Category Archives: dating sims

Love Bites & Cursed Lands update

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In the image above, the usual “character selection screen” from Love Bites! Yes I’m starting to work on this game now, coding the various gameplay parts. First of all, yes there will be a scheduler but there won’t be any stat raising!

See, I listen to what you tell me 😉 I’m not against stat raising games of course, but they need to be very integrated with the story or the gameplay mechanics. Skill checks to pass, and that change the events of the story for example. I agree that if all the stats have to do is just make the gameplay a grind to reach the required value, it’s better to not have stats at all! And that’s why I decided to not have them in Love Bites to unlock the endings.

However, there will still be a scheduler and a few variabls, which together with the in-story choices, will unlock some endings or variants. The current plan is:

  • each love interest has a job to offer to the protagonist. Depending which jobs you take, you’ll unlock more scenes and advance the romance with the love interest.
  • each weekend (Saturday/Sunday) there will be the chance to have a date with one of the love interests
  • in the visual novel scenes, there won’t be anymore a “right or wrong” choice, leading to an increase of relationship. Instead, each choice will alter some hidden variables which will lead to endings variations. I’m not sure if I’ll keep those variables hidden or even show the effects on the choice text itself, have yet to decide it.
  • the only variable in the scheduler will be Energy, Money and another one which I’m not revealing for now (could be called “Stress”). They can influence the game ending and even lead to a sudden game over (don’t worry, it’s not easy to “lose” in this game) and relative achievement, which will be fun 🙂

Love Bites beta should begin this Summer or early September, though not sure yet when exactly.

Cursed Lands news

Good news: the script of Cursed Lands (in the screenshot above, the game main menu) it’s at very good point, and should be completed this year. Of course this doesn’t mean that the GAME will be out this year! 😉

Currently the story is already over 150,000 words, so it’s likely that the final story will be close to the 200,000 word range. Yes, I managed to make another “small game” ™!

Jokes apart, I think for a RPG with a good story, recruitment missions, loyalty/relationship/friendship/romance paths, male / female main character, side missions etc… 200,000 words are needed.

This game, without any spoilers, consists in 3 phases: the intro, where the player is “hired” for an important mission regarding N’Mar. A central phase where player must explore the world and recruit new party members to help with the main goal. A third phase where the “final battles” is played and everything it’s resolved.

In the image above you see a prototype of the central phase, where players will spend most of the time. Yes it’s similar to Amber’s, but the similarities ends with the left GUI 🙂

What about the gameplay? For now I can tell you a few things about the RPG/combat:

  • you can use special skills (Talents) against normal enemies and, with reduced effects, against bosses. Your playing character possess those talents which can lead to interesting results. For example let’s pick the following talent: Bluff – May cause enemy to flee and drop an item. Obviously, with normal/regular enemies this will work (of course during testing I’ll limit certain talents to once in a battle, and also will depend on the target level, etc) but with bosses not (otherwise there won’t be combat lol).
  • if you remember the very old announcement post, I posted a screenshot of the love interest, 6 in total. However, you can recruit MORE people to help with your quest! There are two dwarves, Dasyra and Galan, which are each one the opposite personality/class (Dasyra is a healer, Galan a berserker) and we also decided to allow some secondary side mission which will enable the player to recover also characters that maybe were abandoned in the first mission (where a choice is forced). A total of 10 characters can be recruited in total, and with all of them you can increase your relationship and unlock a “friendship bonus”.
  • because of previous point, to avoid micro-management madness, I’ve decided that each character will have 4 or maximum 5 inventory slots: main/off hand, ranged, armor, jewelry/accessories. I think I might reuse SOTW system with randomized items but for sure have unique items that will be more powerful than anything else.
  • same for the skills: I prefer to have less skills but designed better, so 5 skills for each character, for a total of 50 different skills (enemies might have others though). I haven’t made my mind about the attributes yet, could use same system as SOTW since it’s already well tested.

As you can see, this is definitely NOT a small game by any means even for the complexity of gameplay. The script should be finished towards end of this year, so I might even be able to release this game next year. I know this is a game I started only recently, but as I’ve said many times, I cannot control how slow/fast writers work, so it can happen that games started not long ago are finished sooner than games in the works since years.

Well, at least means a new RPG will be out relatively “soon”, right? 🙂

Amber beta and rest of the year plans

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Amber’s beta officially started a few hours after the latest blog post 2 weeks ago, and I’ve made good progress in fixing bugs and adding features, thanks to the usual great testers in my forums. Special thanks in particular to “Franka” for the help in testing the crafting framework so accurately! (it takes a long time lol)

For those who want to try the game, here’s the official page: http://winterwolves.com/ambersmagicshop.htm

The beta is in a very advanced state: the story is finished, and at the time of writing this post no known bugs are left 🙂

Rest of the year plans!

And now, time to talk about the upcoming release of 5 new RPGs this year!!! Haha obviously I am joking 😀

Having a game I started officially so long ago like Amber in beta is very satisfying, but unfortunately for many of the others there’ll be more to wait because are either RPGs, have an insane amount of romances, or both. Three games in particular, Undead Lily, Planet Stronghold 2 and Loren 2 have all those “problems” 🙂

Anyways, if you remember in the first months of this year I was working on Undead Lily. I asked my coder to do some changes to the card framework and the “good old” RPG framework used in Loren, SOTW, etc.

The first change, on the card framework, would allow the cards to have “skills”. So in practice it would become quite similar to a RPG system, but with the usual easy to understand rock/paper/scissor mechanics typical of a card game.

The second change instead would consist of adding a delay based system with a fixed turn on the RPG framework. Currently the framework has action cost/time (as you know if you played those RPGs) but we cannot measure “a turn”, since it’s all relative to each creature’s speed. So if a party had super-quick creatures, for them the “turn” would pass faster than the others.

Changing it to a fixed timer would allow me to use fixed turns, so have events happening each turn (which would be the same for both the factions involved in the battle) and also some more cool things like having actions that cost less time, so your unit could attack and use a potion in same turn, etc. I would use it mainly to do my Undead Lily experiments but also in future games 🙂 I think it could even allow the implementation of a system similar to Fallout 1-2 or Wasteland 2 “AP points”, in which each action has an AP cost. This last feature though isn’t officially approved by my coder, so might just be my dream 😀

Regarding which games will come out next this year: I’m currently aiming at releasing at least a dating sim or maybe two. One is Love Bites, while I won’t say what is the other, also because it could be a “cursed game” or a game still unannounced 😉

Amber’s update

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Ehm, maybe I won’t keep the messagebox above in the final game, however…

As you know well if you follow me on twitter or read my forums, I’m currently working at fullspeed to get my next game, Amber’s Magic Shop, out.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a much bigger game than I originally thought. But on the other hand I think will be worth the wait! The plot is almost entirely scripted (it was already written long time ago, but I needed to script it), and the gameplay coding is progressing well too, but it’s really much more detailed/complex than I originally planned. Hopefully means it’s also more fun to play 🙂

For example, above you see one of the various screens I coded this week, the “Unfinished Tasks”. Tasks will be like quests for the RPGs: you’ll have a limited amount of time to craft amount X of item Y, and of a minimum quality Z (in the game depending on the ingredients you mix, you’ll obtain different item quality). Rewards will be variable, money (obviously) but also “Reputation points” or new items/recipes.

I am also planning to leave a lot of freedom, especially during the “adult age”. In the young age, since Amber is an apprentice in Haros’ shop, she won’t be able to take many decisions, but once she gets to run her own shop (in the adult age indeed) she will have a much bigger variety of available actions in each game location, and will also be able to build her own magic shop.

I honestly hoped to have the beta out by the time I wrote this post: however, the last thing I want to do is hurry the game now, after all the efforts that have been put in it. Hmm, the next blog post will be the 31st March… maybe that will be a good day to announce the game in beta! 😉

While you wait, listen to a preview of one of the tracks from the game, “Gothic Doll”. Talk to you soon!

Amber’s Magic Shop: Introducing Lair

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intro_lair

In this game, there are plenty of elves. Amber is very cute obviously, but even Laironden, Lair for his friends, is not bad either!

Lair Official Introduction

Born to nobility, Lair lives in fear of his tyrannical father. Ever since his mother died several decades ago, his father, Arnor, has become consumed by rage and the need to control everything he can. His ruthlessness has allowed him to rise in power to the point he has the ear of the King and Queen, but it has come at the cost of alienating all around him. Lair does not hate his father, but he does his best to avoid him and that means he is often seen spending his time in areas that most of his social class would not deign to visit.

His friendship with Amber leads the two of them into conflict with Arnor who holds to the old Elf attitudes towards Dark Elves. He is furious about their relationship and begins to interfere in her life. Eventually, he forces her to work on the Philosopher’s Stone or be banished from Icesilia. She reluctantly agrees, both to protect Lair from his father’s wrath and so she can stay in the city.

Lair is fairly naïve for his age having spent most of it as a sheltered noble. He tries his best to be kind and fair although he can forget about the feelings of others in his bid to escape from the machinations of his father and the nobility at large. For the most part, he tends to be open when people try to explain issues with his behaviour although this openness at times leaves him vulnerable to being manipulated by those who might wish to take advantage of his naivety.

Next week, will make a post about this year, how it turned out to be my most productive year ever, and some personal considerations about the market, indie and life! Stay tuned 🙂

Amber’s Magic Shop: Introducing Cosa & Anders

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intro_cosa_anders

First of all a short announcement: all my games are discounted for the Steam Thanksgiving sale. Also, Happy Thanksgiving! 🙂

Back on topic: why those two characters are introduced together, you might wonder? Well…let’s say that they are often seen together during the story. This is also a particular path since you get an extra bonus CG in it. But wait, I’m saying too much! Let’s proceed with the introduction.

Cosa and Anders introduction

Mysterious adventurers that always seem to be on the run from the Royal Guard, Amber finds herself thrown into the dangerous exploits of the two silver-haired humans.

The pair have a deep interest in alchemy and frequently request assistance from Amber to aid in their own research. Cosa, in particular, has a mission of her own that involves alchemy and she wants to recruit Amber to her cause.

In later years, Amber continues to work with Cosa and Anders to create the legendary Panacea to cure Cosa’s father who is dying from an incurable disease. Their adventures take them all over the country surrounding Icesilia and soon Amber finds out just what Cosa and Anders did to upset the King and Queen of Icesilia.

Cosa is a driven individual who has trained all her life to be an adventurer and warrior. She strives to be perfect in everything she does and has little time for anything but the best. Anders, on the other hand, tends to be fairly laidback although he gets enthusiastic when he has the opportunity to experience new things or try out new technology.

The two of them are close and Amber suspects they are lovers. Still, they tend to be awfully affectionate with her too…

What do you think? an interesting premise 😉