So as usual, in this post I’m going to review my goals for 2024 and see what happened. For reference, this was the blog post with my “new year goals”.

House of Chavez was released, which was a sure thing for me (whenever I do a Kickstarter, I’m confident I can finish the project in a reasonable amount of time). The reception was mixed, with some people not liking the gameplay part (and I’m not even talking about the minigames that can be entirely skipped!). Sales-wise, I was expecting a bit more, considering the quality of the product. However, I’ve come to realize that it’s really hard nowadays. The exposure and sales provided by Steam are always going down, so you can have very different (worse) results even from one year to the next.

Overall, I’m pleased with the result and really like the final game. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this VN/adventure mix had just the right amount of complexity as developer, and I’d love to create another game like this in the future (not necessarily horror). It felt like a nice change from the usual plain VNs. However, I might skip the minigames next time and just do the adventure part!

TFTU: Lilith was also out. In the blog post at beginning of the year I was assuming I’d do Thieves Of Dingirra this year, however in April I made an update, explaining why I swapped the two games, so that I’d do Lilith first. And I still think it was the best move. Lilith has only been out for a short time, so it’s too early to draw any conclusions. However, I’m pretty happy with it so far, and I think many fans (in particular those who wanted Evelyn as romance and a true triad route) are too!

Last but not least I did the campaign for Christine’s Care. This was probably one of the most disappointing Kickstarter I’ve ever done – not only the final amount is the lowest ever (even lower than my first try with Hazel!) but I honestly couldn’t understand why – considering my previous two KS all made over 10k! I even asked for feedback after it ended to understand better what was about that game that made people skip it, and the sad thing is that it seems it’s just that even on Kickstarter the overall exposure is going down. Anyway, I’ve enabled late pledges until end of the year, so if you missed it you can still pledge for it until 1st January 2025.

I have in mind some changes for next year but I’ll discuss that in the usual “New year goals” post at beginning of 2025.

This year I was also celebrating 20 years as indie, and my 50th birthday. I’m amazed that I can still be doing this after so much time! And it’s all thanks to you.

Personal Stuff

If on the professional side things went OK overall, all things considered, but on the personal side… let’s say that things could have been better.

In March I lost my dog Skipper (I dedicated House of Chavez both to him and Tofu who I lost last year). We got a new dog, Daisy, a month later.

Summer was also a nightmare due to the climate, so I could neither work, neither take some time off to relax/recharge batteries. Terrible!

Then in the Fall I had to do the other eye surgery, which was planned but still a pain because I lost several days of work and was stressed about it.

I also had to said goodbye to Micia, a 20 (or more) years old ex-stray cat that we rescued when we moved here.

So, last year I said 2023 was a bad year, but actually 2024 wasn’t that much better…!

Getting older sucks!

Who would have guessed? Haha, jokes aside, I’ve noticed each year I’m a bit slower working than the last. With age, minor health issues pop up—nothing serious, like back ache and so on, but they do slow you down.

Looking back, I’m glad that when I was younger and in good health, I worked hard. It would’ve been such a waste to not take advantage of that time. So, if you’re young and have a dream, make sure you’re putting in the effort to achieve it! Don’t waste your time! Carpe diem, etc.

While it’s true that many famous people found success later in life, it’s definitely easier to achieve when you’re in your prime years! (I’d say between 20 and 40).

That’s all for now. I hope you’re enjoying the holidays, and of course, Happy New Year!

First of all, in case you haven’t been following me on socials and you missed all the spamm- ahem, promotion I’m doing, I have launched my new Kickstarter for the slice of life yuri visual novel Christine’s Care:

After a rough start, at the time of writing we’re very close to the base goal, but I hope we can reach at least the first stretch goal which will add a one-night stand scene with Donna:

Marlon, the muscular MMA fighter girl has already been added to the base game (and that’s probably what boosted the KS after a slow start).

In summary now we have in the base game the following love interests: Hannah, Liz, Marlon, a bonus triad route with Marlon and Liz, and if the first stretch goal is reached, even a one-night stand with Donna. Not bad for a “smaller game”. The story draft is already past 100,000 words as well!

Please visit the Kickstarter page and check the various updates, since I posted a lot of spicy stuff in form of sketches or sneak previews that you don’t want to miss!

Loren spin-offs idea

As you probably know I’m also working on my next big RPG game (which in this case also has town sim elements) Thieves Of Dingirra, and started thinking about the other Loren’s spin-offs left to do.

The current plan was to do 3 more games, with 4 love interests each, 2 “old” romances and 2 “new” romances. But then, I started looking at ToA: An Elven Marriage results, including lurking in forums to see what people thought of it.

In practice, by having only 4 romances, you can’t offer enough variety to players. I mean, if I make one of my “shorter” (still over 100k words lol) games, like the recent Lilith, because are all yuri, you have many love interests. But if someone is into yuri only (just an example, same thing works for yaoi fans or otome etc) even a big game like An Elven Marriage has only Lydia as love interest!

So I think the average sales of that game were mainly due to that – not enough love interests. I thought that by having much longer love stories could compensate it, and indeed many people loved the “romance extension” of Myrth and Rei storylines, but in the end for people who only play a specific route/romance combo, the rest wasn’t enough.

And so while brainstorming with other devs and fans on my Discord I thought: what if instead of doing 3 more games with 4 love interests, I do 2 more but with 6 each?

The idea is to remove the story set in the Amazon Citadel with slaves revolt, which is a good idea for two reasons: first it would be very specific, and I think hard to write or justify the presence of other characters inside the Citadel the whole time. Second, such a setting would have worked better for a simulation than a RPG gameplay.

So that’s an interesting idea, which I could always pursue later in another game with a different cast, or even same characters but using another artist to have more freedom (as you probably know I have the art needed to finish the sequels but Loren’s artist doesn’t work for me anymore so adding more characters/scenes is complicated).

It would leave us with two games, split like this:

Reign Of War

The next planned spin-off, in addition to Jul, Breza, Draco and Mesphit, there would also be two new characters: Selith (the half lizardwoman) and Odurat (half-orc).

Reign Of Peace

The last planned spin-off (I might change the name since the witches have a prominent role in the story), in addition to Loren, Karen, Amukiki and Chambara, there would also be two new characters: Samaras (originally a vampire, now I changed into something else) and Nook (shaman).

This way each game would have 4 bisexual characters (Loren, Amukiki, Mesphit, Chambara, Jul, Selith, Odurat), 1 gay (Draco, Nook) and 1 lesbian (Karen, Breza). Each game would offer same amount of love interests/romance combos.

Going from 4 to 6 love interests would mean more writing of course – but not that much, and I think from the marketing side each game it would benefit more (because it would be easier for potential buyers to find something for their tastes). Plus, it would mean the games could come out sooner – I know some people are eager to romance again their favorite characters from Loren!

Conclusions

For now all of the above is just me thinking loud, but the more I think about it, the more I think it could be a good idea. Of course, first I have to finish Christine’s Care, and next year Thieves Of Dingirra, so there’s time!

I’ll do my usual “end of the year review” blog post later this month, so for now that’s all!