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Visual Novels in AAA games market

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No, outside Japan there aren’t any AAA-commercial quality visual novel games, of course. BUT – and it’s sa big but, the visual novel elements are starting to pour into the normal AAA genres. Some examples? Mass Effect, The Witcher, and probably more I haven’t played.

Ok, but why you say this? What exactly defines a visual novel, and differentiate it from a normal RPG game? Well in the cases above is really difficult, but I think I could say that while RPGs had NPC and quests already as a feature, the way those two games present the dialogues and the choices makes them much more close to visual novel than other games. Indeed, there aren’t simply quests: first, there is LOT of dialogue. Those games are fully voiced (well, like all my future ones) so that helps a lot. Many people don’t like when there’s much text to read, but if you present the same text under the form of a movie/cartoon, with moving actors, scenes and voices, it’s VERY different (in practice is the difference between reading a book or watching a tv movie). In those games, there are MANY choices. Both on Mass Effect and The Witcher you can influence lots of characters/factions, and in the end, really change your ending.

RPGs always had the possibility to make choices, but to influence the world/characters around you and “unlock” different endings? No, that’s more a visual novel thing, to me 😉

Both those games were huge successes, selling million of copies. Of course, it’s not JUST because of the visual novel component: but I like to think that it played a big role. Yes, you can have visual novels features in a AAA game and not bore the western gaming public: you just need to insert them into a context with many other gameplay types (shooters, strategy, simulations). That’s what I’m going to do with The Flower Shop and Planet Stronghold 🙂

Romance and sex in games

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Sex in games, especially in casual games has always been a sort of “taboo” topic. Which makes me laugh. Looking at the recent portals top10 you see, beside the usual cute-girly games, also some “CSI” themed games. Investigations, mysteries, secrets. Which is good of course. But with lots of blood, weapons, violence (even if clearly not splatter).

I personally have no problem with that. Even in my game Bionic Heart there are some disturbing scenes (human organs floating inside glass cylinders full of liquid for example). What makes me laugh is that while you can show that without problems to everyone (including teenagers), the parents gets insanely angry the instant you mention something even VAGUELY sexy.

I’m not talking about pornography of course! But if you have watched any tv-series in past 7 years, you’ll notice that beside violence, there are quite some sexual references. House M.D., just to make a well-known example, has PLENTY of those. But try mentioning in a game that the main character is a bisexual hot girl, and you’ll get instantly bashed as a satanic programmer 😀

Talking about romance instead, Flower Shop is full of it. I got some complaint for my previous games from some customers, saying that there wasn’t enough romance in them, and now reading the last lines of some characters I understood completely what they meant. Ayu is a great writer of course, and I’m glad she wrote this game since with my english I wouldn’t have been able to express such situations so well 🙂

The game is progressing well and soon we’ll start with the voices while we finish the farming sim and add the last pieces of art. Don’t have any official release date but I guess Q1 of 2010 could be a good estimate.

Heileen 2 status update

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Today got a bunch of new art for the game. You can see some screens on this post. The first one is a group of natives you’ll meet on the island. They look really friendly, don’t they? 🙂 The second, is the gallery screen, where you can replay the endings you have unlocked (similarly to Bionic Heart). I really love the two Heileen Devil / Angel pictures. To be honest my favourite is the Devil one!

I have only a few more BGs to get and then the game will be completed, art-wise. However there are still many missing voices. I gave lot of thought about possibly releasing a sort of “pre-order” version, without voices: but talking with several friends (customers and other developers) they agreed that wouldn’t make much sense. People wouldn’t play the game again just to hear voices, so they would just have a lower-quality experience. This means that the game will probably be done in December though 🙁 So please remember this Christmas to ask  Heileen 2 as gift!

What are “light-RPG” games?

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I remember when I was young, the game genres where very well defined: there were action games, adventure games, role playing games and so on.

As the game industry grew up, some interesting genre-mix started to pop up. For example now we all refer to Diablo as a RPG, but would be more accurate to call it Action-RPG. Actually, right now, we can find many “RPG elements” in lots of games. Very few “pure action” games remains.

One of my upcoming games, Planet Stronghold, is a “light-RPG” game. I consider it a visual novel with RPG elements, but stronger than those you can usually find in dating sims. What I exactly mean? I’m talking about quests, relationships, interactiveness? No, because many of those features were already present in my other “normal VNs”. In Heileen 1-2 there are quests, in Bionic Heart relationship and some interactive scenes, in Summer Session there are the stats/skills to improve and so on.

So to call the game “light-RPG” I knew I had to go forward and push renpy to its limits (well no, not really, is quite easy to achieve good results with it!). Indeed in Planet Stronghold there will be combat, an inventory, quests, character relationships and so on. There will be several kind of weapons based on the damage type: energy, piercing, explosive, etc. There will be 4 classes: psionic, soldier, guardian and scout, each one with special advantages.

BUT, the game won’t be FILLED by stats. You’ll clearly know from beginning what kind of gameplay you can expect from a certain class. Scouts will need lot of time to recharge but will be able to kill opponents with a single shot, especially human ones. Guardians will be tough and have lots of hitpoints, psionics duty instead will be to heal / protect others. That’s why I use the word “light”, because while is clearly a RPG game, it’s not hard to understand.

Clearly is not easy to create a game like that. Is actually harder than creating an uber-complex game like some I did in the past (Magic Stones or Supernova 2 for example). Because with this game, even a casual player should be able to pick up the game and after learning a few basics, being able to enjoy the game without getting lost not knowing what to do.

Space RPGs !

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There aren’t many space RPG. There is fallout, but is more post-apocalyptic RPG than pure space RPG. I remember some good wargames like Space Hulk & Co. But really very few space RPGs. Especially Manga RPG (I’m talking about Pc/Mac platforms, not consoles).

So, I’ve decided to make one! The two screenshots you see in this page are from Planet Stronghold, my upcoming space RPG. Originally that game should have been another wargame, similar to Supernova 2. But after falling in love with Python I decided that doing a space RPG (with some VN elements of course!) could have been a more interesting game experience.

The player will control the adventures of Lisa Nelson, a young cadet just graduated from the Royal Army, that gets sent on the military outpost of Planet Stronghold to train. Of course, as soon as she arrives there, the situation will go out of control… 🙂