Category Archives: heileen

Heileen 3 status update

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I think is time for an overdue update on Heileen 3 status. First I said would be ready last Summer, then this Fall… well, tecnically could still be out this Fall, since Winter begins the 21st December 2012, and I really hope to have finished the game by then! 🙂

You might wonder why such delay… well first of all, even if is not a RPG, Heileen 3 is probably one of the most important titles of my visual novel/dating sim category. So I am trying to make it more polished than previous titles. Check the two screenshots below:

Nightbridge

Heileen on the ship bridge by night, nice atmosphere

Marie

Heileen and Marie in a farm / flower plantation

And you can see here http://www.annjewelry.com/

As you can notice I hired a pro artist to do the backgrounds this time, since they always were a weak point of my past games. While not super detailed I think they look quite good with the characters in the foreground.

The downside is that since I found the artist only last month, and such backgrounds require some time, only the backgrounds will probably take 1 month of work. However it’s not artist’s fault, but mine because I waited too long before starting commissioning the backgrounds.

Yesterday also decided to have a full OST for Heileen 3, not with many tracks, but beside the main theme song, even the other 4-5 tracks in the game will be custom. I plan to offer the OST as download during the pre-order phase.

Finally, in case you missed it, the game is not going to be a pure visual novel, but more a life sim. You’ll be able to learn several skills and like in my other game Spirited Heart, you’ll be able to get either a romance ending with one of the 4 boys (and later the yuri version will be released which adds 4 girls) or you can get a “profession ending”. Indeed, if you raise your skill high enough in a particular field, you’ll become a master in that profession and the game will end.

Just to complicate the things, each profession ending is tied to the virtue/sin system. For example, to become a nun, not only you need to have a high Faith skill, but obviously you also need to have a high Chastity virtue. We could argue that a good nun shouldn’t have any “high sin level”, but well for sure the Chastity is the most important! (and for gameplay reason I need only 1 virtue/sin associated to each job)

So as you can see even coding this part is not going to be quick to do. While is not a complex RPG like Loren, it still requires some extra coding/testing before I can start the pre-order stage, which should only reveal some well hidden bugs.

I’d dare to say that my estimate release date for Heileen3 is the first week of December, approximately 3 years after the second chapter! crossing fingers 🙂

Bundles, expansions and new faces

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The Manga Bundle

First of all, I’m doing a Manga Bundle which includes many of my games at a very minimum price (pay extra to get more/newer games) made in collaboration with Groupees.

You can find more info here: http://groupees.com/ww

It started yesterday and will last for one week.

The Castle Of N’Mar

Second, the Loren expansion is officially released: http://www.winterwolves.com/lorencastleofnmar.htm

I still didn’t do any press release because I want to have a small promo video ready before I do it, but you can already buy it since is out of the beta testing stage. Just remember that to play the extra content, is preferred if you load an old savegame in chapter 2, or start a new game. If you resume an old game from chapter3, you won’t see the extra content.

New Faces

I’m working on several project now that Loren’s expansion is finished. The biggest one is Planet Stronghold 2, but I’m also actively working on Heileen 3. For Heileen 3, I’m waiting for new backgrounds, and this will surely delay the game release. I hoped that would be ready by October but for several reasons (Loren that absorbed me completely first, and then two months of african heat that made me KO) I didn’t plan it carefully as I should have.

But is still going to be the next game I release! There will be many characters from the first two games, but also some new faces.

Morganlove Natives Ottocry

Above you can see some images from the scenes I’ve already finished coding.

More new faces will come to Planet Stronghold sequel as well. We’ve decided to add a few more secondary characters to the story, and also to let the player continue any previous romance, so it means that Rumi & Michelle will be romanceable in the sequel as well.

We’re also thinking to add a simple but interesting colony-building sim to Planet Stronghold sequel, a sort of metagame which will influence the main roleplay part. I think should be quite interesting to play and offer more variety of situations. Those who don’t like those simulations don’t worry, playing at easy level will be a piece of cake 😉

Heileen 3 will be coming this Autumn

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Heileen3cast

Or at least that’s the plan! 🙂

I was undecided until the last time if to use the new Monkeycoder engine, or stick with the good old Ren’Py. In the end, I realized that even using the Monkeycoder engine would still require me to learn a new language and right now I really don’t have time to do it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to get my games on iOS too someday, but it has been a very tiring year so far, and I want to relax. I find Ren’Py much more powerful than Monkeycoder to prototype anyway, so I can always port the game later once is done.

So I started working on Heileen 3 a few days ago. As you know, the plot is all finished (at least the otome part) but it still needs all the scripting (placing sprites) and also is missing a good amount of backgrounds, which will commission soon.

So depending how faster the background artist will work, and how faster I’ll script the scenes, the game might be out around this Autumn. It’s not an official date, more what I hope to achieve! It would be great because the first Heileen game was out in October 4 years ago and releasing the third chapter would be a good way to celebrate the anniversary!

Meanwhile, if you are curious about Loren’s expansion official release date, you’ll be pleased to hear that The Castle Of N’Mar (that’s the name of the expansion) will be very likely ready very soon (probably mid-September). The testing so far is doing well and there are only some minor bugs left.

To know more, check this thread in my forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2622

A final note, Steam Greenlight has opened and if you’re one of those people who emailed me asking why my games aren’t on Steam, now you can vote for them to appear. I submitted some games and will try to submit all the one I have made during next week: http://steamcommunity.com/id/winterwolves/myworkshopfiles/?section=greenlight

Androids, drakes and college

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Don’t worry, the cryptic title of my blog post can be easily explained.

Androids: because I finally had time to take a break from working non-stop on Loren The Amazon Princess RPG, I made the Android port of Heileen! I chose that game since is one of the simplest as gameplay (is a basic Visual Novel). I kept the original resolution of the game, so if you play it on a tablet the resolution will be good, while on phones with smaller resolution the game will scale down.

It’s available for only 4.99 in the Android marketplace: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winterwolves.heileen

It has been tested by several people on various devices and nobody had any issues, though on devices with small screen size like phone can be a bit problematic to play, so be warned!

But androids also because I’ve started writing Bionic Heart 2! I’ve only made the storyboard for the 3 first scenes, but the new writer is doing a good job with it so far. It’s cool to be able to finally resume working with Bionic Heart’s universe / characters again after almost 3 years since the first game release.

Drakes: because the chapter4 of Loren is basically finished, and contains a big battle against a Giant Drake which will be one of the toughest enemies of the game. The plot is only missing some romance scenes, but I’m also waiting for 4 new backgrounds and the battle voices to do the next update which will have the full game available (including the romance scenes!). I hope it to be ready sometimes next week or no later than next weekend!

College: because finally I found a replacement writer for the Roommates game, and seems I’ll be able to resume working on it at normal speed again! We’re redefining the game structure/gameplay and the various breaks, changing the game from being Quarter based, rather than Semester based (so there are more breaks which will lead to some cool scenes like Winter / Spring Break).

World at War

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“World at War” is the subtitle of Loren The Amazon Princess second chapter. The war is between the human and the elves: can Loren and her party stop the madness?

Chapter2

In the picture above, while Myrth and Apolimesho shake hands, Rei asks a vital question: “Can the elves really work together with the humans?” that’s what you’ll have to find for yourself playing the new game update, which can be downloaded from here:

http://www.winterwolves.com/download.php?game=LorenRPG-0.85.zip

As always, if you find any bugs, please report them in the game official forums.

Of course, there’s much more beside the new chapter. The game has been improved under various aspects, many bugs fixed and things tweaked. For example, during the final scenes of second chapter, there’s a sequence of battles that you have to fight without the automatic healing option. And I found that the party setup was missing a clear indication of each party member HP and SP.

Newsetup

So in the picture above you can see the new improved party setup screen, that shows the HP/SP for the members you have currently selected to fight.

Another complaint/suggestion I got from the player/testers was about the level up screen. It wasn’t really clear which skills you could learn since all the skills were displayed in full color.

Newlevelup

So as you can see in the screen above, the greyed-out skills are the ones that you cannot learn yet. I think it’s much clear now. Also you might have noticed that I put a reset button, so if the attributes picked by the auto-assign doesn’t satisfy you, you can retry as much as you want or allocate them manually.

Another big change is that I found a bug in the vendor screen, so that the vendors inventories weren’t updating. Now, if you visit the same shop from time to time (you need to advance the plot a bit every time) you’ll see new interesting items available.

There are LOTS more changes in the new version of course, but I cannot list them all! 🙂

I am not satisfied yet by the skills power level setup in the battle, since is easy to forget that you have 3 levels, and using the numbered buttons is not very intuitive, so I still need to tweak it, but except that I believe the battles, the skills and the classes now are really well balanced.

The mages now deal lots of damage, and since the vendors are fixed, you can buy some SP regenerating items and they can become really powerful. Warriors still have the highest HP and can absorb lot of damage, while Thieves are very versatile and now can use their skills more often.

As for the plot, it’s already 140,000 words, so already more than double Planet Stronghold’s plot! There’s still the end of chapter4 and some romances left, so I think will reach 150,000 words for sure, becoming my biggest game ever! And it’s not even a pure VN, but a RPG… definitely people won’t be able to complain about the game length 😉

Other games update!

And now for the visual novel / dating sim fans, here’s an unusual outfit for Ebele that you’ll be able to admire in the upcoming Heileen3:

Ebeledancing

The game is already over 120,000 words, and almost all the 100 scenes have been written. Lora’s path is complete, and only Marie’s one is left. If everything goes well, expect it sometimes this summer 🙂

Also, the artist working on mystery/otome game Nicole had some computer problems, so the art production was delayed by a few weeks, but now she resumed working regularly. Even for this other game, expect a release sometimes this summer!