Category Archives: roommates

Bionic Heart 2 officially out and more news

1 Reply

Bionic Heart 2 is done!

First of all the big news everyone (myself in particular, since was getting burned out!) was waiting for: Bionic Heart 2 is finally finished!

You can get more info and download the free demo at this page: http://www.winterwolves.com/bionicheart2.htm

I am working on a small update that will enable a “HINT MODE” so that you’ll get some hints before each boss battle, though to be honest most of them are easy enough, but there are a couple of harder ones towards the end of the game (Tom/Luke and in particular Julia/Tanya last boss fight). Meanwhile, please visit my forums to get some tips and a full walkthrough.

The official game video isn’t ready yet, I had it done already by the end of March but decided to change a few things, I hope to be able to upload it next week, along with the official PR and newsletter.

Roger Steel is back

After some delays, the sneak peek of the steampunk RPG Roger Steel are back in my forums! Check here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2961

More RPGs in the near future…

Even if the next games to be released will likely be the dating sims Roommates and Nicole, rest assured that I’m not going to stop making RPGs! Planet Stronghold 2 still needs more time, but meanwhile I am planning some surprises, including an unannounced RPG and resuming the work on Undead Lily, which was put on hiatus early last year, and while is a more light/casual RPG it should still be fun to play. More news about those projects after the Summer though!

iOS madness

A not-so-good news instead is that I’m having insane troubles trying to validate/upload the Heileen port to iOS appstore. I’ve been talking with 5-6 different people, all expert of iOS, showed them a lot of screenshots, and everyone said that “it should work” (last famous words).

But as a matter of fact, after ONE WEEK spent on it, I still couldn’t validate/upload Heileen. Now before you think I’m a dumb newbie, I really tried EVERYTHING, and I suspect is something really screwed up at Mac OS/Xcode level (wouldn’t be the first time I heard of such problems). Maybe will just hire someone to do the submission, I can’t afford to waste one week of my time just for that! 😀

So for now, I am not sure IF/WHEN I’ll be able to publish any games on iOS. Meanwhile, Bionic Heart 2 is already available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winterwolves.bionicheart2

Week full of good news

1 Reply

After some rather sad/grim posts in the past, today I’m pleased to make a very happy one 🙂

Bionic Heart 2 update

First of all: Bionic Heart 2 beta testing is basically over, I’m waiting a bit more but if you waited until now to try it because you were afraid of bugs, don’t wait any longer! Check the official forum thread here with the new download links.

Lots of things have changed from last week, I had a sort of enlightening when I completely changed the game logic code. Before, the logic jumps were scattered all around the 100,000 words script, making very hard to understand the game flow. So I tried another approach: I concentrated all the logic code in 10-15 lines, calling each scene from it. It was the decisive move, since all the remaining bugs could be fixed very easily after that!

I wonder why I didn’t think about this before. Probably was a bit burned after all ^_^;

Nicole update

nicole WIP
A work in progress screenshot from the game

I am making good progress with Nicole too. Main menu track is finished, Darren’s script is done, and I’m testing / adding the various sprites right now to the game. In the screenshot above you also see one of the new chibis representing Nicole’s status (like in Always Remember Me).

Of course everything is work in progress but I like the direction so far 🙂 If the writer can finish all the otome routes by end of May/mid-June the game might be out in early July for sure!

Planet Stronghold 2

Progress are being made too, now that I’m done with other projects I’m starting to discuss with Aleema some interesting plot twists 😉 At same time artist should be able to finish the enemies and start with the camp talk poses during this month.

Roommates

The script is almost done, and the theme song preview is great, I like it 🙂 There’s still some delays because of background images and some extra CG scenes to be added to the spring break event in the game, so for now I don’t want to say any deadline since I’m not sure myself either.

Heileen on iOS!

Since yesterday was my 39th birthday, I gifted myself a iPad mini. Why? to test the first Heileen build for iOS:Heileen iOS

it was ported using Monkeycoder by a developer friend, and so far seems to work well. I still need to test it and submit the game, so will probably take another month before appears on the appstore.

The plan is to keep porting the other games, except for the RPGs that would require much more time/effort. Also, because of Apple’s policies will probably need to censor somehow the more “steamy” games, since I don’t want to risk to see my apps removed or worse.

As always if you want to make sure to not miss anything, the only way is to get the games directly from my site 😉

Progress update

10 Replies

First of all, I redid my website layout, I think is much better and functional than the previous one (the shopping cart layout needs to be updated but don’t worry, it works fine and is safe!). Second, the big update for Planet Stronghold is now out of beta, so you can grab it from the official page: http://www.winterwolves.com/planetstronghold.htm

Third, it’s been a while since I last posted a cat picture and did a progress report of all my games, so here we go:
tofu snowIn the image above, my cat Tofu looking at the snow from her little wooden house

As you know I have always several projects going on at once. Let’s make the point of the situation. I’ll try to order the games in the orders they’re likely to be finished, but of course it’s not a definitive list:

Bionic Heart 2

As you know everything is ready, but there are some serious plot bugs. Hopefully out at the end of this month, at least the beta testing stage!

Nicole

The otome version is at a very good point. It has all the characters/background art, and it’s only missing the soundtrack (but that can be done in 2 months) and the writing. After that is done, I’ll need to put together the gameplay, but shouldn’t take long since will mostly reuse the one already coded for Always Remember Me.

Roommates

Even this game is at good point, but since is very big, it will be probably out after Nicole. Story-wise there’s the last part left to write, but then we’ll need to playtest/edit everything so that’s still a lot of work. All the backgrounds are still missing, though I have already contacted a person to do them, and we decided to add several more CG images for the Spring Break event where most love-stories will really begin to flourish 😉

Then there’s still the soundtrack to do, which very likely will also consist of a theme song, since one of the characters of the game (Max) is a singer in a band.

Planet Stronghold 2

This is a very ambitious game, so while a good amount of work is already done, like all the romance scenes, we will add more enemies and probably camp talk images like those that will be present in Loren sequel. The RPG framework is also being rewritten completely and will take some time because the coder want to make it more flexible than previous one (so it can be adapted and reused for future games better).

The other games

Even if I don’t have time to post regular updates, progress is being made for Amber Magic Shop, Queen Of Thieves, Roger Steel and all the others 🙂

Bionic Heart 2 preorders open

Leave a reply

Bionic Heart 2 update…

Good news, after months of hard work Bionic Heart 2 is almost finished!

I am coding the endings in those days, and doing some extra testing because the game has so many paths that I want to test them all to make sure there are no mistakes (even if probably will miss something, but that’s what the beta testing phase is for!).

Now check this cool image:
tanyahelenwallpaper

Helen holding Tanya’s hand, eager to show her something (this image will be present in one ending as well).

Anyway, this is one of the many wallpapers you’ll get with the “bonus content” edition of Bionic Heart 2 (the real ones have resolution if 1920×1200 so will fit even the biggest monitor/resolution!). There are much more steamy images, both of female and male characters from the game 😉

Beside the wallpapers, you also get a full atmospheric soundtrack with 10 original tracks.

You can preoder the normal version clicking here. If you want the version with bonus content instead, please click here.

But there’s no hurry, both versions will be available at same price, so you can wait to play the demo first if you are unsure 🙂

…and the other games!

The other projects are advancing, more or less. Some faster, other slower, but of course depends on the game type. RPGs take a lot of time to make, as you well know 😉

Speaking of RPGs, you can read the latest sneak preview of Roger Steel in my forums here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2887
(and catch up with the other sneak previews if you missed some)

Planet Stronghold 2 artist is working on more enemy sprites, and the last task is to draw the camp talk poses.

Roommates is also going well, writer is finishing the script and in the next months will try to talk more about this game, since I should start to decide its gameplay. Below you can see 4 new secondary characters that you’ll encounter in the game:

Finally, do you remember Queen Of Thieves? got in touch again with the artist who said will finish the latest ending scenes (they were made in a very unique style as comic pages), so I should have all the artwork needed for the game in the next months 🙂

What’s Next?

As always when people ask me what will be the next released game (apart Bionic Heart 2 of course), my reply is that I have no clue because depends on how fast are the artists/writers. Once I have everything done, usually takes me from 2 to 4 months to finish a game, depending on the complexity of course.

Deadlines

7 Replies

Deadlines are part of almost every job. With indie games, and in particular small/single indies like me, deadlines are usually self-imposed.

When I used to work in a (small) software house, we had deadlines and was a bit crazy. Every time, we had to do last-minute “crunch mode” which basically meant working 12h a day for the last weeks before the deadline. Not a great experience as you can imagine, and lots of stress!

Thank God, now that I’m indie I have more flexibility! But that still doesn’t mean that I can take as much time as I want to finish a proejct of course! A delay of one or more months will have both economical consequences (I need to regularly release new games to keep the cash flow) and also could damage my credibility (missing deadlines or delaying games is never a cool thing).

Even if I have to say that my followers are absolutely awesome and even when they ask me “when will be game XYZ be out!!?” they do it only because they’re eager to play it 🙂

Speaking of deadlines let’s see what could be some estimate release dates for upcoming games. Note how estimate is written in bold!

Bionic Heart 2

Hyppocratesresearch

Is the game closest to completion. At beginning of month, everything was going smoothly and I was thinking that the game might be finished by the end of February as I originally planned. However there have been some problems, so I can already say that I won’t be able to release it by that date.

In any case, I really think that March will finally see the release of the sequel of one of my first visual novels, Bionic Heart ! By the way, I recently lowered the first game price to $9.99 to promote the upcoming release of the sequel, so if you never played it, now is a good time 🙂

Roommates

Everything is going well on this game, even if there’s still a lot of work to do! I managed to make two new “fact file” for Isabella and Rakesh, the latest two romanceable character of the game:

Rakeshfile Isabellafile

Writing is going steady, but still need to commission all backgrounds (though I have already an artist ready for it) and of course code the gameplay, script the scenes, and so on, so is very unlikely that this will be out before June/July 🙂

Planet Stronghold 2

Well I would be lying if I was saying that everything is going well 😀 however, this game will be a big step forward compared to the first, both in term of gameplay (a much better RPG system) and writing. Good things needs time though! At least all the romance scenes are done, below you can see a sneak peek of Joshua’s romances:

Joshuaromances

Art-wise there’s still a few more enemies to finish, and some extra “camp talk” sprite poses, where each character will be in their favorite environment (guess where Philipp will be?) when you visit them to talk. I decided to do that since talking with the characters standing up like in previous game was a bit weird!

Also showing the character in a normal life situation with normal clothes and various poses will be more realistic and also more “interesting”, for example if you go visit Rebecca at the gym, or the new hot guy Milo while he’s training… understand what I mean? 😉