First of all: work on Lilith is proceeding, I have sent to editor 90% of the script, and I’m just polishing some endings right now before I sent them also the final part. There’s still a LOT of art, so estimate deadline for beta is still around end of September/mid-October.

And now, back to the topic of this post! This is both a post about my indie career and also a sort of advice. As a certain Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.

How does this apply to the indie dev world? Simple: if you’re struggling with your career, have you considered trying new things?

First a premise: I’m not saying that changing is always good. On the opposite, if you have your definite “style”, if you have already enough fans that like it, in general if you’re happy both financially and personally about “your legacy”, then there’s really little reason (if none!) to change.

But what if you’re unhappy with the results you’re getting and don’t know what to do?

Several years ago, I used to chat with a dev who was using RPGmaker XP to make RPGs. Nothing wrong with that tool, it’s a very saturated market, but you could say the same about VNs as well.

The issue was that they were unhappy, but at same time they had this total mind-closure, using always the default assets, spending little on music, never trying anything new. Because the problem wasn’t RPGMaker XP itself (many successful games were made and are still being made with that tool) but the unwillingness to change and to challenge yourself.

The four years cycle

In my indie career, this happened already many times. Curiously, at regular intervals of 4 years (not always, but most of the times). Let’s see:

2004 – when I started around this year I was doing sports, simulation, wargames. More complex games in general, using C++ and a custom library called PTK
2008 – this year things changed: I discovered visual novels and learned to use Ren’Py
2012 – things changed again: I tried to do RPG/VNs and learned python (knowing Ren’Py doesn’t necessarily mean you also know python well)
2016 – once again tried something different: my first card game (PSCD). In 2017 I also tried my first crafting game (Amber’s Magic Shop)
2020 – I did my first Kickstarter (TFTU: Hazel), and my first yuri-only game (Volleyball Heaven). Since then doing yuri games helped me greatly on Steam
2024 – my first psychological horror / adventure game (House of Chavez) and maybe… first town building sim (Thieves of Dingirra)? haha we’ll see, but more likely next year!

Changes can be radical like switching to a completely different genre, to more subtle ones like changing art style, setting, etc. It can also be using a different tool, though this is a big change and usually takes a lot of time.

There are so many things you can try in game development. Even within the same genre and engine, you can create games that are very different from each other! For example, I reused my RPG framework that I coded for games like Loren The Amazon Princess, Seasons Of The Wolf, etc to create a sci-fi game like Planet Stronghold 2. Or back in 2010, I did two visual novels using western-comic art style (Vera Blanc). They didn’t do well (although I suspect not for the style but the quality of the drawings) but at least I tried.

If you try something new, you can say “well, I tried, didn’t work.” If you never try, you’ll always live with the regret “I wonder if I tried that, what might have happened…?” I know for certain that if back in 2008 I didn’t try Ren’Py and visual novels, probably now I wouldn’t be here writing this blog post, because it was a turning point in my career (and the same I can say about what happened in 2012 and also in 2020!).

What’s next?

As I wrote, this year I released my first pyschological horror game, which also was my first VN/adventure game mix. It was well received in general. Of course, people who were interested only in… the sex stuff, didn’t like to have to use the brain to walk through the adventure part haha (but that’s why I put a full guide on Steam!).

Personally, I was a bit burned out last year after ToA: An Elven Marriage, and working on House of Chavez was really a nice change. I really enjoyed working on that game, because was different than a plain simple VN, with a map, an inventory, interacting with environment, etc etc, but not as complex as doing a full RPG. Main issue is that doing such a game requires a lot of art (all the backgrounds) and time, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to do another, though I hope soon.

This year after Lilith release I should also work on Thieves Of Dingirra, which could have (I’m not sure yet if that will be doable with Ren’Py) a sort of simplified town sim gameplay. I admit I’m a bit scared of coding that part, and worse case will be just a “regular” RPG, but I want to try adding the town sim element too if possible.

In any case, the important is to keep trying new things, also because otherwise it can get a bit boring!