Category Archives: beta demo

Nicole beta officially out

Nicole main menu image

Get the demo and buy the game in the official game page at: http://www.winterwolves.com/nicole.htm

After a long wait, Nicole is finally in beta! The beta actually started last Monday, so this version is already very stable! The latest 3 updates consisted mostly of typos and wrong images, so it should be perfectly safe to play this version (I got report of people who finished all the endings).

So what are you waiting for? Nicole needs your help! 🙂

Update on the yuri version

As you might know, a yuri version is also in the works. This time the yuri will be a completely separate game. Once it is ready, I’ll make a new demo where you can choose in the beginning which kind of content you want to see in the game.

The art is at good point but the writing has just started, so right now I can’t make any guess about when it will be available, though I hope worse case scenario Spring 2014!

…and the RPGs?

There’s no doubt that the RPGs have become my most popular games, so don’t worry I haven’t forgot about them. Right now the new Planet Stronghold 2 writer is busily working in the mines under the iron fist of my whip… ahem I mean, I’m motivating him to work fast 😉

Regarding Seasons Of The Wolf, writer should resume working on it in November and I still have to code almost two seasons of the game story. I plan to do like I did with Loren, and release the game as I’m working on it. So once I finish the full first season (Winter) I’ll release a beta demo for it, then when I finish the second I’ll update the demo to include the second season as well and so on.

I think that at leas the first season should be ready for Christmas 🙂

Incoming Nicole demo preview tomorrow

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I wanted to post it today, but as my cat Othello below always says “Never do today what you can do tomorrow”.

Othello is a world-expert in cat-napping

Jokes apart, tomorrow will upload a “demo preview” of Nicole. What is a demo preview? well is not the finished game, and not a finished demo. But is more than an Alpha version.

Ok I confess, I just made up that term. But in practice what I mean is:

the game romance plot is finished except one route (still missing the mystery part)
all the art is done, except a few chibis and some extra sprites for some scenes
the gameplay is done, but need a bit more testing to balance it

So there isn’t much work left, assuming people involved will work faster (I’ll make sure to use my spiked whip this time to speed things up!). I am releasing this demo because this way everyone who pre-ordered the game last month has something to play, and don’t think that I ran away with the money on a desert island! 🙂

I wanted to release it today, but there are still a few annoying things to finish so I want to wait one day more to give time to the chibi artist to draw two more images.

Also, I’m very likely going to hire another writer to do the yuri part. Not because the current writing is bad, rather the opposite (as I’m sure you’ll agree after reading it tomorrow) but because is taking too long. I definitely don’t want people to think that yuri is just a secondary thing for me, I want to treat all my customers equally. And while releasing the yuri version 2 months later like for Heileen 3 was acceptable after all, releasing it after 6 months it would be too much! (and I think that’s what would happen right now).

I got a few submissions already, but if you’re a writer, are motivated and interested feel free to email me (you can find the email visiting the support page of my site on the top menu).

RPG fans I haven’t forgot about you! Please stay tuned because next week will hopefully talk about the new changes I made to SOTW, like the new attributes/skills! Meanwhile here’s a screenshot below to keep you interested 😉

Week full of good news

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After some rather sad/grim posts in the past, today I’m pleased to make a very happy one 🙂

Bionic Heart 2 update

First of all: Bionic Heart 2 beta testing is basically over, I’m waiting a bit more but if you waited until now to try it because you were afraid of bugs, don’t wait any longer! Check the official forum thread here with the new download links.

Lots of things have changed from last week, I had a sort of enlightening when I completely changed the game logic code. Before, the logic jumps were scattered all around the 100,000 words script, making very hard to understand the game flow. So I tried another approach: I concentrated all the logic code in 10-15 lines, calling each scene from it. It was the decisive move, since all the remaining bugs could be fixed very easily after that!

I wonder why I didn’t think about this before. Probably was a bit burned after all ^_^;

Nicole update

A work in progress screenshot from the game

I am making good progress with Nicole too. Main menu track is finished, Darren’s script is done, and I’m testing / adding the various sprites right now to the game. In the screenshot above you also see one of the new chibis representing Nicole’s status (like in Always Remember Me).

Of course everything is work in progress but I like the direction so far 🙂 If the writer can finish all the otome routes by end of May/mid-June the game might be out in early July for sure!

Planet Stronghold 2

Progress are being made too, now that I’m done with other projects I’m starting to discuss with Aleema some interesting plot twists 😉 At same time artist should be able to finish the enemies and start with the camp talk poses during this month.

Roommates

The script is almost done, and the theme song preview is great, I like it 🙂 There’s still some delays because of background images and some extra CG scenes to be added to the spring break event in the game, so for now I don’t want to say any deadline since I’m not sure myself either.

Heileen on iOS!

Since yesterday was my 39th birthday, I gifted myself a iPad mini. Why? to test the first Heileen build for iOS:

it was ported using Monkeycoder by a developer friend, and so far seems to work well. I still need to test it and submit the game, so will probably take another month before appears on the appstore.

The plan is to keep porting the other games, except for the RPGs that would require much more time/effort. Also, because of Apple’s policies will probably need to censor somehow the more “steamy” games, since I don’t want to risk to see my apps removed or worse.

As always if you want to make sure to not miss anything, the only way is to get the games directly from my site 😉

Planet Stronghold deluxe version available

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I know many people after last week post are eagerly awaiting Bionic Heart 2 release. I asked Aleema to take care of it, since I was really burned out from weeks of continuous testing. I’m sure she’ll do a good job and I think the game should be out before the end of month!

Meanwhile take a look at the screenshot below:

It’s from the deluxe version of Planet Stronghold which is currently in beta testing, you can download it here: http://www.macgames.biz/games/PlanetStronghold-1.5.2-all.zip

What is this deluxe version? I needed a break from the testing, so I thought to update this old game with the latest Ren’Py version (which should improve the speed by a lot).

Since I was there I also decided to do a real update, consisting of:

removed the “super easy” difficult level, since even at Easy mode the game was easy enough, and added a new Nightmare mode, which could also be called “prepare to die”. Since there seems to be a new trend in making very-ultra-difficult games, I thought to do my part too!
but the real new feature, depicted in the image above, is a new screen that you can access by visiting the laboratory where Lucille is. You can ask her to build weapons and armors using “metal scraps”, which you can obtain looting enemies and salvaging other items you have. Some items are worse than those you can get through questing, others are better. You’ll have to find out which ones, there are about 80 new items 😉
last but not least, a new GUI for the game, as you can see from the screenshots below:

: normal dialog window

: load/save

: battle screen

The update is free for anyone who bought the “Official Strategy Guide” for the game. If you have bought only the base game you can get the strategy guide here: http://www.winterwolves.com/buy.php?prod=17030044

That’s everything for this week. Work on the other games continues, and I hope to have new interesting updates next Friday!

Heileen 3: Sea Maidens in beta

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Despite being buried in snow and recovering from a flu, this week still managed to finish the beta version of Heileen 3: Sea Maidens, the yuri version of Heileen 3.

Direct download link (BETA)
http://www.macgames.biz/games/Heileen3-1.1d.exe (Windows)
http://www.macgames.biz/games/Heileen3-1.1d.zip (Mac)
http://www.macgames.biz/games/Heileen3-1.1d.tar.bz2 (Linux)

Buy/Preorder links
http://www.winterwolves.com/buy.php?prod=17030053 (normal yuri version)
http://www.winterwolves.com/buy.php?prod=17030054 (yuri version with Bonus Content. Note that the Bonus Content is IDENTICAL to the “otome” version, so if you already bought that, you already have all the extra content!)

Discounts
Anyone who bought already the normal version has the right to a 50% discount (that is what I’ll offer as bundle once the yuri version is officially released, a discount of 25% on the whole order so it’s the equivalent of 50% of one item). So if you bought the normal version already simply email me and will send you the discount code 🙂

If you find any bugs feel free to report them in my forums here:

http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2823

Note that the new downloads contains both the otome and yuri versions, similarly to what happens for Spirited Heart. Also there are new scenes for the otome version too.

Other games

Now that Heileen 3 is getting towards the final release, I am going to get back to the other games. The next one to be released should be Bionic Heart 2. Then there are several games in the works, and one of the most important is Planet Stronghold 2. Speaking of it, check this interesting sneak peek of Lisa romances:

I will post the Joshua sneak peek as soon as artist finishes the last CG scene, Joshua/Cliff 😉 but rest assured that they’re very good too. Meanwhile the coding and design for the new RPG framework continues, and next week I might officially announce a new RPG game… stay tuned.

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva