As usual, in the latest blog post of the year I review what happened and do some considerations. But first of all, my games are on sale on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/pub/winterwolves

and also on itchio: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/
(Steam keys comes with each itchio purchase)

Going back to my “New Year Goals” post earlier this year: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2025/01/new-year-goals-8/

I was enthusiastically saying “If I can achieve all that, finish 3 games and do 3 crowdfunding campaigns, I’d consider 2025 a fantastic year!“

Haha obviously that didn’t happen, indeed I finished 2 games and did only 1 kickstarter, however it still was a very productive year! But let’s start in order.

Christine’s Care release

Throughout my indie career, there have been some games that, even if they didn’t make much money, stayed very close to my heart. Christine’s Care is one of them.

About half of the story was written by an external writer, and I finished the rest with the help of my editor. I added more scenes, the Marlon/Liz triad, and other details. I really enjoyed writing a story that included a disabled character, and Hannah became one of my favorite characters from all my modern-day stories.

The Steam release went “okay”, not great, but not terrible either (especially considering how crowded the visual novel market is on Steam!). Honestly, I didn’t care: I knew from the start that with its setting and genre, it wouldn’t be a big seller (are you planning to sell a plain VN on Steam? Good luck! You’ll need it.). But it was a game I truly wanted to make… a story I needed to tell. And while Hannah is my favorite, I also really like Marlon, Liz, and Donna. To be honest, I even liked the “alone” ending!

The game’s art style is also one of my favorites. I loved it so much that for my other release this year, Thieves of Dingirra, I decided to work with the same artist again for the CG scenes.

Thieves Of Dingirra

The game has been out for too short a time to draw any real conclusions, but so far it’s performed better than I expected. While very different from Christine’s Care, in a way it still shares something with it yes because this is a game I wanted to make too, as a personal challenge. I remember when I told some other indie friend about my intention of making a town management in Ren’Py, they laughed, almost saying “are you crazy? that’s impossible”.

And to be honest, it wasn’t easy! At all. But, somehow, earlier this year I started working on it, and everything clicked together. It was HARD. Very hard. It’s the most difficult game I’ve coded in my indie career. And most importantly, I did it all alone! Yes, because for Loren I had the help of an external coder, and for Amber’s Magic Shop or PSCD: Colonial Defense as well. With this game? I did it all on my own!

I still remember early this year, I think was February and I was having a very hard time figuring out some complex coding stuff and for a moment I thought “why I decided to complicate my life with this game?”. But the satisfaction I had once it was complete is hard to express by words. Probably the closest thing I experienced before was when I finished Planet Stronghold 2, another very big game.

In the end, I spent about 10-12 months on this game, and honestly it was a bit too much, in the end I was exhausted. And this leads to the final consideration.

From lone wolf to pack member

I’ve always made games mostly on my own in the last 20 years (crazy, I know). I did only a few collaborations, but in general while obviously I outsourced stuff (art, music, writing, etc) I was the one doing the games, putting everything together. And in recent times, things went even more extreme, to the point that I was doing all the coding, writing, and even some GUI stuff or videos myself!

This year after finishing Thieves Of Dingirra I realized that I was so tired that I couldn’t even think about trying to do some marketing. Now, while I think marketing as most indie intend it is overrated (I plan to write a blog post about this in future) it’s still something that you HAVE to do. In general, I realized that what I want to do is… make games. And this is why I decided to try partnering with Andrealphus for my next game. After talking with them, and knowing that I could still develop the game on my own, and they would take care of the parts I don’t like or don’t know how to make (marketing, adding animations, etc) I thought, let’s try!

Talking with other indies, they had some positive experiences doing partnerships. I think the important is to pick the right person/team to do that. Doesn’t mean “the best or most famous you can get”. For me the best is someone who shares the same vision about the games I make, that has good work ethics, and so on.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that while before I was absolutely sure I’d never work with someone, now I’m more open about the idea, since I think joining forces can bring more benefits to both parties involved.

I will still make many games “solo” of course, but if this experiment with Glamour Photographer works, it won’t be the last time! And remember to bookmark the KS campaign page since it should be launching earlier next year: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer/

That’s all for now, I hope you’re enjoying the holidays and I wish you all a happy new year! In the next blog post I’ll talk about my ambitious goals for 2026.

It’s time to talk about my next game. Like many of my projects, its origins go back several years. I won’t deny that HuniePop has been a major influence, especially its match-3 mechanics, but once the game is out, you’ll see that it’s a very different experience.

The managerial / simulation part is bigger in this game, while not being particularly complex. I’d say is a “casual style simulation”. Yes you’ll have finances to manage, a roster of models, different locations and all that, but I’ve finished doing the tutorial now and I believe I’ve presented the information in a very simple way so that even players not used to this kind of games will have an easy time.

In the past, when coding my games, I used to skip tutorials or do them quickly. But it’s wrong, because not everyone is a fan of a certain genre or in general what it’s obvious to you as coder/designer of the game, could be counter-intuitive to a player who is not used or new to the genre.

And so I made a step by step tutorial showing the main screens of the game and what they do. For example below you see the trends screen (accessed by clicking on the magazines in the main desk hub):

In this case it’s a “unique trend”. Unique trends require a specific combo of location and model, indeed each model has a flavor/trait that matches each unique trend, like in the example Anna, the first model you encounter (your former schoolmate) has the Rustic flair, and you’ll do your first photoshoot in her family barn.

During the tutorial the trends are fixed to let players understand better the mechanics, but of course later in the game they’ll be randomized (they update once a month).

Beside the unique trends there’ll be “generic” ones that require only a specific location/set, but work with any model. For example we could have a location like the beach that will work with Outdoor, Vibrant, Public trends, or a location like the Kitchen that will have Indoor, Intimate, Cozy, Soft, etc.

The trends will be useful because when you sell the photos to magazines, if you match the current trend you’ll get bonus money, adding a bit of strategy. There’ll be other things that boost the photos value, like the model’s fame (a famous model’s photos will be worth more), the outfit (ahem, naked pictures will get a big bonus!) and so on.

There’ll be several other aspects that will influence the gameplay. During the photoshoot, which takes the form of a match 3, you’ll get bonuses depending on the model:

For example Miyoki likes Mystery (black) and Romance (light-blue) and dislikes Passion (red). Matching those gems will give you a multiple bonus (or malus, in case of Challenge).

On the right instead you see that each location has an impact on the chances of certain gems to appear: in this case the kitchen increases the ligh-blue by 15%, green by 10% and decreases purple by -10%. So certain locations works better with certain models.

The camera and lighting are two kind of upgrades you can buy, the first one reduces the timer of the move suggestion (gems will blink suggesting the move) and the other adds seconds to the photoshoot timer.

Last but not least, at the bottom of the screen there’s a bar that fills as you match gems and indicates the photo’s quality: the better the quality, the more valuable will be.

As you see, even if I just released Thieves of Dingirra last month, I’ve been very busy on this game. In the following months I hope to introduce each model (I’m still writing the story though) and share more screenshots and also announce the Kickstarter date!

See you towards the end of the month when I’ll do my usual “end of year post” in which I’ll discuss how this year went for me. And if you’re interested in Glamour Photographer be sure to bookmark this page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer/