I was hoping to announce my next game in this post, but unfortunately, I’m not quite there yet. The truth is, wrapping up Thieves of Dingirra has been more challenging than I anticipated. It’s the most ambitious gameplay-wise project I’ve ever taken on. While the story may not be as long as some of my previous RPGs, it’s still shaping up to be at least as substantial as An Elven Marriage.

Right now I’m finishing all the character’s personal quests, and of course each of them has a different theme/setting, a different boss-fight, and a different reward (beside a boost on the relationship value).

In the screenshot above, for example, if you choose to help Ghamal, you’ll receive a permanent discount at his shop, something that can be very useful later in the game. Other characters, like Labwa, will gain a permanent First Strike buff at the start of every battle. These choices are entirely optional, but I think the rewards provide a nice incentive!

I’ve also started coding the “jealousy scenes.” These will effectively determine which romance path you want to follow, but only if you’re romantically involved with more than one character (except for Labwa and Di’Aab since you can unlock a triad ending with them!). And yes, in this game you can reach 100% relationship with anyone. That doesn’t necessarily mean romance: they can remain close friends with no romantic involvement if you choose.

As you see there’s a lot of things to do and test, even if the bigger town management and RPG part is already finished. I still believe I’ll manage to have a game beta towards the end of the month, but I’ll keep you updated.

As for the new game… well, I think I’ll delay the announcement towards the end of month too, I doubt I can make it sooner, though you never know. To be fair I’m starting to feel a bit burned out by this huge project!

And now I explain a bit how I manage to work on so many games every year.

How my release and pre-production process works

Let me try to explain it better. Imagine two games: Game A and Game B. Each game’s development typically goes through three phases:

• Pre-production (brainstorming the game idea, creating some basic assets, drafting the story or parts of it, etc.)
• Production (the real development grind!)
• Polishing/Finalization (beta testing, bug fixing, etc.)

During this final stage, I’m not doing much hands-on development anymore. The story is already written, most of the art is complete (or nearly so), and the code is finished aside from bug fixing. At this point, I spend a lot of time waiting—either for feedback from beta testers, for that last missing icon or background, or for the editor to finish polishing the text (though lately I’ve been trying to have all text edited before beta even begins).

So what usually happens is this: while I’m in the finalization phase of one game, I like to begin pre-production on the next one. That way, I’m not wasting valuable time just waiting. It’s much easier to visualize with an image:

In the current case, game A is of course Thieves Of Dingirra, and game B is … to be announced!

Of course, not always the phase are of same “size” (or better, time). Sometimes a game for unforeseen reasons, could have a longer production or shorter finalization etc. In any case, I always try to have at least the basic idea, plot and some images done for the game B before I even am into finalization phase. This is how I manage to release many games each year.

Now the game B in question is the comedy game with male protagonist, I have already started working on the crowdfunding page, but I’m still missing the trailer and so on. I’ll see if I manage to do it before the end of the month. Might even just take a small break this time, getting old, etc

But at least I can share a sneak preview from some CG scenes of the game:

See you on next month where I really hope to have Thieves of Dingirra beta ready!