Category Archives: beta demo

Never Forget Me beta + Future romance games

75 Replies

luis

First of all Public Service Announcement: my upcoming otome game “Never Forget Me” is now in beta. The only thing missing is the official game main menu and the theme song. Everything else is there and should be working!

For more info, check the forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=3937

Expected final release should be end of month or November at the latest, depending how testing goes (however being a visual novel/dating sim, most of the mistakes could be typos or other minor stuff!).

And now I wanted to talk about a topic I find interesting to me:

Romance in future games

After Heirs & Graces release on Steam, there was an interesting discussion in the community forums. To be honest, I expected a much worse reaction, considering the game topic (yaoi/gay only dating sim). I just deleted a couple of obvious stupid threads but not much.

Anyway, here’s what I’m going to do in future games, regarding the romances.

Finding an audience

The most important thing for an indie dev, is finding the audience, the niche. Either you try to make a game in a popular genre (platformer?) but in that case you have to compete against many top indies (and the chances of succeeding are small) or you can try to cater to a smaller but loyal audience. That’s what I’ve always tried to do.

The question is: there’s a gay/yaoi audience on Steam? probably, but it’s very small. It’s not just Steam though: I sell the games directly, but also on mobile. The result though, is that  Heirs & Graces did much worse than, for example, C14 Dating, on all platforms.

So if I had to make games for an audience, I would stop making BxB games completely. BUT! There’s a big but 🙂 What is my goal? I think everyone should ask themselves what is their goal in life. I did it when I went indie. Originally, I wanted to make simulations and RPGs. Recently, I still want to make RPGs but also make experiments and story-based games. And regarding the stories, my goal is:

“I want as much people as possible to read my stories”

Yes, as simple as it is, that is my goal. Not because I’m arrogant and I think my stories (and those of my writers) are good or better than anyone else (they’re good though!). But simply because I want everyone to read them.

Now in the case of Heirs & Graces, I think it has one of the most beautiful stories of all my games. The father/son relationship, the fun and sad moments, etc. Not just my opinion, but basically of everyone who played the game. And here’s the problem: many people didn’t play the game because is yaoi only. And they missed a great story. This is bad, but honestly I knew it, it was inevitable, as much as some people wouldn’t play a yuri only game, etc.

What is the solution then? Well, the most obvious solution is to make games in which you can play as male/female, and have all kind of romances! On the other hand, doing such games takes a lot more time, as you can imagine. Also, usually you can’t offer 8+ romances (since you need to write them from the male/female point of view! it’s a LOT of work) and then you have complaints like with SOTW, in which people say that the game could have been better than Loren, but because of the few romances, it isn’t 🙁

Are they to blame either? No. I can understand that as male straight player, perhaps Krimm is not my kind of romance. Or as female player, I could find Jariel just too “nice” (the DLC changes things quite a lot though!). There’s no one to blame, really.

Finding a compromise

So as author I need to ask myself what is the best thing to do. As you can imagine it’s not like I can do all games with male/female main character AND 4+ romances each gender. Then we have situations like Loren 2, Roger Steel or Undead Lily where the game isn’t ready yet after 3+ years! Doh, insanely huge games takes a lot more time to make! Who would have guessed! haha

However, I think perhaps the best way is to try, whenever possible, to have a male/female main character and at least 2 romances for each gender. Sure, there won’t be as many romances as if the game was otome or yaoi or yuri only, but at least this way there are more  chances that everyone can read my stories. My main goal.

If someone thinks that having maybe only 2 romanceable characters/combos is too few for a full price game, well they can always wait and buy the game discounted later. But at least they will read the story, as long as there’s at least one romance they’re interested in 🙂

Of course, I have a lot of games I started years ago (some even in 2011… ahem) so for those, they could still be yuri only, no straight male romance, etc. Nothing can be done about this, except finish them as they were originally planned.

But for future games, especially bigger ones, that’s what I’ll try to do 🙂

So, what’s next?

22 Replies

2016sofar

This year, so far I finished three games, with the fourth (Queen Of Thieves) already in a good state for a beta. So, what’s next? 🙂

First half of 2016

First of all, we’re halfway through 2016. I’m not going to lie, things have changed A LOT for the indie business. For the first time I heard other indies quitting or taking contract work to pay the bills. It’s scary. I am fine, since I live very frugally (my biggest expense is cat food! haha) but still, I cannot deny that I’m a bit worried too!

Early this year I released PSCD, which underperformed despite great writing and good gameplay design (not my biased opinion, it has 100% positive ratings on Steam!). I didn’t know why at first, but soon I understood the main reason: the art. The next games, C14 Dating and Heirs & Graces, did as expected, or even better than I thought.  Queen Of Thieves is in beta and in preorder since a week so it’s a bit early, but so far the impression is very positive.

In summary, all is good! I only hope the artist finishes the main plot CGs soon… I might need to use my motivational whip to speed things up! 😉

So, what’s next?

Going back to the original question: a few weeks ago I talked about burnout, and the risk of ignoring it. So I’m well aware of it, and indeed I’m taking frequent breaks from work. In practice instead of long holidays, I work every day (even weekends!), but less hours than I used to. Thanks to that, I am not really burned out or tired right now, and I’m planning what to do in the next months.

As already posted in the past, I am thinking to do some “other games“: games in which the gameplay is more important, without a plot or with a smaller plot. This because honestly, writing a good story of 120k+ words (like all my recent games, in some cases even double that amount!) is going to take time. And I don’t want to rush writers, because if the story of a story-based game is bad… yeah, you get it! So, an alternative is to work on something else on the side, while I wait for them to finish.

They could be pure-gameplay, or mixed with a story, but one thing is to write a story of 120k words, another thing is to write a story 30-40k words long (which is more than enough if a game is not strictly story-based!).

I made a small poll in my forums asking what kind of gameplay people would like to see mixed with visual novel/story: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3885

At the moment of writing this, “simulation” seems to be the most popular. Which is good, since it’s one of my favorite game genres and one I think I’m skilled enough (my early games were all simulations). This means that maybe I’ll try to add a more complex/detailed simulation part in my upcoming game Amber’s Magic Shop!

This is what I’m planning to do in the remaining months this year: some gameplay experiment/prototypes. I might post them in public and ask for feedback and then decide if they’re ideas worth pursuing or not.

Of course, the “regular games” will have the precedence. I’ll do those experiments while I wait for my collaborators to send me updates and make progresses 🙂

Queen Of Thieves beta

12 Replies

buynow

Yes, finally the game beta is ready! You can get more info and pre-purchase here:
http://winterwolves.com/queenofthieves.htm

Like always, during beta you need to visit my forums to know the download link, since it always changes based on the game version.

Of course even if it’s a simplified RPG, it’s still a RPG: so expect a longer beta testing period than my previous two games (C14 Dating and Heirs And Graces) ! However if you’re willing to help me and try the beta and report bugs, I will be very thankful 🙂

difficulty

Non RPG players will also be happy to know that I’ve added a “Visual Novel Mode” even to this game, since it’s a feature that seems popular. Besides those who don’t like or aren’t good with RPGs, VN Mode is also useful to replay the game quickly, maybe to try other romances / alternate endings.

As I posted in the forums already, what I’m looking for mostly is feedback about the game pacing: since in the story you need to unlock several scenes by reaching a certain money threshold every time (like 1000 gold, 2500 gold, etc). I want to know if the amount of time needed to reach each step is OK, or could be made faster (or maybe slower).

I am also thinking that maybe I could even add in the options screen a sort of slider to adjust the game pacing:

Slow: you get less money and experience from fights
Fast: you get more money and more experience from fights

This way if you like to play the battles and unlock the skills slowly (in practice if you like grinding!) you could pick the first option, otherwise the second. It’s just an idea of course so I don’t know if I’ll actually add this feature, but I think could make sense to do that.

The game is still missing a few main plot CGs and some background images, but in the past days a lot of testing has been done already, and I got several people that reached the end successfully.

A roleplaying Summer!

7 Replies

qot
In the screenshot above, Arianna in her “Queen Of Thieves” outfit, and a young Lysander

I am now scripting the Queen Of Thieves last main plot scenes, which include some flashbacks: the man you see above is Lysander when he was young. He stilll does have his beard though 🙂

I’m also using the new map of Aravorn that I had recently redone by a new artist. I must say that even zoomed in, it still looks good:gamemap

So now when there are flashback/main plot scenes I can show the time/date but also the place using the map. The scenes aren’t many, but there are 4 CGs, all featuring Arianna… and some are VERY spicy. OK, I think I have said already enough!! 😉

As I said in previous post I will take my time and not rush things to avoid burnout, also considering that I still have to officially release Heirs & Graces and PSCD free update. They’re in a very advanced state though, so that shouldn’t take much longer.

Back to the title of this post, even taking things easier, it’s quite likely that the Queen Of Thieves testing will take place this Summer, with just a disclaimer: if it will be hot like past year (one month and half, whole July and up to mid-August, with temperatures constantly over 38°C!) I will probably be able to work just a few hours in the morning! Anyway, even if I surely won’t be working/updating the game as I did with SOTW (that game was quite a marathon!!) I should still be able to do a few updates based on testing feedback.

All things considered, the beta COULD begin at end of June. In the worst case, it should be July.

But that’s not enough: for me will be a real “Summer RPG” because I’ll also start doing the design for Undead Lily. No coding, just planning on paper/flowchart, thinking about the combat, skills, etc. That’s what will keep me busy this Summer. What can I say, some people go on holiday in tropical islands and have fun, while others code and design RPGs! 😀

Undead Lily Ace romances sneak peek

Speaking of Undead Lily game, a few weeks ago I posted the Lily’s romance sneak peek. Now it’s Ace’s turn! As you can see even Ace has some interesting “romantic moments” in the game as well!

aceromances

Heirs & Graces beta

6 Replies

drama2
In the screenshot above, one of the various jealousy scenes

Well, last week I’ve told you that this would be the next game to come out, though I admit I didn’t expect to finish it so soon! 🙂 Obviously I’m talking about the beta version, however I think the official release should happen before the end of month.

Anyway, you can head to this page to try the game beta demo and pre-purchase it:
http://winterwolves.com/heirsandgraces.htm

There’s a beta demo download in forums in this thread: http://winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=3851

Like always, since it’s a beta version it might still contain bugs. However any help testing it will be greatly appreciated!

I really hope that even non-yaoi fans will try the game, since I believe it has a very nice art, GUI, music and writing. I’m also interested to know what people think of the scheduler/stat raising system. It’s a bit similar to Roommates, but it has also some “skill checks” to do, so you need to plan and think more what to do next.

Playing in Easy mode, you won’t have any problems though 😉

What’s Next?

While doing a beta, I usually try to go on with other games. Unless the beta is for a RPG, in that case I’m usually busy fixing bugs/adding features, so I have no time for anything else!

Anyway, while Heirs & Graces beta goes on, alongside it will finally decide what to do with PSCD and the extra romances. I’ll start first by adding all of them to the base game, and then if there’s enough time (and I’m not burned out too much!) I’ll also see if I can add some sort of “free play mode” or something like that. This way I could even add the extra cards who were planned for the DLC.

Once the PSCD DLC is finished, I’ll finally resume working on Queen Of Thieves. First I’ll take a small break though 🙂