Category Archives: dating sims

Winter In Fairbrook – Meet Jacob

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After Steve now it’s the turn of Jacob! This very nice, polite, shy guy was present in the first episode as well, and he had a crush for another member of the cast… (won’t say which one just in case someone still haven’t played it. By the way, what are you waiting for?).

In this scene, you can already feel how innocent and good he is. Natalie seems not to understand his reasons, why he always must help everyone, why he is doing it for free… and it’s just my impression, or Natalie is a bit jealous of Susana? 😉

I also wanted to answer some questions that users made in previous blog posts or on Youtube. Even if Steve scene has mouth animation, the game won’t be voiced. The lip animation was added at last minute as test, so we’re not even sure it will be present in the final game! Indeed today’s video with Jacob doesn’t have it. About the length, it’s slightly longer than the first game, so if you played it you have a good idea of what to expect. The farming / flower raising sim will be easier and differently from the first title won’t have an impact on the endings.

About the release date, we’re trying hard to release the game for the end of this month, or at least the pre-order version, since indeed there isn’t much time left…! 🙂

Is going to be a hot spring

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In the picture above, Lilli sleeping over some straw 🙂

Spring is my favourite season. The blossoming flowers, the nature that wakes up, warm but not too hot climate (at least, for now) and so on. They say that the season you like most, is the season you’re born in. Indeed, next monday will be my birthday…so maybe is true! I have lots of things going on, so this post is going to be made in form of “news”. First news is…

Loren to be a manga game too

Yes, after thinking about it a lot, and after seeing that the actual comic author wasn’t doing a great job (sigh…) I’ve decided to use manga art even for this game. I am not sure yet who will do the art but is likely will be the same artist of Undead Lily, so I’ll need to finish that game first (since artist still need to do a lot of art for that game).

I realized I was about to make the same mistake I made with Vera Blanc, but at least this time I changed direction in time 😉

I’m also going to change the gameplay, from card-rpg battle to some more real-time stuff and perhaps even isometric battlefield! But right now is too early to talk about it, since the game is officially on hiatus for now.

Remember Me out very soon + new title!

My new life / dating sim will be almost surely out for pre-orders next weekend (of the next week I mean)! I have finished testing the romance arc of Lawrence, so there are only 3 more characters to check. Obiously the pre-order version might contain a few bugs and some unbalanced gameplay, and the texts won’t be completely proofread, even if the main story was written by a native English speaker, so there are only minor things that aren’t proofread.

Yesterday spent the whole day testing it and I believe is going to be a good game, the “normal” endings are easy enough to get, once you find the right dialog choices (like in my other games) but the special ones are going to be tricky. You’ll need to understand which actions raises which stats, and is going to be fun to discover them all (some happens only at specifc day/hour).

Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook out… this summer!

Technically might be out even this Spring, since Summer starts the 21st June and if I understood well, Ayu of Sakevisual wants to have the game ready by the first days of June 🙂 You can see a nice gallery of pictures of the game below… this otome game is going to be quite interesting!

Screen_sonotinnocent Screen_susanajacob Screen_travisryan

So far the word count amounts at around 25,000 words, which is not bad already. There is going to be the usual farming sim, this time with flowers instead, but have yet to discuss about this with Ayu so don’t know exactly how it will be done. More detailed information about this game will come in the next weeks!

So… what’s the plan again?

The new release schedule is:

Mid-April – Remember Me pre-orders
End-April –  Remember Me Official Release

End-May or Early June – Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook

I’m going to list only the games almost ready from now on, since for the others in production many things can happen that can change completely the schedule. I’m also probably going to find the time to release an add-on for Planet Stronghold sometime before next Summer! Featuring the so-much-requested romance options: Lisa – Prince Cliff and Joshua – Queen Shiler!

Downloadables are dead, long live downloadables

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In the picture above, Otello happily posing in middle of the flowers. I love spring 🙂

As you could guess from the title, this is a rant-post. I’ve heard so many discussions recently about the dying downloadables, how online games is the future, and so on. It’s a very complex discussion, so I’m not going into every detail (also because I want to talk about my games) however I feel the need to say a few things:

  • “dead markets” doesn’t mean that you cannot make any profit in them. It only means that the main hype moved elsewhere. Also, since there’s less hype, means that there’s also less competition. I believe that as indie, having less competition is much more important than having a bigger potential target market.
  • speaking for my games, in general story-based games works best as single player. I’ve never played a multiplayer game that also was immersive or told me a good story, simply because storytelling requires only one viewer/spectator. If you give other people the possibility to influence a plot or ruin the mood, don’t worry, they’ll absolutely do it (anyone who played a MMORPG surely has met people that would destroy the fantasy setting atmosphere in a second with some typical US-slang words :D)
  • remember that very big portals are still using the downloadables model. Big Fish Games in the casual world, Steam, D2D, Gamersgate, Impulse and others for the more “hardcore/niche” games. They’re not going to disappear overnight, and I believe not even in 5-10 years
  • also as indie, we’re different from big publishers and most of the discussions don’t apply. Look at Spiderweb games. Old-school RPG are dead, right? since about 1990. He is not doing well indeed. He is doing extremely well! As indie (especially if you work alone or in a small team) you don’t necessarily need to sell a $1 game to 100,000 people in a week, but you can have better luck trying to sell a $20 game to “only” 10000 in several years. That makes quite a difference!

That said, of course online games/web games can be profitable! I never said the opposite. Only that they require a completely different subset of skills vs the traditional downloadables, and also on marketing. I am currently doing research to make some online games as well, but it’s a big step for me. Most of the successful online games are run by a team, with a few exceptions, and don’t want to committ myself to something “too big” yet. I could do some experiments though.

For example, an idea I recently had was to add an online mode to Planet Stronghold. You would play online battles (not PvP though, at least initially) and as you win you would get experience, money to spend on better equipment or buying skills, and so on. It would be completely separated from the main game, so that I was even thinking to sell it as stand alone game or maybe use the free-to-play model. However I’m not sure if there’s enough interest to justify the time I’d have to spend to do this (especially coding the server part), even if it wouldn’t be a completely new game since I would be able to reuse good part of the normal offline game system.

In general I think that while visual novel, dating sims, and other similar games gain zero benefits from being online, other kind of games like RPG, simulation, strategy games can become more interesting with new online features.

Speaking of dating / life sim, I’ve made more progresses on Remember Me this week, and some events are really cool like the one below:

Secretadmirer

Who is this mysterious secret admirer? you’ll have to play the game to find out, even if honestly is not that difficult!

I’ve also got some important news about the other games in development. Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook is getting close to the release! I don’t have yet an exact date, but should be before next June, so not much left to wait. I’m currently writing (with help of external writers) and getting the art done for the simulation/RPG game Queen Of Thieves and the comic-RPG game Loren: Amazon Princess. My sports simulation game Universal Boxing Manager 2 is also going on well, even if right now there’s not enough to make a video, since the coder is mostly doing stuff that appears behind the scenes (statistics, AI, gameplay, and so on).

My planned release schedule (which surely will be messed up completely) would be:

  1. Mid/End-April – Remember Me
  2. End of May/June – Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook
  3. July/August – Loren The Amazon Princess
  4. September/October – Queen of Thieves
  5. November/December – either the superheroes game or maybe UBM2

Friday catblogging – Happy New Year

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Gilda in a basket in the bathroom of my old home. Because we have so many cats, we never had a decorated Christmas Tree, otherwise would be instantly destroyed… 🙂

First of all, Happy New Year to everyone! I have released Planet Stronghold alpha 0.8, which features lot of new content! If you’re interested in trying the demo or buying the game please visit the game website.

Then, a quick update on what you can expect in the next months:

Role Playing Games

Beside Planet Stronghold, which will be finished at end of January 2011, I plan to start 2-3 more RPGs. I love RPGs and I always wanted to make them, but in the past I was lacking proper funds and/or technical knowledge to make decent ones. Now, using Planet Stronghold RPG framework I can expand it and create new RPGs. Most of them will be in fantasy setting though, since it’s the most common/popular one (unless Planet Stronghold is so successful that convinces me to make add-on/sequels). I have already a good collaborator of mine who is starting creating the main game plot, character sketches, and so on. Another one should start hopefully in next months, and I want to do another myself as well. So the 2011 will be surely full of RPGs!

Adventure Games

I am still in love with my character of Vera Blanc, despite the first two episodes not being really topsellers. As I posted several times if I make a third episode, it will be an adventure (first person) and not a visual novel, since the adventure style integrates better with that kind of game. I have already a plot for the story, but since it requires lot of money, it’s still a risky decision, so if I make it, won’t be before next summer, or even later during Fall/Winter of 2011.

Visual Novels / Dating Sims

Of course I’ll keep making them! Flower Shop 2 release is really close, is just a matter of few months. But since is tied to external factors (artists finishing some pieces) I won’t dare to name a date for it. Instead I can already say that very likely the otome game “Remember Me” will be ready around February/March 2011, since the plot is completely written and need only to code the “simulation part” of it and do testing/balancing. Depending how my other projects go, I could make more VN/Dating Sims, but they’ll be mixed with simulation games.

Strategy / Simulation Games

In 2011 perhaps I will finally release the sequel of Spirited Heart. I have yet to start coding it though, so is probably more accurate to say that in 2011 I’ll begin coding it, which is a bit different. It won’t be ready probably before 2012, also because I have in mind some online-features (probably optional) that could improve the gameplay a lot, so I am not sure yet I’ll use Ren’Py to code this one.
There will be for sure more strategy/simulation games coming in 2011 though. A remake of my game Universal Boxing Manager, this time with the fights completlely in 3d realtime, is under production! Is made in partnership with a good 3d coder who is going to use Unity3d to power the 3d simulation. It’s probably my biggest/most ambitious game to date and the 2011 will be mainly focused on it. I hope will do well since I’d like to port more of my old games into 3d or start new ones.
As I said I might also find the time to do a sort of light-strategy/time management game based on Heileen settings. In particular, Heileen 2 settings (pirates, the caribbean). The game could be played as normal strategy game or with visual novel cut-scenes (they’ll be optional). This will be a sort of experiment since I am not sure if/when I’ll finish it. Let’s say I’ll work on it on my spare time and when it’s done, is done 🙂

Online Games

Almost every year I say “next year I’ll make one”. So, this time I won’t say it! But, I would like to try making one, even if I am not sure I’ll find the time…or better, if I’ll find the right person, since I’m probably going to outsource the coding (will be most likely done in Flash or HTML5). Or if the new interesting BRL:monkey project from Mark Sibly (creator of Blitzmax) gets released, I might use that and do everything myself.

So in conclusion, looks like the 2011 will be a year full of new releases! Happy New Year again!!

Friday catblogging – Excessive branching is not good

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In the picture above, Othello sitting in a flower vase with a blossoming cherry tree in the background. Took it in my previous home, during spring.

Sometimes when I have a little time I play other games. Recently I bought Alpha Protocol, and was completely fascinated by it (no wonder, Obsidian is one of the best AAA developers around). It interested me a lot because of the RPG/FPS mix, but mostly because of the dialogue system and the multiple paths/branching typical of VNs.

Here is the problem. The game promises lots of different paths, every decision influences the story, and so on. And it’s TRUE. The point is – is useful? Who is going to replay the game from beginning to see what he has missed (and no guarantees that he will really see everything) ? Very FEW people, believe me. Also, in a FPS/RPG you can’t just skip the dialogues forward like in my Renpy games, so you can’t just do a “quick replay” to see what you have missed.

So I thought if wouldn’t have been a wiser choice to have still some branching, but not so many. Or that would lead to a different subplot completely, like I did with Bionic Heart. Such games should either be quickly replayable to let the player see what he missed, or tell the player “Hey, save now because there’s a big branch of the plot now, so you can reload this savegame later and pick a different direction to see what you have missed”.

I watched on youtube many videos of Alpha Protocol just to see what I had missed, because I really couldn’t afford to replay the whole thing from the beginning. It felt like a “waste of time and resources” to me. The devs could have done a longer game (is already long, but could be even longer) instead of making it so “free-play”. After all, in a story-based game, is more important to KNOW that you can have 50 different endings but that you probably will never replay it to see them all (especially if you can’t play fast-forward), or that the story is much longer?

I’m sure most players would pick the second option. That’s why in my upcoming RPG Planet Stronghold I haven’t opted to have lots of different paths: it will have a common main plot, but with missions/quest that let you have some freedom (do them in any order you want) and several romance subplots that are optional, but can be done anytime after chapter4, without the need to restart from beginning (except if you want to see the romance from another gender). In practice, save the game at beginning of chapter 4 and you can then reload it and see all possible endings/branches for your gender.

Speaking of Planet Stronghold, the next version 0.8 will be out hopefully next week, I don’t know the exact day yet because I had some eyesight problem recently, and with the Christmas busy schedule you can never know. Anyway, as I wrote several times, with version 0.8 the pre-order price will increase permanently to $19.99 so if you are interested in the game, be sure to buy it now 🙂