If you’ve followed me on socials you already know about the beta testing phase of my new game, Thieves of Dingirra. The game is currently already available on itchio, with all the content (no censorship). You can find it here: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/thieves-of-dingirra

The beta is already in a very good shape, I believe most of the bugs have been fixed and I know that many people reached the end of the game without problems. Regarding Steam, as usual things are a bit more complicated, but while I haven’t heard back from them yet, I’m hoping that the game can be released in early November! You can wishlist the game from this page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/617990/Thieves_Of_Dingirra/

The biggest game I’ve ever done

Yes, I said this many times in the past, and I can surely say that this game is the biggest game I’ve ever done, by a wide margin. Not for the amount of narrative content: for that, Cursed Lands and Planet Stronghold 2 are still the biggest ones with over 300,000 words each (though even this game has 200,000 words on top of everything else!).

But for gameplay there’s no match: beside having the usual RPG combat, I’ve added a roguelike missions (with branching choices), each missions concludes with a custom boss fight, and of course there’s the whole town conquest/management with all the related stuff (NPC management, upgrade buildings, etc).

You can’t imagine how much time this game took to make. Even though the Kickstarter only launched earlier this year, I’ve actually been working on the project for 5–6 years. As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes you have a game idea but lack the technical skills, or you hit burnout, or your favorite tool (in my case, Ren’Py) just isn’t advanced enough yet to bring your vision to life. When that happens, you end up waiting, hoping the right opportunity will come along.

And this happened this year. I must be honest that I’m surprised myself I was able to code such a complex game without burning out completely (well, I am a bit now, but I am taking breaks !). I had also to do several tricks to make sure the game would run fine on Ren’Py and also on moderately older hardware (and on Steam deck, for example). I think I made a fairly good work, using tricks like hiding the building buttons/icons when they’re off-screen and so on.

It made me go back in time when I used to code on much older/slower computers, and had to resort to those tricks to keep speed reasonable. Honestly, I had a lot of fun doing this part. I also had fun in writing/adapting the story (original draft was made long time ago and without considering to run a party or a complex gameplay) and I hope I did a good job with that too.

I’d like to make more strategy/simulation games mixed with VN/dating sim mechanics. Indeed, my next project will be exactly like that (albeit this time much simpler!).

The Glamour Photographer gameplay

I’m sure most people looking at the Kickstarter page will be mostly drawn into this game by the beautiful manga art. But there’s much more. I plan to have a full simulation gameplay, but very simple/user friendly, of the whole glamour photography business.

Of course, being a comedy game I’m not aiming at it to be super historical accurate or anything but I want to offer a nice gameplay beside… you know, the main attraction of the game! 🙂

So it will have a full simulation in which you can schedule photo shootings, go around to find new potential models, choose a location, check local magazines to see the latest trends (if you make photos following the current trend you’ll earn bonuses) and so on. All from this screen:

Each item above has a in-game function, but don’t worry it won’t be particularly complex. The photo shoot will be done in a match3 style minigame, which should offer some break from the management part. This game has a lot of artwork and I hope the Kickstarter will do well.

If you want to be informed when it launches, you can bookmark the game by visiting this page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer

I’m also talking with another indie doing adult games for a possible collaboration on this game to make it even better/bigger. Stay tuned for more news next month!