Category Archives: dating sims

Heirs & Graces – Vincent

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vincent

Today we introduce another character of the upcoming yaoi dating sim “Heirs & Graces”: Vincent.

Vincent has been working for Lord Sandor since he was sixteen. He was initially hired on as a regular servant, but has since risen to the position of butler. Though it is possible he would have gotten the position by simply not quitting, Vincent has proven himself more than capable in the role.

He handles nobles well, does more than his fair share of work, and has a good head for business on top of that. Vincent’s advice has gone far in helping Lord Sandor expand his wealth, though Lord Sandor gives Vincent little credit for it. Vincent doesn’t mind though as he sees it as a normal part of his job. Lord Sandor has grown to trust Vincent implicitly and often lets Vincent take care of his daily affairs.

While Vincent excels at his job, he has a hard time navigating the world outside of it. He doesn’t really know what to do with his free time so he usually spends it completing extra work or learning skills that will help him improve his work.

Needless to say, his social life is virtually non-existent. Kamal is the only one Vincent can honestly claim as a friend and that’s only because Kamal goes out of his way to interact with him. If Vincent isn’t working, he feels useless and Vincent can’t stand feeling useless.

His greatest fear is that the people around him will consider him a bother. To avoid this, Vincent strives for perfection in all of his tasks to the point where he becomes devastated on the rare occasions where he does make a mistake – no matter how small that mistake may be.

Vincent is strict with himself, but he’s surprisingly understanding when others make mistakes. He’s quick to step in to help out when other servants get into trouble and doesn’t reprimand them if they’ve learned their lesson. He is a bit lenient in general, but he can be stern if he’s pushed too far.

Overall, Vincent is reliable and loyal. He’s a good person to have on your side.

More progress on the other games!

I’m making more progress on Queen Of Thieves, the skilltrees are basically done. I had the idea to use Hands Of Fate (not my Heileen 2 game, that popular roguelike) card system for the exploration: instead of cards, will be rooms of the various buildings the girls will explore trying to rob rich people. Each room will have a surprise (both positive or negative) randomly chosen from a set of possible events. I think done this way it’s more “casual” and easier to code than an isometric map 🙂

I still have some great isometric tileset done by artist that I’ll reuse in other fantasy games.

Next week I’ll also begin talking about my CYOA game “Cursed Lands” with some previews and more info about it!

May update!

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Time for a big update on the progress of the various games in the works! Let’s start:

C14 Dating

deandre
Deandre asking a tough question to Melissa… 😉 the new GUI interface is still not implemented in the build

Writing for this game is finished since last year, but now even the scripting (which means adding all the various characters on screen, their facial expressions, the musics, etc) is at a very good point. What is really missing now are the romance CGs, which the awesome Deji plans to make next month. Fingers crossed, but MAYBE in July we will be able to start digging-ahem I meant playing this game! 😉

Queen Of Thieves

I’ve made more progress in coding/designing it. I’m not going to talk about it in detail anymore here, since during development things change so quickly that would probably be a waste of time (for example several of the features in previous blog post have been changed once I’ve tried them “on the field”!).

If you’re interested, check the forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewforum.php?f=32

Regarding the writing, I’m happy to report that the first draft of all the yuri routes is finished! the plan now is to finish the missing otome part and review what is already written, to match the yuri part which is generally longer (so even the otome will be around same length).

casual
The new casual outfits for the three sisters 🙂

Regarding art, I should be getting some NPC soon, together with some fixes for the yuri romance characters. There are still the romance CG to do, and several other minor stuff (icons, tilesets, etc) but in general it’s at good point too.

PSCD & Undead Lily

Those two games should have a good amount of gameplay in common (both card-rpg based). As you know, PSCD writing is done, art is almost finished too even if I still need to design all the cards. For Undead Lily, the artist finished all the cards and is remaking the images in the new style. For example, here’s Aquaria and Magma:

newundead

Please note: the images above are only sketches, so not final images, which will be much more detailed. But you can already see the big quality improvement 🙂

Each character will have a covered/uncovered outfit, and to make my customers happy, you’ll be able to set for every character in the game the outfit to be used ! 😉 It will be an option page full of buttons, considering there are 14 characters in the game!

As you can see, a lot of progress have been made in May. I daresay… may it continue next month! 😀

Digging you – a preview of the otome C14 Dating

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prettyguys
It’s still a work in progress screenshot, but looks already good!

So… puns aside, I’m really digging how C14 is coming out! In case you missed my earlier posts (from past year) you can read more about the game here: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/category/dating-sims/c14-dating/

In summary: it’s an otome dating sim set in the archeology world. And it features a cast of REALLY diverse characters. There’s a boy with a prosthetic arm, another with a cochlear implant, the nerd boy, and so on.

The main story is already over 140,000 words! And the writer and the editor are still tweaking/editing some later scenes 🙂 so it will be another very big game, featuring a lot of scenes and funny/cute/interesting moments. If you’re interested in the archeology world you’ll love this, and if you aren’t… you might become interested after playing it 😉

What is mainly missing are some sprites, the ending CG images and a few things here and there, like some GUI buttons, a few minigames to tweak/balance and so on, but overall it is in a very advanced state, as shown by the screenshots.

c14datingscheduler
The weekly schedule screen, with a lot of different activities showing as animated chibi!

Now I know what you’re wondering… when it will be out? Well I don’t want to say anything to not jinx it 😀 but it shouldn’t really take too long (talking about the beta, the official game for sure won’t be out before this Autumn).

I hope you’re excited as I am to see this game finally out!!

Queen Of Thieves update

This week I’m also trying to come up with a new battle layout for this new RPG in the works. The idea was to make it more user-friendly, maybe even “mobile-friendly”, and simplify the interface. So far I’ve made this:

newlayout

As you can see if you’re familiar with Loren/SOTW battle interface, I removed the battle log at bottom, and you can toggle it on/off with a button (the “L” button). If the log is turned off, you would see the selected character stats there.

The idea is that I already display almost all the info directly on the portraits: attack (sword), defense (shield), hit points (heart), SP (star). The only stats not shown are speed and critical which aren’t so essential, since the movement order can be seen on the right, and critical is a percentage of doing double damage but can be seen in character’s screen.

The skill or effect description would show on the left too, in the frame below the one in which the log is displayed.

If you have any feedback/ideas about it, I’ve made a thread in forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3624 to discuss 🙂

“Bad Blood” SOTW DLC is in beta

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greatwolf

I’ve decided to open the preorders and put the beta version of the DLC for download in my forums! For more details, you can check this forum thread:
http://winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=3610

In short: the only missing thing right now are the ending scenes. There are 4 scenes, one for each romantic couple, plus another one (can’t say what because… spoilers!).

Speaking of spoilers, for those who have ALREADY finished the base game, this video illustrates the contents of the DLC:

Unfortunately like with Loren, I can’t really make a “demo” of the DLC, but I hope that the video above will help people to make their decision. In general, I think if you liked the characters and the story you should like the DLC too.

The DLC focuses more on the story and characters relationships, with several lines and even scenes that change depending on your love interest. Because of that we thought to add a menu at beginning of the DLC, so that once you played the story to the end, you can replay choosing the starting conditions quickly with the menu (without the need to start the game from beginning or keep a lot of different savegames).

Of course, there are still battles, and thanks to the main metagame of “rebuilding Ninim” also some strategy. Let me know your thoughts about the difficulty: I am not sure that in the current beta the game can be beaten in Nightmare mode… 🙂

If everything goes as planned I should get the missing images by mid-April, so that’s when I’ll release the DLC officially.

Work on the other games goes on as planned. I keep getting weekly updates for more or less all of them. I definitely want to have one of the dating sims in progress out during the Summer 😉

shiori_sybil

Also, Roger Steel writer made a very interesting post in my forums with an update about the game itself: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3612

The bad news is that it won’t be out soon, the good news is that it will be much bigger and very similar in gameplay to Loren, with even a greater emphasis on choices and relationships. People who want, will be able to play it in pure visual novel mode, using choices to raise skills and fighting battles automatically 🙂

Heirs & Graces – Kamal

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kamal

Time for another Heirs & Graces character introduction, this time the ex-gladiator Kamal. One of my favorite characters of this game 🙂

Before being employed by Lord Sandor, Kamal sought to make a name for himself fighting in the arena. He genuinely loved honing his skills and battling against powerful opponents; getting paid for it was nice too. If he had continued as a gladiator, Kamal could have easily become one of the best. However, after an incident in the Dingirra arena, Kamal’s feelings towards his job as a gladiator turned sour. He still appreciates a good fight, but he has no desire to return to the arena. Luckily, Kamal didn’t stay unemployed for long. Lord Sandor witnessed his last battle and decided to hire him on as a body guard.

As it turns out, Kamal isn’t exactly the ideal servant. He has a problem obeying orders from people he doesn’t respect and will outright refuse to serve nobles if they’re rude to him. This has caused a few incidents in the past, but Lord Sandor has no interest in firing him. If anything, this behavior only amuses him– though he’d never admit it while he’s keeping up appearences.

It does cause a bit of a headache for Lord Sandor’s butler, Vincent, though. To avoid incidents, Vincent has Kamal work outside where his interaction with nobles is at a minimum which is more than fine by Kamal. He enjoys spending long periods of time outside and has taken up an extra job as Lord Sandor’s gardener to help Vincent out. Though they may seem an unlikely pair, Kamal and Vincent are actually friends due in part to the fact that they’ve both worked for Lord Sandor longer than any of the other servants.

Kamal tends to keep his sentences short, but that doesn’t mean he dislikes company. He’s actually quite friendly and often perceives people’s needs before they need them. Kamal is almost always calm and laid back which may make him look lazy to some. However, that’s not really true. He gets everything done at his own pace and can put in a lot of hard work if it’s actually required. He just doesn’t see the need to rush.

In other news, today got the colored sketches of “Bad Blood” (the new SOTW DLC) CGs, so I think I will begin preorders next weekend! Stay tuned for more info 🙂