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Show Me The Sales

RPGs status update

It’s time to give you an update on my two main RPG projects I’m currently working on: Loren The Amazon Princess and Planet Stronghold: Warzone.

Loren The Amazon Princess

As you can see below, I made a mockup for the game main menu, and I like it (not that the main menu is so important in a RPG, but I want to have it look good). As I’m writing, the game soundtrack is being recorded, which will feature Cristina Vee again singing the theme song. I’m eager to listen to it 🙂

Below, you see the first icons made for the skilltrees. I also got some weapons/items, but not enough yet to show a full equipped character. As for the skills, I realized yesterday that I actually need a separate icon for every skill present in the 16 base skiltrees: since every skilltree has 5, it means that I still have 60 icons to commission!! It’s necessary of course, but it all adds to the final game costs. This game better sell well!

The writing is at good point, and everything should be finished at end of this month or early December, however there is still left to add all the battles and quests and everything else that makes a RPG (enemies, balancing, and so on). So, I’d say that while I hope to have a public alpha at end of the month to get feedback about the battle system, the fullgame won’t be available for sure this year. I’m aiming at Q1 2012 release (probably February/March).

Planet Stronghold: Warzone

For this game things are “apparently” going slower. I say apparently because even if the game writing is still at early stages (I don’t even have planned the full story yet!), I have already made the changes to the combat system (in practice a full redesign of the Psionic Powers vs the first game). I also have planned all the romances, which will be even more important than the previous game, since there will be 4 for each gender (vs the 3 of the previous title).

So in practice, since the gameplay/game system is already tested, once the story starts to be written this game will progress much faster than Loren (also because the RPG system is simpler).

Speaking of romance, take a look at this:

It’s a fun “collage image” I made picking some details from each of the 4 romance scenes for Lisa Nelson. As you can see, lots of *hot* stuff going on! 🙂

I don’t have all the 4 romance images for Joshua, but once I have them will make a similar thing for him too.

I have another important announcement about Planet Stronghold, even if it will have to wait until next week, but is a very interesting deal! So stay tuned (will announce it on twitter, facebook and in the blog).

Unfinished business

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In the picture above, Maja when was a kitten sleeping on a mousepad in my “old office”.

What is the unfinished business I’m talking about? Well, lots of games get started every year, and many of them, for a reason or another, are canceled. This doesn’t happens only in the AAA studios, but even at “indie level”.

In the video below, a work in progress of a 3d roleplay game called “Tower Of Destiny”. The project was abandoned about 3 years ago because the coder quit. It should have been a 3d dungeon crawler, with some “outdoor” zones. I think I’ll probably redo it as plain 2d dungeon game sometimes in the future.

In this other video a more recent work-in-progress. It’s the 3d version of one of my older games, Universal Boxing Manager. I didn’t hear back from the coder since June this year, so while I cannot officially say that it won’t be done, I don’t have much hopes as well!

So you might start to understand why I’m making mostly games I can code myself recently? Disappearing artists/writers are a pain, since you need to look for a replacement (and in the case of art, redo even the art that has been already partly done), but when a coder disappear… means the game can’t go on, especially if you’re not able to finish/continue coding yourself or if the coder used a different tool/language you’re not familiar with.

This just to show that being indie it can be a real pain as well, since there are many more problems than people might think. And now, let’s talk about something else…

Bionic Heart promotion!

I’ve updated Bionic Heart to use online activation, and like I did for Heileen 2, I’m offering two downloads: one without voices, which is about 32-35mb, and one with voices which is about 169-173mb!

The game will be only 4.99 for the weekend, so grab it now!
Only $0,2 each ending! (it has 24 endings)

Roommates game

So I got the first sketches from artist for this new game. As you can see, lots of interesting people… the 6 characters below are the dateable one. Max and Anne are the two main playing characters (the game will be playable as male/female). There are two bisex characters, can you guess which ones? 🙂

Do you think the male characters are sexy/interesting enough? I have no doubts the females are 😀

And for this week is all. Ah no, wait: there are rumors that a certain game with a winter theme MIGHT be really finished shortly… but maybe is just a rumor! Who knows? Keep following me on twitter/facebook/blog to know more.

The Price is Right

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In the picture above, an image of my dwarf rabbit Cleo who decided to travel to the rabbits paradise last week, after 9 years with us.

Why low pricing is wrong for niche games

I’m going to talk briefly about my own experience with low prices. I know that as customer, you’d want the games to be cheaper! who wouldn’t want that? however, as I gather data from my little price experimentation, it’s quite clear that if I was to sell my games for 4.99 I would be bankrupt in less than one year.

Check the pie-graph below:

On top there’s the graph for the number of copies sold. Wow, during the promotional week sale, Heileen1 was almost 1/3 of my total games sold!

However, the enthusiasm quickly fades checking the other graph below, showing the net revenues for the same period: Heileen1 is at the 5th place, below other games.

This is even more “dramatic” if we consider that I sent the newsletter, posted in my twitter/facebook page and so on about the promotion. So in practice, the “regular sales” of my other games (the best selling titles though) were generating more revenues that a super-mega sale…!

I like to do sales, since I know that not everyone can afford to buy my games at full price. Obviously, I’m going to wait several months before I do sales of my recent games, but for games that were released 2-3 years ago (Heileen 1 was released in 2008 for example) it’s fine.

But the fact is that unless you have a great exposure, a customer base of millions, like the portals have, undercutting your price is never going to work. You’ll only lose money, and if you’re not careful, forced to find another job! 😀

Heileen 2: Hands Of Fate promotional sale

Speaking of promotions, this week I managed to update Heileen 2, which is on sale until next Sunday (included). Below you find a teasing image of Ebele with the new relationship bar added to that game as well. (Sadly Ebele is not dateable in the game, even if there are some spicy situations with her…)

Since I’m using online activation, I decided to offer two kind of downloads: the “standard” game, without voices, which is 45mb, or the fully voiced game that is 100mb. I’m particularly interested to check the statistics after some time, to see how many people prefer the voiced vs unvoiced version, since I’m considering if to make some more voiced games in future or not.

And the various games in progress? they’re all still going fine! This week got some sketches for the Roommates game from a new artist, new finished CG scenes for Planet Stronghold: Warzone, new images/texts for Queen Of Thieves and new texts for Heileen3.

I really am not sure which game will be done first, since mostly depends on artists/writers speed, and what kind of gameplay will choose to implement in some of them (I have a few interesting ideas for Queen Of Thieves but must see if is something that I am able to code or not!).

Queen of Thieves customers

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In the image above, my cat Leon seems almost in a meditation pose 🙂

So, who will be the customers of the game Queen Of Thieves? Take a look below:

Yes, I was talking about the in-game customers! For those unfamiliar with the game (which is still work-in-progress) it will feature a shop simulation similar to the popular Recettear game. But one thing that annoyed me a bit of that game was the fact that there were only 3-4 different customer appearances 🙂 So in my game I asked the artist to draw a sort of doll-dressing game, and as you can see, the combinations can be a lot.

The main variations are by body shape (normal, fat, old) and by social status (poor, middle clas, noble, guards, priest, wizard). And of course there are several minor variations based on face shape, hair and beard color/shape and hats.

Beside the example above, there will also be female customers of course!

The writing is being done right now and art-wise there is really not much left to do. The game will be a bit different from my usual ones, even if I haven’t yet decided how I’ll do the mission part. I would like to use a sort of 2d boardgame view, where you move your characters in a sort of turn-based strategy game.

I am not sure yet if I’ll also include RPG battles, even if the temptation is strong, since I have lots of armor/clothing/weapons ready to use, but the playable characters would be max 3 (the three sisters Joanne, Kira and Thalia) so it would be a somewhat simplified RPG.

So in theory it could be an otome life simulation game with strategy and RPG elements 😀 I don’t want to rush things with this one since I have anyway other games in production, so I’d like to experiment a bit with a different gameplay system. Time will tell, as always!

The other games

Meanwhile, all the other games I announced are progressing, and we’re waiting for the UI/skills/items art to finish an alpha build of LorenRPG to release it to public to get feedback about the battle system. I think it could be ready next month, so stay tuned.

Promotional sale

Promo sales: this week promo sale is of the game College Romance: Rise Of The Little Brother that is only 4.99 until Sunday (included).

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva