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Seasons Of The Wolf official release!

Yep, the “supposedly – small – RPG – game” is finally out! 😀

I made a few minor bugfixes since the soft-release, updating the game to version 1.0.5. though the only real problem was a bug when replaying the game after you replayed one of the ending romances from the gallery screen.

A short post-mortem

I can’t make a real post-mortem since the game is just out since 15 days, and even if had a very long testing/preordering stage, it’s not enough to draw any conclusions. However I can safely say that if sales continues this way, the game could beat Loren’s success, which wasn’t really something I was counting on 🙂 Of course, IF the sales continues this way, which might not happen. I think by the end of year I’ll have a better idea if doing this crazy huge RPG was a good investment of my time or not.

Honestly I wish I had made the game with less features. Less than 12 skills each character. I wish I made less than the 300+ battles in the game or the over 115 different enemies. Maybe I should have avoided some extra sidequests, or the isometric map. The unlockable quest/location bonuses. Some hidden areas to do grinding. The huge amount of background images (more than double Loren’s). The art quality, using 5 artists at once (never happened with any other game). Or the theme song and full epic soundtrack. Adding still romances despite all the amount of content, and two CGs each romance (a kissing scene, and an ending scene).

Why, you ask? because it was hard to price the game, considering the time/money invested on it. About that…

Steam release and pricing

I was unsure what to do until today, originally I had planned to sell the game for $29.99 also because of the crazy amount of time I’ve personally spent on it, however… considering many players play my games mainly for the romances, in the end it didn’t seem fair to them.

For those who like more gameplay, I think it’s a great deal at this price since will keep you busy FOR HOURS! Seriously, I have some testers who spent over 50-60h on it, of course in Hard/Nightmare difficulty mode, completing all the achievements/quests 😉

As for Steam, just today the game was accepted, but since I don’t want to rush things will add the game there in January (I need to do all the achievements, testing, etc). But at least now you know that if you buy direct you’ll get a free key because the game will be on Steam soon!

Differences vs Loren

I want to stress this again: the game is much more RPG/combat focused than Loren. There isn’t the same amount of romances or “camp talk” dialogues with each character. It is a bit more similar, gameplay wise, to my first RPG Planet Stronghold, even if of course much more polished.

So if you’re looking for something like Loren, you better wait for Loren 2, or Roger Steel which will be much more similar to that game (as I often say, more VN and less RPG). If instead you want more RPG gameplay but still with a story, then this game is for you. As always, there’s a free demo to try before you buy.

Overall, it was a “small game” that somehow turned into the biggest game I’ve ever made. It’s not necessarily a bad thing of course 🙂 but I need a break badly from such big projects, so don’t expect any new RPG like this one out in 2015. I mean, I will probably start working on Roger Steel next year for example, but the actual game won’t be out for sure before 2016. Even SOTW was started in Summer 2013, and the first beta was out in Spring this year…making good and long games takes time!

Mobile release

What about mobile? I’ll start working on it, but is really a bad moment now with Christmas and everything else (really busy!). I will TRY to do the mobile port in time, but might slip into January. The mobile version, beside obvious testing, needs some changes to the interface to be more playable on touch based devices. Also, it’s probably going to be quite slow on low-end/old devices because of the isometric map. Anyway, as always will use in-app purchases so you can play/test the game first and decide if is worth spending your money on the mobile version.

The upcoming games

Meanwhile, next year you’ll enjoy Nicole yuri for sure, then there’s a big amount of games in progress: Heirs and Graces (the yaoi only dating sim), another still unnamed yuri only dating sim (check this poll in forums if you want to help give it a name!), PSCD, Queen Of Thieves, Amber’s Magic Shop… and I’m probably missing something! 😀

Lots of active projects! As always I will finish the one which is more advanced, so I think PSCD is the one more likely to be out soon together with Nicole yuri. For the others, I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes 😉

November update!

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A mockup of the character inventory screen for Queen Of Thieves

The image above is a mockup I made for the GUI artist, for the game Queen Of Thieves. Does anyone remember it? 😀

When I first announced it, was very long time ago. Yes it was February 2011!! Lots of things happened since then, and to be honest I am almost glad that I had to put the game on hiatus for a long time, since now I have the knowledge and the resources to make the game as I wanted and much better.

Most of what I said in that post is still valid. The main change in the game is that your mother is not dead but being held captive. “Oh noes, a damsel in distress!” Well yes, but to save her there are 3 other younger damsels 😉 There will be the father/husband but he will only be present to give advice and run the shop.

Artist resumed working on it, currently he’s adding 3 new female characters since I’m going to have also yuri options (not as DLC, but all in one). The romances are 6 for each gender, in practice each girl will have two romance options. Obviously, this will make someone unhappy (why Joanne can’t date Fredrick! Why Thalia can’t date Tiberius! etc) but is normal, so I’m not too worried about that 😉

It’s another “experimental game”, since for the first time you control all three the characters. It will be strange maybe, sort of “The Sims”, in which you kind of play as God and decide their fate (including the romances). I am still thinking how it will work in details regarding the romances, currently it works like this, at least the first scenes (click to enlarge the storyboard):

Tiberius for example (the guard captain): can be romanced by Kira and Joanne. But only by ONE of them. In the game, you’ll control all the girls, but depending on your choices, only one of those two will get the romance. This means that in theory, there can be only one combination in which each female character gets 1 romance each. In all other cases, there will be two.

However, considering I have to rewrite the game from scratch (the current writing was 3/4 done but the quality doesn’t match my recent much higher standards, so I have decided to redo it), I could change that, maybe just have one romance each girl, since I don’t want this to become “yet another monstrous game that won’t be out before YEARS” 😀

As for the gameplay, I am thinking to reuse the one from the SOTW maps/dungeons, maybe with some changes. There will also be two other “mini-games”, I still have to decide how to code them. I’m in the design stage in practice, so while I’ve resumed working on this, definitely doesn’t mean will be ready anytime soon!

Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense update

It’s fun to see the original artwork and the revamped version of the same alien race!

Above you see the Matrick from Planet Stronghold 1 (the RPG) and the same alien in a new style, the style of PSCD. They’re very different but both cool 🙂

The writer has written a good amount of the initial missions, and also planned the whole storyboard. Of course, even in this game are still in early stages, since there isn’t yet a single working mission 😀 but hopefully I’ll have something to show in the next weeks!

Finally, about Seasons Of The Wolf, the soft release is going well, with only some minor bug fixes/rare bugs and improvements done in the last couple of updates. So really I’m quite happy how things are going so far! 🙂 Definitely next Friday I’ll officially announce it.

Seasons Of The Wolf soft release!

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First of all, happy Halloween 🙂 The image above seemed appropriate for this occasion!

I’m proud to announce that I’ve put SOTW live on my site. Is still in “soft release” mode. What does it means? It’s a sort of soft-launch, not because is not complete (it has been complete since two weeks!) but because there might still be some small bug or gameplay tweak.

I want to be clear, the game is complete, you can play the full story and discover all its secrets. There are only some minor things like battle tweaking/balancing, we’re currently trying to make the battle shorter by lowering enemies HP in some scenes, but still trying to preserve the difficulty by increasing their attack/speed.

In one of the latest updates I even added a “tweak menu” that the user can invoke with the letter key o:

Since I don’t have big testing team and limited resources I thought to try that, since is optional it means the base game is untouched, but if enough people play with it and share their experiences, I might “commit” the tweaks. I think the first one should be “safe”, but you never know. The latest option, +30% attack and +15% speed with -30% HP can lead to some funny results 😀

Ideally I wanted to release the game next month, in mid-end of November, before the “Christmas madness” (in which a lot of titles and promotion take up all the people’s attention). However after spending a year on it, I definitely don’t want to rush things! That’s why I’ve added that menu, to get some final feedback from players.

The game price is currently at $24.99 but will increase to $29.99 once it’s officially out (not before mid-November in any case). Why? Because the game lasts longer than Loren+DLC put together! Really, is very long 🙂 And also has a lo more features (isometric map, randomized items, lots of skills, better battles, more animation/characters/locations, etc etc).

Also, this isn’t an official announcement yet, but I’m talking with the writer about a possible DLC. I won’t go in details since would involve spoilers about the story 🙂 But it should be an interesting setting/story, happening after the events of act4.

People asked me about mobile and/or Steam: the game definitely will come to mobile, even if I’m not sure how playable will be on small screen device (as always you’ll have a demo to play before deciding if is worth buying) and regarding Steam I’ve put the game on Greenlight here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=314755751

I am not sure if I was supposed to put it there, but anyway getting more votes won’t hurt 😉

I have no time estimate for when it will be on Steam but as always if you buy direct you’ll get a free Steam key later, so not a big deal! As for mobile I first need to do some tweaks to the interface to adapt it to the touch devices, so that will take longer (at least a month).

That’s it for now! Stay tuned for news about the other games.

PSCD – Meet Rigel

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Time to introduce another PSCD character. He’s the BxB romance, albeit not one of the heroes (he has no skills in battle).

Name: Rigel A. Luvene
Nation of Origin: Australia
Service Branch: Mechanic/Imperial Vehicle Maintenance

Description:
Among the newest arrivals to the colony, Rigel is the assigned mechanic for the colony’s vehicle hangar. Say what one might, Rigel is considered the best mechanic ever.

However, not everyone viewed Rigel’s arrival with pleasure, for Xavier saw the sable-haired man as a threat to his position. They soon became good friends when Rigel showed Xavier how he could get a 11% acceleration boost in his hovercycle, and extend his jumps by 20 meters. Soon, other people started to show up, making Rigel the goto person for modifying their vehicles and weapons.

Rigel is considered a bit aloof since he spends most of his time in the vehicle bay. Despite Rigel’s obvious skills, reported mechanical mishaps have increased over 50% in the colony. Some of the more cynical attribute this to owner sabotage, hoping Rigel will appear to repair the ‘broken’ vehicles.

When he can be pried away from vehicle bay, Rigel can be found avidly watching the hovercar races in the bar. Some of the few arguments he’s gotten in have been over just who the greatest hovercar driver is; Rigel will go to his grave believing it is Candace Shatz, three time winner of the Death Valley Rally.

This doesn’t mean Rigel eats, breathes, and sleeps oil. Rigel can often be found out among the dunes, the stark beauty reminding him of his earthly home.

Latest news about the other games

As you probably know, Seasons Of The Wolf is going the final testing stage, but is complete since a week. You can play it all and read all the story and unlock all the romances/achievements, even if is still in beta.
For how long will keep it in beta? I am not sure, but perhaps it could be released next Friday, the night of Halloween! That would be cool 🙂

However I’m not in a hurry at all, I want to test it well to make sure that when I officially put it live on my site will be (almost) bug free. Which for such a big game, isn’t an easy task 😉

C14 Dating is also going very well. Deji (main artist) is doing a great job drawing some animated chibis for the schedule activities. Below you can see a WIP of the game GUI done by Therese Yucamco (who did the GUI of Nicole as well):

Is taken from a gameplay video so the quality is not the best, but you can see already how cool it is! 🙂

I’m working also on other projects of course, but I don’t have any significant progress to show you this week. Stay tuned for next Friday!

PSCD – meet Mizuki

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Time to met a new PSCD character: the hot japanese hacker Mizuki!

Name: Mizuki Tsukino
Nickname: Null
Nation of Origin: Japan
Service Branch: Imperial cyber Defense
Specialty: Overclock

Description:
At one time, Mizuki was considered the greatest threat in cyberspace. No target was safe when her avatar, a neon dragon, appeared wreaking havoc on corporate, criminal, or government networks. Not bad for a woman yet to see seventeen summers.

However, despite her almost superhuman talent, she was eventually captured. In a secret court, she was offered two choices: either assist the Empire with her formidable computer skills, or spend the rest of her life in a primitive cell with nothing but rats for company.

It is in military service Mizuki encountered the challenge she craved. Whether it was outwitting the Robobrains in their own cybernetic hives, or adapting to the Vauses’ fluidic thinking, Mizuki found her skills matching, or exceeding their own. This earned her the nickname Null, since her presence was never detected, let alone suspected.

While she is the mistress of the digital world, Mizuki is less sure of herself in what she terms the meat world. After all, how can you trust what you can’t control?

This isn’t to say Mizuki isn’t loyal. She’s had numerous opportunities to escape, covering her absence electronically, but when her comrades spilled blood for her, leaving was the last thought on her mind.

Seasons Of The Wolf last Act/Season coming soon!

You can see a sneak preview of the ending CGs above

This week I’ve worked on the last act, though as you may know if you follow me on twitter, I had already finished the main coding last month. So I am just retesting everything, the battles, the enemies (there are some really tough boss fights!) and in general that all the endings unlocks the intended way.

Speaking of the endings I’ve commissioned new CG images for them, using a different artist, since the original one couldn’t make it in time. I’m rather happy about the result 🙂

I believe I will release this last act/season this weekend or maximum early next week, I’m just waiting to see if I get get some last missing images (but the game works already anyway). Keep an eye on the forums to know when is ready!
In any case, not much left to wait, to see the conclusion of the story. Do you remember the wolf pup in the first season? Well… 😉

Some general considerations: as I’m approaching the end of this project, I have learned several things:

that doing such LONG (really, SOTW is the longest game I’ve EVER MADE!! lol) RPGs it was a real massacre. I’ve worked on it 1 year, of which almost 8-9 months full time which for me is a lot! Think that I was reusing Loren’s engine, so in theory I only had to do the story and stop, but instead I’ve added countless new features!!
So, this game better sell well, MUCH more than Loren, because otherwise it really wasn’t worth it. I liked doing it, but since I run a business I need to take that into consideration as well.
the longer the game, the quicker I lose interest. The last months of coding were really painful. Don’t get me wrong, I still put 100% of efforts like I always do (that’s how I am made). But sometimes it felt really a chore 😀 This is something personal of course, I know many other indies who prefer to work on a smaller amount of titles and take more time with them. For me, after a while, becomes frustrating since I keep having new ideas about new stories or gameplay 🙂
I’m not sure if players really appreciated the efforts. Don’t get me wrong I got great support from fans as always. But it seems (might be just an impression) that players would have preferred less fights, less complexity and more story/scenes. Sort of the opposite direction I went with SOTW, so as you can imagine I’m a bit worried! But this only a theory for now, I’ll need to see once the game is out.

Because of such considerations, and based on how SOTW will do, will decide how to take the challenge to make the future RPGs. If I see that all the insane effort I put to make the gameplay of SOTW so detailed didn’t make the game more appealing to players, I think will need to do things differently.

But in general, I might do things differently even if SOTW did well, just to rest a little 🙂 Playing Banner Saga, and other indie RPGs, showed me that you don’t necessarily need to have 8+ characters with 15 skills each, huge battles 6 vs 6, and so on.

In summary there are other ways to make a story-based RPG interesting without the need to make it long, super complex or add a lot of features.

Also, I might for once do what basically most other indies do: reuse the same engine WITH SMALL CHANGES (not what I did with SOTW!!!) and make smaller games (of course, at lower prices as well). Not necessarily everyone wants to play huge epic RPGs, sometimes is refreshing to do something small. Small is beautiful! etc etc 🙂

OK better stop my ramblings here otherwise you think I went crazy while working on SOTW! …which actually is not completely wrong…! 😀

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva