Lately, I have noticed some signs of a potential crackdown on adult games in various online stores. The most recent example is itchio de-listing from search results adult games (or even developers) from their platform. As far as I understand, this means that you can still sell through itchio, but customers can only access your games from external sources (like your own website).

update: Speaking with some devs, seems like itchio delisted adult games from collections when their devs set to 0% the itchio’s cut, which is really understandable. Also, shame on those devs! Itchio desevers some money for their good service!

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the last few months I’ve heard a lot of stories:

• the company porting my VN to consoles explicitly said that they don’t allow adult stuff anymore, but not just that. Even small nudity is not allowed, or (depending on the platform) even underwear or revealing outfits…!
• I know at least three devs (won’t name them but maybe you know them already since are mutual followers on Twitter) who had their games outright REJECTED by Steam. Not even launching! For different reasons, but all tied to the adult content present in them
• payment processors like Paypal or Stripe never liked adult stuff even before, but seems like they’re becoming even more strict. As you can imagine this has a big impact on selling online

You probably get the idea. Those who have been following me for a long time, since my first VN Heileen in 2008, know very well that adult stuff is not my main focus. I added it to my games in the last few years because many fans requested it, and because realistically games with adult content sell better.

The picture above is from Loren – my first game to have actual nudity. This is the “censored” version of Chambara’s romance scene. Even fully dressed I don’t think the scene loses appeal..

But I always made it optional in my games. I always offered a “clean” or better “mild / non explicit” version of my games, because I know that not everyone enjoys that kind of content.

To be fair, with the exception of a few games (At Your Feet, TFTU series, The Beastmaster Princess) my games never had very explicit stuff going on. But you know how it is, it’s easy to generalize and then someone just having sexy outfits and some tasteful erotica scenes is compared to people doing extreme porn stuff, even if it’s like comparing apple with oranges…

Personally, if I’ll be forced to stop doing adult games, it won’t affect me much because even in my most silly games like At Your Feet, I always put a lot of emphasis on story, character growth, intriguing themes. The sexual element was just an extra thing, not the main point of the story, or at least it could be completely cut out and the games wouldn’t lose all their charm.

I think for now I’m going to leave the already released games as they are and wait to see how things unfold. But for future games I believe I’ll have to say goodbye to erotic stuff. There will be sexy outfits and romance, flirting and sexual jokes (I hope our supreme rulers will still allow us to do that!!!) but I’ll steer clear of anything too risky.

Because in case you don’t remember, just 4-5 years ago Google decided to ban my entire developer account on Android, making me lose a small but decent income stream, because of this very reason. Of course I’m sorry for people who like that kind of content, but if the same thing happened again with itchio or Steam, it would be the end for me.

I am not sure how developers doing full porn stuff can keep doing it, seems so risky right now!

First of all I want to thank everyone who supported the “Save the World” Kickstarter. After Bionic Heart and Planet Stronghold 2 I wasn’t sure I’d ever do a sci-fi story again but thanks to people’s support I was able to.

Today I want to talk about something that often comes up either as form of players’ comments or just as general discussions. The game (story) length and amount of love interests in visual novels.

Of course, if you ask players, they’ll want every visual novel to be 300,000 words long and have 10 love interests, minimum. Or maybe not – indeed recently many of my followers expressed interests in some shorter stories, claiming they never had the time to finish my longer games (like Planet Stronghold 2 for example, 330,000 words long).

I personally believe that word count can’t be the only parameter to judge whether a visual novel is worth it or not. Writing and story quality matters a lot more than length. A super boring but very long story isn’t better than a shorter but better-written and more interesting one. But that’s not all: it also depends on whether the story has a lot of branching or not.

I’ve never made “kinetic novels” or visual novels with very little choices because I think it would be weird, but in practice the more choices, branching and different ending you have, the less likely a single playthrough will consist of the full story length.

For obvious reasons, while many players just play the game once, some players might want to replay the game until they have seen all endings or even all possible paths. That’s why in my recent titles, I’ve started showing the ‘total amount of script seen’ statistic in percentage in the options screen so that players can get an idea of how much potential story they’re still missing.

(note that it counts every single word, so like even a variant depending on your personality or other small things. So if you see 96% of script done, you’ll surely have seen all the main story scenes!)

Pricing games and content

My recent Kickstarter for the game “Save the World” had a base pledge price of 8 eur (it’s always hard to me to find the right conversion since USD and EUR currencies change very often). Even when it will be out on regular stores (itchio and Steam) its price will likely be 7.99 usd.

It’s cheap and yes it’s going to be a short game, because I think will be enough to develop my game idea – if I start adding scenes just to reach a higher wordcount it’s similar to what tv series do with “filler episodes” and I honestly I hate that. Also, I have a sort of rule in my pricing, tied to wordcount and romances amount.

My “regular” games (Nicole, Heirs & Graces, etc) had a story between 120-140,000 words and four love interests. That was a formula I used for a long time and I still keep it as sort of reference, even if clearly it’s not a fixed rule. Those games costs around $19.99 fullprice.

Of course it’s impossible to always standardize prices based on contents. Sometimes there can be “better” or “worse” deals but it also depends on the game story. And that’s is really hard for me to judge, because I can’t even be sure myself if a story will be popular or not.

I mean, all the recent games I wrote myself (Planet Stronghold 2, Hazel, After Midnight) all have very positive review ratings on Steam, but I’m not so cocky to think that every story I’ll write will be so well received. Still I have to price the games somehow, and so if games with 120k words + 4 romances were priced $19.99, I think a game about half the length and half love interests should cost around $9.99. In the case of Save the World which will have those numbers, the price will be even less.

Last but not least artwork is also a big factor in VNs. I know some of my fans buy VN from other devs, even with mediocre writing, just because are fan of a certain artist or art-style. And that’s fine – sometimes I watch tv series just because I know that actor/actress is in it, and even if the story isn’t particularly good, I love their acting so much that I still watch them. So that’s another thing to consider.

Conclusions

I just wanted to share this to explain how difficult is sometimes to find the “right price” for a game. For example I’ve seen some porn games with zero plot but a lot of CG scenes selling for $15, and getting many positive reviews. So it’s hard to know what people really want!

Also, considering how quickly games get discounted (even 20-30% after 1 year or so) all this talk about price doesn’t even make much sense, since you can always wait to buy a game when it’s discounted, if you’re not sure it’s worth its full price.

I plan to continue trying to make my best in doing the stories I want to tell and hope people will be happy with it.

First of all, my new fantasy visual novel “The Beastmaster Princess” is now out both on itchio and Steam.

You can buy it from here: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/the-beastmaster-princess

Or here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2150020/The_Beastmaster_Princess/

As already posted previously for the Steam version I decided to save myself the useless efforts of trying to censor it and just went with adult-only category. But the game can still be played with suggestive outfits/content off if you like.

Thanks once again to all Kickstarter backers for helping me finish this game.

Are you ready to Save the World?

My next Kickstarter is also live. This is one of the shorter VN I want to make I was talking about in past months, that I plan to release in between the bigger projects like ToA: An Elven Marriage.

For more information about the game please visit the Kickstarter (you can also click the image above). The game is set in London, and the protagonist is Ekiya, an Indian immigrant in the UK who is struggling with her life but she has a good heart. The encounter with the aliens will change her life forever. Note that despite taking place in the same city, the game is not related to my previous title Bionic Heart.

The game’s premise is based on this concept: what would happen if aliens arrived and believed that our society was flawed, and the solution was to redistribute wealth by killing the world’s wealthiest individuals on a daily basis?

The premise is just the start as the game will feature even more wild events. There are two love interests, your childhood friend and roommate Sarah and Xen, who is a non-binary character and the leader of the aliens.

But considering how cute Agent Castillo turned out (I have a long tradition of making hot secondary character) I hope that also the stretch goal gets achieved!

The game will feature optional adult content, but since the story is focused on the aliens, I’m going to make sure that this time there’s a clean version playable by anyone. And of course many cute moments the ones below:

That’s all for now. As I’m writing this the game was already funded but as said before there are some very interesting stretch goals I hope to reach!

I am excited to announce that my upcoming game, The Beastmaster Princess, is now in beta testing on itch.io. The testing phase is expected to conclude by the end of the month, after which the game will be available on Steam. Purchasing on itch.io will also provide a free Steam key.

For more information please visit: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/the-beastmaster-princess

I have chosen to classify the game as “adult only” due to its setting, which features revealing outfits for characters in a desert and nomad setting. Additionally, Steam has a policy of categorizing games with manga art as adult only, so it made more sense to put it in this section rather than waste time censoring it. This decision was also influenced by similar experiences of other game developers who had their games categorized as adult only despite mild content.

The only drawback is that the game will not be available for purchase in certain countries, such as Germany, due to its adult only classification on Steam. However, I believe that players interested in this type of game have likely already switched to purchasing through itch.io.

ToA: An Elven Marriage update

In other news, I’ve made some good progress also on ToA: An Elven Marriage, going past 150,000 words of story. It’s kind of fun to work mainly on a game (Beastmaster Princess) and then during the dead moments work on a complex RPG! And also plan the next small game Kickstarter as well, which will be live next month. Rest assured, despite the workload, I am taking precautions to prevent burn-out and have learned from past experiences.

Anyway a feature I added recently was the possibility to pick ANY romance from Loren even if that character is not present or is not a main character of the story:

What’s the point you might ask? Well, if someone wants to be “loyal” to a specific love interest and they’re not in the game… in that case it’s like if they were playing with no romance though, since you won’t be able to unlock any romance CG. The relationship points though will still work, as well as the personal quests.

Just to recap quickly, to avoid confusions:

1. there isn’t any “Loren 2”. Instead, 4 spin-off games focused on Elenor/Saren (the real protagonist now!)
2. in each of the 4 games, there will be 2 “old” romances (from Loren) + 2 new romances (new characters). Of course, always different in each game.
3. in each game you can either: continue an old romance, or start as single and romance one of the two new characters
4. for those who wants to roleplay, they can pick any love interest from Loren, even those NOT present in the story. But of course, no romance path or CG will take place

In this game using this system will actually be rather easy. In the next one will be a bit more difficult since for example Loren IS NOT a love interest (both Loren and Karen will be in the 3rd game that focuses on the Amazons and the slavery themes etc). However both Loren and Karen will be present in the second game as NPC/secondary characters.

So if I allow this “roleplay thing” I’ll need to write a few variants in this case. Still NOT a full romance path. I hope I managed to explain. And I hope it will be worth it lol

Note that I’ll do the same also for the NEW romances. Example: in ToA:An Elven Marriage you romance Lydia/Nathir. In the next game (Reign of War, another demon war themed story) beside all the older romance you’ll be able to roleplay and start as if you romanced Lydia (or Nathir).

To summarize: you have the option to choose any previous love interest from prior games in the series (beginning with Loren). If the character is a central figure in that specific story, you will experience a full romantic storyline. If not, you will receive references or mentions and only a few scenes. Generally, if they are not main characters, they will have very limited screen time.

Last but not least: this series of games uses the parallel universes or if you prefer, the multi-verse system. So in one world, Saren is the hero who fought alongside Loren and became her lover. In another, is Elenor and she fell in love with Chambara. Etc etc. However, there will be some major world-event that will be fixed.

So for example in every “universe” they defeated Fost with the help of Zeal (he’ll be present in the first two spin-off games). In every universe, Loren becomes the new Queen. Both Karen and Loren are alive, so is Mesphit. And so on.

Phew. Why I decided to make such complex, branching plot games? I don’t know, really, but I hope you’ll have fun as I am doing world building.

Happy New Year! As every year, I’ll set my own new year goals in the first post of the year.

This time I’m taking into account my eye issues, which luckily for now doesn’t seem too bad. But still something to consider especially for big games like the RPGs – staying hours looking at spreadsheets to balance enemies/items is not healthy for the eyes, as you can imagine!

Anyways: like past year, I’ve a Kickstarted game to finish, The Beastmaster Princess, and I plan to finish it in the first quarter. I’m not sure yet when exactly, but definitely should happen in first months of the year. I have currently 4 chapters out of 5 fully edited, I might still add a few things there and there, but if I had to guess, February or early March at the latest could be a good candidate for the beta release.

After this, the next game to be out should be ToA: An Elven Marriage. I’ve basically worked on it already last year in “my spare time” but being a full RPG (with some new tweaks/features of course) it takes longer than a pure VN.

I’d like to say it will be out in Q2-Q3, but maybe I could release a smaller game first to avoid burn-out. I’ll need to see (as usual I’m working on several games at once).

Ah yes, about the smaller games: I already spoke about this in my Patreon, in practice I’m going to try making some sci-fi games but more in the Black Mirror style, so not space opera, but “alternate reality”, “crazy situations”, etc.

I think I’ll be able to release one of those games this year, and will be about aliens but… I believe it’s a new idea, different from what already seen.

Oh, I also started brainstorming the next (and likely last) game of the Tales From The Under-Realm series (yuri only like the other titles). For now all I can say is that Evelyn from After Midnight will be a love interest, and the protagonist will be a half-demon named Lilith. Not a bad start, eh?