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Gamasutra articles about my games

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So it looks like is a two out of two. Both my games Summer Session and Heileen were featured on gamasutra by Emily Short (originally part of her ‘Homer in Silicon’ column at sister site GameSetWatch):

Summer Session – Refining Simulation into Narrative

Heileen & The Art Of Game Storytelling

Obviously I’m quite proud of that, even if the article about Heileen doesn’t really speak too much well of the game (but in a constructive way in any case). I really love telling stories, but of course my biggest barrier is the language. Anyway, I’d be also happy just to outline the main plot and have other native english writer do the rest, like if I was a director 🙂

I’ll be surely doing an Heileen 2, even if don’t really know when, probably next year. I’m about to release Spirited Heart at last, after 2 months of crazy delay for translation problems (a lesson to learn…). So I’m a bit late on my planned 4 releases this year: however luckily Ewan Grantham (the writer/programmer behind College Romance) is doing right now the first chapter of a space trilogy that I’ll publish this year, which sounds very interesting and will keep the number of games released higher (even if they aren’t written directly by me).

Right now my plan is:

mid-end of April release Spirited Heart
May/June first episode of Space Trilogy
July/August release of Bionic Heart
September/October release of a mysterious card game… 😉

but of course I know already that this schedule will be messed up completely in the upcoming months, so let’s say that I’d be happy to release at least 3 more games this year 🙂

College Romance released

two is better than oneThis weekend I released the visual novel College Romance: Rise Of The Little Brother. The game was developed by Ewan Grantham, and follows the romantic adventures of a teenager that just entered the college.

Initially there should have been 2 more characters (girls to meet), but we had some problems with the artist which had a really busy month, so we decided to release a sort of “light version” at lower price and then in few months release a Deluxe version.

The cool thing is that this way we’ll be able to gather the feedback of the users about the first release, and add new features to the deluxe version. So far the major requests are about a more expanded dating sim structure like the one present in my other game Summer Session, and in general to have more choices during the game.

This way the game wouldn’t be anymore a real Visual Novel (which usually have much less choices) but well, we should do what the public wants after all 😉

To download the demo please visit the game page.

Spirited Heart update + new game

So in theory by mid-march my new game should have been finished. And it is. The problem is that I wrote a big part of the story (the love/relationship scenes, so the most important) into my own native language, italian. I then handled them to a “translator” so she could deliver me the final texts in time for mid-march.

The result was disastrous. A translation so poor that I would have done much much better myself alone. So, I had no choice but ask another translator (a REAL one this time) to proofread again the texts, resulting in a delay of 1-2 weeks. At this point I think the game will be ready by first days of April.

Some of you might have noticed recently I switched to more casual/simple games. But fear not! I am working also on another game, similar to Magic Stones, called “5 Elements: The RPG Card Game”:

for now I’m still in the planning stage, but I can reveal some features:

– 5 elements that influence the whole game (units and spells): fire, air, nature, death, life. Your initial choice will reflect into the kind of units you can train during the game.
– you’ll create your commander choosing from three types: Warlord, Wizard and Marksman. Each type will unlock some extra powerful leveling options for your units
– several “race packs”. Initially the game will be shipped with only the human race, but I’ll release extra packs containing new cards with new races (amazons, dwarves, etc)
– leveling avatars. The cards all start based on one of the three archetypes: melee, magic and missile. Each base archetype can evolve after level 4 into a more powerful unit, picking an element. Then after the units reach level 15, can evolve into an even more powerful unit.
– I have planned 48 unique units for each race. A unit, different from magic stones, will have a full set of skill and attack options, like a real RPG character.

Ok I think that’s enough to wet your appetite 😀

Bionic Heart promo trailer

I’ve just uploaded a promotional trailer of my upcoming sci-fi game Bionic Heart. It shows the use of the holomap to move to the various game locations, some dialogues, and a hot Helen in jogging outfit 😉
I’m quite proud of what I’ve done so far, and I think this game is definitely different from my previous dating sim /visual novels.

Stay tuned for more info coming soon…

New screens and facebook app

I’ve uploaded on my facebook profile new pictures of the upcoming game, but I have reuploaded here in my blog too:

related to facebook, I made an app to play my webgame inside facebook. If you liked the game and want to see more of those in future, please take a minute to try it at this URL:

http://apps.facebook.com/heileen/

it will ask your permission to post a small feed on your facebook profile saying that you’re playing the free flash game Heileen. This way I hope to get more people interested in visual novels to be able to release more soon! 😀