I’m pleased to announce that TFTU: Lilith beta is now available on itchio!

This game features:

• a succubus protagonist!
• Evelyn from After Midnight as love interest (this “feature” was requested soo much! lol)
• a crazy variety of outfits and CG scenes (20 CG, but with variations can go up to 24-25 CGs)
• comic-style art for certain scenes, adding a lot more content (36 CGs !!!)
• using animated video directly with Ren’Py in the first scene
• having optional one-night stand scenes with 4 more secondary characters!
• And last but definitely not least, there’s a full triad romance. It’s not just an extra ending added quickly, but a relationship that develops from the very first scenes of the game!

All this for the very reasonable price of $15. Seriously, years ago I’d have never thought to be offering so much content so cheap!

The game demo will also be present on the Steam Next Fest, and you can wishlist the game on Steam if you prefer.

And now some curiosity / behind the scenes stuff.

Deciding the story

While the first game was about Hazel being captive, and the relationship she developed with either her cellmate or her “torturer”, and the second was a murder mystery, I wanted again to write something completely different.

I decided to go for the “roadtrip” setting. This way I could explore many places of my fantasy world (Grimoire, Shacklesplit, Dingirra, Icesilia, Mount Kronos, etc) and also imagine how they could have changed now that the wizards are in power. Indeed, the game is set far in the future—by far the most distant point in time I’ve ever placed a story within my fantasy world.

It was also fun to have so many references to my other characters, including Rowinda, the grand-niece of the original crazy Rowinda from Seasons of The Wolf, one of my favorite characters of all time. But also the return of Amber, who is now queen of Icesilia. And there are also a couple more recurring characters that I won’t reveal since I don’t wan to spoil the fun.

The adult content

This has always been a sort of issue for me. Not because I’m against it, not at all. I’m for freedom of content, and I like sexy stuff too personally. The problem is that adding that kind of content as author it’s always a bit problematic. Obviously, the game will end up in adult only category on Steam. I’ve done optional adult stuff in games in the past, but hot like in this one… I don’t think. Anyway, I hope players will play it not just because there’s that content, and also enjoy the story!

The relationships

I have a soft spot for the “enemies to lovers” trophe, and so I decided to include it in the game in the form of Evelyn and Odette, and that’s why, if you go the alone route with Lilith, they become a couple and end up together in a somewhat bittersweet ending.

But in this game I also implemented for the first time the “Flirt / Tease” dual system, and I’m very pleased by the results. Having this attitude reflect also in the more intimate scenes adds variety and adapts better to each player’s tastes.

I consider the triad route the canon ending, in particular the God’s Bet one. Indeed, Lilith trapped inside the gem (the main menu image) was the first image I envisioned for this game. If you want to know more about it and what does it means, you’ll have to play the game.

I hope people will appreciate all the efforts I put in making probably one of my biggest games, for sure the biggest one at this price point!

Note that in the beta there’s still some missing art, all “comic style” CGs, which will show up during one Odette’s flashback and in the “alone ending” (in which Odette and Evelyn become a couple). I hope to get them in time for the final release!

What’s Next ?

In case you don’t follow me on socials, I had my second eye surgery earlier this month, all seems going well, but still I am taking it easier. The next project should be Thieves Of Dingirra, and that’s a HUGE game. I plan to first release Lilith, and then see if I can do the KS for Thieves Of Dingirra the next month or not.

No worries, the game will be done, indeed I’m already working on it (such a game requires a long time to make), but one idea I had was to do a sort of prequel story, plain visual novel, introducing the characters and so on, using comic art style, which mean a lot of content. A much shorter game, that could reduce the “idle time” between releases.

Basically the choice is between these two options:

1. doing the KS next month, then maybe wait 10-12 months (it’s a HUGE game!) before the release, with nothing between (sadly, very bad for me business wise)
2. do the KS for the “intro VN”, release it in 6 months or so, then do the Thieves of Dingirra KS and then 4-6 months later release that big game (because I would still be working on it meanwhile and finish the “base game”, the KS would only add bonus features that I can add in 6 months).

I’ll see what to do – if KS allowed more than one project at once at least for “trusted” devs like me who fulfilled ALL the KS done, it would be much easier since I wouldn’t need to worry about what to do first. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated, and I can guarantee that unless something really unexpected happens, Thieves of Dingirra should be out next year!

No, not Summer in Trigue! I wish 🙂 Simply… Summer in hell. This is how I could describe my Summer in the last two months.

The plan was to begin (or better, resume) doing some preliminary work on Thieves of Dingirra while I was waiting for a bunch of art for TFTU: Lilith to be finished. But I forgot a small detail called global warming… ugh!

Here it’s hot already since several years, but this year everyone agreed that was the worst. It was a mix of uninterrupted hot days (here I had 3-4 days of rain since mid-June! and I’m one of the “lucky ones”) and extremely hot humidity. Basically temperatures ranging from 20° to 32°C, and humidity always higher than 50%, often close to 70-75%. Tropical climate I believe. I don’t like it! lol

I have a “floor cooling system”, but I didn’t want to turn it too high (it’s bad to have a difference of 10°C or more between inside and outside) and at night I was sleeping with open windows anyway.

I had much better luck than people living down in towns, but still I never imagined that, at 7pm at 800m on sea level, you would still have 30-31°C… that’s just insane!

Anyways without rambling too much, this weather completely destroyed all my plans. I managed to work a bit on simpler stuff like the narrative mechanics (I’ll have some interesting new things) and a few screens. I did work on it, so I still made progress, but not in what I was planning to – the main gameplay of the game!

So that’s what happened. But let’s talk about those new features I’m working on.

No forced choices

With this game, I wanted to break out of the idea of being forced to have a certain attitude with someone to successfully complete the romance. Why? Simple: if I know character X requires certain choices, or a specific alignment (Friendly, Joking, Forceful, etc) then the 99% of players are just going to follow the walkthrough to see the romance scenes. It’s obvious. And those who don’t follow a walkthrough, maybe will play regularly but not get the romance, and then be even more pissed!

I asked myself: what’s the point then of having 4 choices ? Why have a specific Romance button (like in Loren or several other RPGs I’ve done)? Players interested in the romance will always pick Romance choice!

So here’s the new idea: you’ll be able to raise your relationship with a character by simply visiting them. On each scene, will increase slightly. Then, the kind of attitude you want to have is your choice (literally). In the story, in EACH SCENE, there’ll be several exclusive lines that play depending on your attitude with THAT character. Yes, because if you want you can be friendly with all, but you can also be friendly with one, and forceful with all the others, and so on!

Then, after several scenes, a new Flirt option will appear which will make the MC explicitly flirt with the love interest, potentially unlocking the romance. This solves also the other major problem, of people wanting to have a friendship with a character but without necessarily romancing them.

Flirting won’t lock you in a romance, there’ll still be a choice later, but it will simply change the relationship from friend-only, to potentially “more than a friend”.

New relationship system!

This required a redesign of the whole relationship system, so I thought: why not have a full relationship system between ALL the characters? Some characters like each other, while others can’t stand a specific one, and so on. The screen below is the result:

Not going to lie, I’m pretty happy with the result! I know it looks dauting at first, but it’s pretty simple to read (it wasn’t that simple to code haha). You move the mouse over and a tooltip at the bottom will explain everything.

From top to bottom: for each potential love interest you see: name, portrait, relationship (text), relationship value (the hearts if flirting started, otherwise stars for friendship only) and the attitude you have. For example in this screen, I’m Joking with Abu, Ghamal, Di’Aab and Halima, and Friendly with Labwa and Yasemin.

Then each character has their own preferences. But wait, there’s more! There’ll be some scenes in the story that will change those values (in better, or worse). This to say that the choices won’t be purely cosmetic but they’ll influence also the gameplay.

Since I decided to have also a RPG part (but not with grinding or tons of battles, a very specific amounts of fights, all connected to the story) an overall “party alchemy” or some similar value that will consider the relationship between the current party members and give different combat bonuses.

News about TFTU: Lilith

Now that’s September, weather seems better and so I hope to make more progress this month, while I wait for the rest of TFTU: Lilith art. BTW, about Lilith, I decided to try again my luck with the Steam Next Fest, so the game release will necessarily be around the end of October! But it will be worth the wait. I’ll make another post about that game next month, with all the details.

For those not following the development: game will have over 25 CGs (with variations), plus another 30 “comic style” CGs, full triad route, pin-ups, five different endings, and much more. The biggest game I’ve ever made at $15 price point!

First of all: work on Lilith is proceeding, I have sent to editor 90% of the script, and I’m just polishing some endings right now before I sent them also the final part. There’s still a LOT of art, so estimate deadline for beta is still around end of September/mid-October.

And now, back to the topic of this post! This is both a post about my indie career and also a sort of advice. As a certain Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.

How does this apply to the indie dev world? Simple: if you’re struggling with your career, have you considered trying new things?

First a premise: I’m not saying that changing is always good. On the opposite, if you have your definite “style”, if you have already enough fans that like it, in general if you’re happy both financially and personally about “your legacy”, then there’s really little reason (if none!) to change.

But what if you’re unhappy with the results you’re getting and don’t know what to do?

Several years ago, I used to chat with a dev who was using RPGmaker XP to make RPGs. Nothing wrong with that tool, it’s a very saturated market, but you could say the same about VNs as well.

The issue was that they were unhappy, but at same time they had this total mind-closure, using always the default assets, spending little on music, never trying anything new. Because the problem wasn’t RPGMaker XP itself (many successful games were made and are still being made with that tool) but the unwillingness to change and to challenge yourself.

The four years cycle

In my indie career, this happened already many times. Curiously, at regular intervals of 4 years (not always, but most of the times). Let’s see:

2004 – when I started around this year I was doing sports, simulation, wargames. More complex games in general, using C++ and a custom library called PTK
2008 – this year things changed: I discovered visual novels and learned to use Ren’Py
2012 – things changed again: I tried to do RPG/VNs and learned python (knowing Ren’Py doesn’t necessarily mean you also know python well)
2016 – once again tried something different: my first card game (PSCD). In 2017 I also tried my first crafting game (Amber’s Magic Shop)
2020 – I did my first Kickstarter (TFTU: Hazel), and my first yuri-only game (Volleyball Heaven). Since then doing yuri games helped me greatly on Steam
2024 – my first psychological horror / adventure game (House of Chavez) and maybe… first town building sim (Thieves of Dingirra)? haha we’ll see, but more likely next year!

Changes can be radical like switching to a completely different genre, to more subtle ones like changing art style, setting, etc. It can also be using a different tool, though this is a big change and usually takes a lot of time.

There are so many things you can try in game development. Even within the same genre and engine, you can create games that are very different from each other! For example, I reused my RPG framework that I coded for games like Loren The Amazon Princess, Seasons Of The Wolf, etc to create a sci-fi game like Planet Stronghold 2. Or back in 2010, I did two visual novels using western-comic art style (Vera Blanc). They didn’t do well (although I suspect not for the style but the quality of the drawings) but at least I tried.

If you try something new, you can say “well, I tried, didn’t work.” If you never try, you’ll always live with the regret “I wonder if I tried that, what might have happened…?” I know for certain that if back in 2008 I didn’t try Ren’Py and visual novels, probably now I wouldn’t be here writing this blog post, because it was a turning point in my career (and the same I can say about what happened in 2012 and also in 2020!).

What’s next?

As I wrote, this year I released my first pyschological horror game, which also was my first VN/adventure game mix. It was well received in general. Of course, people who were interested only in… the sex stuff, didn’t like to have to use the brain to walk through the adventure part haha (but that’s why I put a full guide on Steam!).

Personally, I was a bit burned out last year after ToA: An Elven Marriage, and working on House of Chavez was really a nice change. I really enjoyed working on that game, because was different than a plain simple VN, with a map, an inventory, interacting with environment, etc etc, but not as complex as doing a full RPG. Main issue is that doing such a game requires a lot of art (all the backgrounds) and time, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to do another, though I hope soon.

This year after Lilith release I should also work on Thieves Of Dingirra, which could have (I’m not sure yet if that will be doable with Ren’Py) a sort of simplified town sim gameplay. I admit I’m a bit scared of coding that part, and worse case will be just a “regular” RPG, but I want to try adding the town sim element too if possible.

In any case, the important is to keep trying new things, also because otherwise it can get a bit boring!

Ahaha, enigmatic title, isn’t it? I’ll explain it shortly. But first, an update on TFTU: Lilith! Things are going smoothly, and I’m confident that the game will be out this fall, maybe even October. Mostly depends on the artists’ speed (but I don’t want to rush their work).

Screw socials!

Back to the topic of this post: as you know, recently I reduced my time in socials, and focused more on my “true fans”. It’s too early to draw conclusions on the financial side, but for sure on the personal side, it was one of the best choices I’ve made in last years.

Socials are becoming really terrible. Full of AI bots, providing zero exposure, and just being an annoyance more than a plus. Of course I know well that you can’t do entirely without them, and I still keep posting. But no way I’m spending a lot of time on those. I know, I’m going against all common advice, but keep in mind I’ve been around since 20 years, I have already a following, I do niche games, etc. So what works for me might be entirely wrong for someone else and vice versa.

The wishlists madness

I also think that Steam itself is turning into a kind of “social platform” in a negative way. Marketing gurus say you need 7k wishlists to make it big with new games. But now that the information is public, then what? Now there are millions of developers all hustling to get those wishlists, maybe not even focusing on actually making the game better. It’s turned into a mad rush, everyone pushing against each other in a super crowded space, with the age-old question: how do you stand out when there’s so much competition? With 30+ games launching every day, and seemingly everyone with a computer thinking, “Hey, why not make an indie game?” – it’s just not enjoyable for me anymore.

You might be thinking, “Now that things are tougher, you get out.” And you’re partly right. It’s clear that when a platform is overflowing with competition, it’s tough, and all your efforts seem to have less impact. So, I believe it’s smarter to focus on promoting my own website, Patreon, Discord, building my own community. When you pay for ads to direct people to your Steam page, there are countless “exit points” – links, buttons, thumbnails – where potential customers can click and end up buying another game (usually from the same handful of AAA titles or indie darlings that dominate promotion 99% of the time). But with my own site, even if they click on another game page, they’re still buying my games.

The real reason why I went indie

However, the financial side is just one reason why I chose the indie path. Honestly, if it were just about money, I’d probably quit right now. But I’m older, and while I know how to code, I’m not a pro, and I don’t possess any extraordinary skills. I’ve seen plenty of other indie devs call it quits and move on to lucrative jobs in banks or other big corporations, making ten times the money they did before. Good for them! Just not my thing.

The other (and more important) reason why I chose the indie path is the direct connection with fans and customers. I genuinely enjoy interacting with them (whenever I have the time, of course!), hearing what they like or dislike about my games, and considering their suggestions and critiques. Even have them directly involved in development through crowdfunding rewards like drawing characters outfits or naming places in my fantasy world. These are things that will forever remain in my games, and I think they really appreciate that level of engagement. This aspect is priceless to me and helps maintain the human element in game development.

Otherwise, I might as well be a robot, endlessly churning out 500 social media posts a day in hopes of hitting the 7,000 wishlists mark for the Steam lottery. No thanks! As long as I can keep doing things the way I am now, I’ll stick with it. If there comes a time when even that’s not feasible anymore, I’ll just move on and do something else, maybe even something completely unrelated to computers!

Thank you for listening to my rant, and I hope you’re getting my games in the current Summer sales:

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/pub/winterwolves

itchio: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/

It’s that time of year again, where I pause to take a look at the situation, as we’ve reached the exact midpoint of the year.

Of course, the game I’m working on is TFTU: Lilith, and I plan to show some progress in the coming months. In case you missed it, I’m reducing my time spent in socials, just an update a week, and instead focusing on my Discord and my Patreon. Patreon in particular will be updated almost daily, with more free base content unlocked a few days after the members.

At the time of writing this post I haven’t received the funds yet, but if all goes well I’ll start commissioning artists to produce more work, since many stretch goals were reached. I can say without doubt that this will be the game of the series with the most content!

Because of all the content, the game might take longer than planned, just for the time needed to produce art. In this case, while I wait for it and have finished writing the whole story, I might start to work on the next big project, Thieves of Dingirra.

Thieves of Dingirra gameplay

I’m still doing tests with the gameplay part, since story-wise I have everything more or less planned, almost all the characters and scenes laid out (of course when I get to actually write it, I might get inspiration to write more scenes or do things slightly differently).

Haha, to paraphrase the famous saying “to gameplay or not to gameplay”? I must confess that it’s always been a dilemma for me to decide whether incorporating gameplay into my narrative-driven games was a good or a bad idea. For games where I could easily put a “visual novel mode”, like my RPG or card games, that wasn’t an issue, since players could always play the game like that. But for other kind of games, like Roommates (scheduler) or the recent House of Chavez (you could skip minigames but not the adventure part) this wasn’t possible.

In Thieves of Dingirra it would be a bit hard to offer a visual novel mode since the story would progress as you conquered the city step by step. I guess I could simulate that somehow. Or maybe, if there’ll be fights, I could add an auto-skip option.

As you see there’s still a lot of things to think about, and it’s what I’ll do in the coming months, while I wait for art for Lilith and/or take a break between writing a scene and another.

After this, what?

I believe Thieves of Dingirra crowdfunding might start this fall, and will surely take me several months to do that game (even if I decide to make it visual novel only, there’s a big cast). After that, the next big project will be the second Loren spin-off, Reign of War. Even if that game should take me less time than An Elven Marriage, due to the fact that I’ll reuse the battle system (without doing any changes this time! just different skills and items) and that I have already a draft done (this story is what Loren 2 originally was supposed to be), I am surely not going to do that game immediately after Thieves of Dingirra though, since I’ll need a break.

So, I have in mind a few small projects that I will do as I take a break after Thieves of Dingirra and the next big RPG. Also because so far all those “smaller projects” gave me very good ROI, even better than the big games, which is kind of hilarious – it’s starting to be better to make smaller games than bigger ones… what a weird market!

That’s all for now, see you next month with an update on Lilith development!