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The best moment for an indie

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This is actually the best moment for me, as indie. What I’m talking about? About the period of time between a finished project, and the start of the new one.

Indeed I’ve officially finished writing all the texts needed for Heileen 2: The Hands Of Fate, even if of course I haven’t finished the game itself yet. But from now on, it is just a matter of waiting for the voices / missing art, and playtesting (but I’ve already done that a lot while writing the story). So while there’s still some work to do, nothing that really require my creativity.

Instead, right now I’m thinking about what to do next. I have several other projects going on, but some are long-term ones, or are carried on by other people (I’ve other writers working on more games). For sure the first thing will be to implement a small mini-farming game for the Flower Shop dating sim, and then… don’t know. I am evaluating several ideas right now, including some light-horror stories, an investigative one, a sci-fi team combat based game with story, and more.

It’s going to be a fun end of the month 🙂

Deadlines and commitment

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It’s scary thinking that today is already the 10th october and I announced Heileen 2 for november 🙂 But at same time is thrilling and having a deadline keeps me focused and committed to finishing the game. Not that I wouldn’t have finished it otherwise – but I have the insane tendency to always add more stuff in games. I start small, then day by day I have new ideas and I want to add them all in the game. It might sounds good but it isn’t: if you do something too big too fast, there are several side effect that might happen:

  • bugs – adding too much content/features in short time WILL inevitabily lead to bugs. And you know, nobody likes them 🙂
  • lower quality – this is obvious: adding too much stuff (in my case text or gameplay experiences) in short time means I won’t have time to test them properly and see if they impact the gameplay in a good or bad manner
  • possible delays – last but not least, it can lead to a situation where you won’t meet the deadline. Like happened with Bionic Heart for example, where I delayed the exit of 2 weeks because of voiceovers

Right now I’m still writing the final part but I’m almost done. It’s really nice to see all the various endings, all the possible ways the story of Heileen can end. BUt will it really end with this game? who knows… 😉

Lots of decisions

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morgan-julietIn the final part of Heileen 2 I’m trying to make things less dramatic. Some of the dreams Heileen has are pretty scary, true nightmares. But they don’t really fit too much into the light theme of the first game, so I’m changing slightly direction in this last part.

There will be fun moments and even the endings with the most risky sins like Wrath or Envy won’t be anything too bad.

On the left, meet Morgan and Juliet. Yes, exactly, Morgan isn’t free… even if Heileen instantly fall in love with him. But who knows, maybe things will change through the story, after some events…?

I’m also trying to keep the player active through the whole story. I know that the original Japanese VN have VERY FEW choices, and lot of text, but I think as they are they can’t work well with the western audience (if not at all).

Beside, I too like to have more control over what is happening. I don’t like too much to ask myself “why the main character did that? it was stupid, I should have had the choice to do differently!”.

decisionsSo even during this last part, that in theory was a sort of “prologue”, I’m putting many menu with decisions that will affect (even if in some cases only slightly) the final outcome.

The most important part for the outcome will be the choices you made in the previous 21 dreams, but also what you will pick in this final part: so in summary there will be 14 unique endings (one for each Sin / Virtue) and a sort of early ending for a total of 15 unique endings.

But there also will be several subquest that are triggered through the game and are independent from the main story (even if to finish them you’ll have to reach the pirates part) and the final score that you can reach will be 100 (so 20 different quests that you can solve).

I believe with all that content the game will be quite replayable and long, maybe not as Bionic Heart (who is my longest and more varied game to date) but still not bad at all 😉

Heileen 2, no more dreams

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Today finished writing the last dream for Heileen 2. There will be 3 dreams for each of the 7 sin/virtues, so 21 dreams in total. That alone probably makes the game longer than the original Heileen already. But now starts the fun, the final part with pirates 🙂 In this part, what you did in the previous dreams comes out. Based on previous choices the game builds up a sort of “profile”, so that the final endings matches what you’ve done, the action you did in the past. Beware if you were a sinner 😉

It’s also a relief to finally be able to write a part not in episodes. As I was with Spirited Heart, I’m quite tired and I ran out of ideas about the dreams. Writing small stories that are immediately interesting and not boring is probably one of the hardest tasks for any writer, IMHO. When I wrote Bionic Heart instead, since it was a long story with so many different outcomes, it was easier for me. Each decision would split the plot, but was connected with the story I had already written so far. With the dreams or the Spirited Heart events instead, since they could happen in any order, I couldn’t put any actual references to other characters/event happened in the past!

Anyway, going to have some relaxing time now with my cats 🙂

Heileen 2 officially announced

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Yesterday I sent the PR to the websites (some have already published it). There’s no turning back now 🙂 To stay safe I put November as expected release date. The current situation is:

– story: I should be able to finish the last 3 dreams this week. Then there’s the last part with the pirates, and also the other endings (there are a few ones already written)
– proofread/edit: I still need to get the whole part2 proofreaded/edited, and then send the part3 and the final epilogue with pirates and all the endings!
– art: mid-October I should get all the remaining art for the game!
– voices: I have some voices ready, but there’s still a lot to be done. I have yet to select the male voice actors. Luckily, based on my experience with Bionic Heart, they’re usually quite fast to voice, so I think I can wait until I finish the story completely before asking the voice actors to start their job

I’m also currently thinking if to do a pre-order thing. It would work like that: people could pre-order the game and have it immediately without the voices. The game would be tested of course, there might be some slight bug but nothing serious left. In any case, anyone who preordered could then get the fully voiced game once the voices are all done (and any bug fixed of course).

I’m not yet sure if I’ll go this route, but is something I’m considering…