Category Archives: nicole

Introducing the main characters of Seasons Of The Wolf

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althea-shea
Althea & Shea, the snow elven twins are the two playable characters of the game

During the game, you can play as one of the two twins. Like my previous RPGs, the main story doesn’t change based on who you pick, but the romance dialogues do.

Speaking of romances, this game will have one for each sexual preference. I know is much less than previous RPGs but I had to do this if I wanted this game to be out this year. I can always release DLC/expansions adding more romances later 😉

In this game though, differently from Loren, you can choose three classes: Ranger (the equivalent of Warrior class), Hunter (the equivalent of Thief class) and Druid (the equivalent of Mage class). So as you can see there will be more freedom of choices regarding your character class.

The character creation will let you customize your character, or pick some predefined builds (for those who want a quick-start). I am thinking to allow the same choices for the other twin: you can decide his/her skills or pick some ready-made builds.

The only restriction will be that both twins can’t have same Class, for balance reasons. As much as it could be fun to have two Rangers or two Druids, I am not confident that I can balance the battles for such situation. I might still allow the option for the more adventurous players, displaying a big warning though!

While I haven’t decided yet how the gameplay will be outside the battles, I plan to have a map with more “free roaming” than Loren’s one, have randomized encounters in specific places, some opportunity to grinding using a new system which I called “leveled grinding”.

In what it does consist? Let’s say that the plot is divided into “key points” that you must reach to advance in the story, and of course we’ll have different difficulty levels.

In practice:

beginning -> until key point of the story 1 = you can level up skills up to tier 1
-> until key point of the story 2 = you can level up skills up to tier 2
-> until key point of the story 3 = you can level up skills up to tier 3
this way maybe it would be possible in Easy/Normal mode to not reach the level cap for the next “key point” but still be powerful enough to go on, while playing in Hard mode it would be recommended or maybe even needed to get past. This system would let me balance the various fights much better since I would know exactly which skills the players CANNOT use in certain battles 😉

…and the other games?

Ahem, I have a good and a bad news. The good news is that Nicole will be a much bigger game than I thought (only the otome part will be over 100k words!) and Roommates background artist has started working. The bad news is that for sure I won’t be able to release those two games soon, because there’s still quite a lot of work left to do.

If I really must give a date, I’d say that probably one of the two games should be in beta towards the end of August, but I’m not 100% sure of that… so please wait, I assure you that will be worth it!

A hot Summer

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Technically today 21st June Summer starts, but here in Europe things are getting hotter since one week at least. Every year during this period I struggle to work, and this year is no exception. I thought that going living at 800m on sea level would have been enough but apparently I was wrong…

Nicole update

Anyway, at least I still manage to work hard in the morning. Check the video below:

Nicole’s first encounter with Ted. I chose the wrong choice on purpose since is more funny

I’m working on Ted’s route right now, and then there’s only Jeff to finish the otome version! Of course, some things are still missing, but maybe I’m not behind as I thought 😉

Planet Stronghold 2

Spoke with the writer and the coder, things are progressing well. As for the new RPG framework, things are a bit on hiatus now but coder said that everything should be ready this September. Which means that meanwhile writer can go on with the story, so in September I could be able to start adding/design the items/encounters/enemies and have a beta shortly after. IN THEORY, of course! 🙂

The Mystery RPG

I am voluntarily not saying much about that game yet even if development has already started since several weeks. I want to have at least all the characters artwork done before starting to talk about it. Writing is going well, and I think it could be finished by this Fall. Then of courseI’ll have to code all the encounters and do the testing…

Crossing fingers, it means that this Fall I should be able to work on at least one of the two RPGs above! If that happens, I’m confident that I’ll manage to release at least a new one before the end of year, and maybe the other a few months after,so RPG fans will finally be able to play new stuff after a long wait (in the last two years I always managed to release at least a game a year).

Android platform

While I haven’t abandoned completely the idea of getting my games on iOS, for sure that won’t happen soon (and  for sure I won’t waste anymore of my personal time trying to submit, I had enough!).

On the Android front, I’ve started porting Loren as you can see from the video below:

Loren RPG running on an Android tablet

Unfortunately there’s still some work to do (though that video is old, the character selection already works now for example). I’ve also “donated a Fire Kindle HD to the cause”, so that the Ren’Py coder can investigate the problems publishing on the Amazon store (and fix other generic Android bugs as well).

Stay tuned for more info coming in the next weeks!

Nicole’s progresses

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In the video above, Nicole’s first encounter with Kurt Madry

Nicole made some big progresses. Oh no wait, I mean… I made some big progresses on Nicole (the otome/yuri dating sim I’m working on).

First of all the game has a brand new GUI:

I’m quite happy about it. You can see the main menu, load/save and options screen, and a in-game screenshot. By the way about the last screenshot, I’m sure Natalie from Winter In Faibrook would agree with Nicole, about what she says 😉

Yesterday I just finished coding Kurt’s route, and writer said should send me Ted shortly. There’s only Jeff left to write. However I don’t want to say anything I could regret later… so for now the estimate release date is still mid-July, for several reasons:

  • we decided to add extra images, so that there will be a “normal” ending, and a special ending. In the normal ending will use sprites over transparent backgrounds, while special endings will be full CGs drawings.
  • even if writer manages to finish writing the last otome route with Jeff at end of June, we still have to write the events in which the mystery is solved. Yes because they’re going to be different from the normal romance route, at least the final part.
  • also, we need to add some mystery events that will trigger in the game during certain points. Won’t be long scenes but needs to be thought carefully.
  • while the main gameplay is done, we wanted to add some nice touches like cellular messages, online shopping (since the main character is a bit of a geek) and so on. Small things but they take time to draw the art and code.
  • the chibi/main menu/GUI artist wants to do an OP to the game (a sort of trailer with music for it to show at the beginning, for those not familiar with japanese dating sims). That will be very cool but also require some time as you imagine.
  • last but not least I need to code all the scenes, add them inside the game and do a preliminary testing. And even if this is one of the main games I’m working on at the moment, I have to work a bit on the others as well… 😉

So, still a lots of stuff to do, and probably will delay the game release, but I think in the end will be worth the wait!

Don’t rest on your laurels

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Batman sleeping
In the picture above, my cat Batman sleeping in my messy office

This year I’ve already released two games: Heileen 3 Sea Maidens, the yuri version for  Heileen 3 released last year in December, and Bionic Heart 2.

But there’s no time to rest on my laurels! The show must go on! etc etc.

Roommates

So I’m very excited to announce that Roommates script is 99.9% finished (just some minor tweaks and some gameplay phrases to add). The total word count is about 130,000 which is definitely not bad. It also will have a lot of replayability, since for the first time in one of my dating sims, you can play as male or female main character!

Unfortunately, there is still quite some work to do. The game will feature a full original soundtrack PLUS a theme song for it. I’m quite excited about that, since the theme song perfectly fits with the light-comedy setting of the game 🙂

On the art side, I am expecting some extra romance CGs that between my writer and me were referred as “the beach sex scenes”. So as you can imagine they will be quite “steamy” 😉

I’m also missing all the 26 backgrounds, and the artist I picked (who already did a great job on Nicole’s backgrounds) can begin working on them only in July. So as you can imagine, the game is very likely to be out in August/September, a bit later than I expected, but at least this will leave us a good amount of time for editing, testing, tweaking gameplay and so on.

Nicole

I finished Darren’s path this week, and Kurt’s one is being proofread right now. The soundtrack is finished (with 7 different tracks) and art-wise I am missing four extra scenes for the “normal romance endings”, but artist guaranteed she can do them in one month. There’s still some other art left like the GUI and chibis, but shouldn’t be a major cause of delays.

So I still believe the game beta could be out at end of June, or mid-July at the latest. We’ll see!

…and I haven’t forgot about the RPGs!

I know that a good amount of people who follows me now is because of my last RPGs. Well don’t worry, I haven’t forgot about you: I am definitely going to try finishing another RPG soon. Planet Stronghold 2 looks like will need more time than I thought, so that’s why I’m playing around with Loren RPG framework to experiment with it, using a different layout, higher resolution (1280×720) and simpler interface which could work also on touch-based devices, as you can see in the work-in-progress image below:

mysterious RPG

For what game you might ask ? Well maybe Loren sequel won’t be the only RPG set in Aravorn to be out in the (near, hopefully) future… 😉

The last missing piece

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What last missing piece you ask? Well, yesterday for real-life reasons I had to commute for long distances, so I spent a lot of time thinking. An activity that probably I should do more often 🙂

So, I thought that making games is like making a puzzle. You need all the pieces to finish it, and like puzzles, there are pieces that fit immediately, and others that take long time before you’ve found the right spot.

Gameplay design

A bit is for gameplay design reasons. I had to experiment a lot with the RPGs, but even for simpler games (at least apparently) like dating/life sim, quite often I have to tweak the screen layout and system for days or even weeks.

For example you might remember the old look of the scheduler for Nicole from last week post. Now look at the new version below:

newscheduler

Much better now! I eliminated the top title and made the photos look like Polaroid so four could fit on each row, and the text doesn’t overlap the image anymore. Small changes like that might seem obvious but still take time to design and code.

The real missing parts/pieces

But the most important thing, is to have all the needed pieces/parts/assets for a game!

I am doing several projects at once (probably too many) but there’s a reason for that: in every one there’s something missing. Nicole is missing some chibis and some extra artwork. Roommates some artwork, the main soundtrack, some writing. Planet Stronghold 2 is still missing a good amount of writing, some art (the talk poses) and good part of the RPG framework, plus GUI work.

In some cases is people’s fault, in other simply the job takes time to make, or is my fault because I waited too much to hire the right person for the job or planned the project badly.

But no matter the cause, every indie is in this situation, unless you make games that you code yourself using pixel-art / poser to do the graphics. In that case you might be able to do everything on your own, like I was doing in the beginning. No delays ever except for my own, but the results were much worse, since obviously I’m not a good artist nor a great writer!

So I wrote this post to say that even if a game is 90% done, sometimes that last piece of art, music track, writing scene, gameplay tweak, might cause big delays on a game release. That’s why when people ask me when a game will be out I always use the conditional “it SHOULD be out…” 😉

This year goal

I realized that we’re already in May, so at this point, as I said to a recent interview I did a week ago, my main goal is to release one RPG this year! Since I have the feeling that with the first Loren game everything went smoothly, all pieces fit together very easily, but I didn’t notice it until I started working on new RPGs and difficulties started to arise 🙂

Meanwhile, here’s a short video of Nicole so you can get an idea of the art and writing. The GUI artwork is still temporary placeholder of course!