you and your beloved ones.