Category Archives: volleyball heaven

Status update, codesign and other amenities

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Yes I know that I said I would talk about games, and I am going to. But first, I need to make a short deviation 🙂

I certify I have enough

Recently there has been a BIG drop of direct sales. Probably because of Steam direct, but also I suspect other factors. In summary, in last two months I reached the bottom. Luckily, sales on other platforms (mobile, Steam) while are going down (it’s the Indieapocalypse baby) didn’t totally collapse as the direct sales.

Chatting with other indies, I found out that actually my direct sales so far were much better than the average! lol, so the situation is global, even for very successful indies, there has been a great drop.

Why? Well, most people are used to buy/play on Steam, but the OS have their faults too: indeed both Windows and MacOS, now require apps to be “codesigned”, otherwise they show various warnings and it’s hard just to download the game (not even run, just download it’s difficult!). Yes you could codesign, which means you had to pay a yearly fee to get this “certification”, which IN THEORY should protect users from malicious software. A pity that in reality this doesn’t matter – because the codesign only certifies who made it, but not if there’s any virus/trojan/whatever in it (see what happened recently with a famous registry cleaner tool…).

I was codesigning my games (both on Win/Mac) but recently I am really too overwhelmed by all the stuff to do, so I am considering switching all my downloads to the itch.io platform, which seems well known to visual novel authors. The main reason it’s that it uses really great tools, on par with Steam. I will just mention two things that makes a big difference:

  1. incremental upload/download, like Steam. If I change one line in a file and it’s 5kb, both me and players only need to upload/download 5kb, and not the whole game installer (which maybe is 170mb). And for the customers who don’t want to use the itchio client, you can always download a .zip file normally. Doing beta testing with that system will be a breeze. How many times in the past I found a bug when it was almost midnight, so I simply posted in forums “sorry, I’ll update the game tomorrow”. Now I can just run a command-line tool and  do it in 5 seconds making the update instantly available! 🙂
  2. using the client, the codesign/OS warning don’t show. Since your game exe is launched by Itchio app (similarly to what happens on Steam) the various Windows/MacOS don’t show up those annoying “WAIT ARE YOU SURE!? YOU COULD START WORLD WAR 3!!” messages 😀

Of course, I won’t instantly switch, but I think it’s safe to say that for future games I’ll use itch.io exclusively to sell my games directly.

Speaking of games…

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not really happy about the current status, by now I hoped to have at least another game in beta testing or even finished. But honestly, this year was a bit crazy, also considering the terrible Summer temperatures I got here where I live, which put me KO for 2 months!

Anyways, let’s see how is the progress of the various games:

Cursed Lands – this game simply became much bigger than I originally thought (lol, a new thing!). I am still coding the various sidequests, and writer said would write the main plot missions in the next weeks/months. When those are done, the game will be very close to completion. It’s going to be another of those 200k+ word RPG games, and I have pushed to add more camp talk and CG (each love interest has two bonus CGs besides the romance CG!). Also, both Vaeril and Nuala are bisex now, and you can romance them both with male or female protagonist. So at least looks like should be worth the wait 😉

Love Bites – it’s half done: half of the game routes are fully scripted. In this case, once the writer finishes them, the gameplay is very simple (there is some stat raising but not like my other games) and it could be “put together” much faster. Depending on how things go, I think this one could be done faster than Cursed Lands. But of course depends when the writing is finished and the last thing I want to do is rush the writing of a game as you can imagine 🙂

Volleyball Heaven – luckily the writing is 99% done, but there is still a lot of artwork to draw. So in this case we’re waiting for the artist, who is working hard, but there’s a lot to do. Drawing all those hot CGs takes time, you know 😉

And what about estimate release dates? that’s the big question! Well, for all the 3 games above, I think early 2018 would work. Which means I could be in a fun situation where all of the 3 games above will be almost ready at about the same time. Then I’ll decide in which order to release them, but ideally I’d keep the RPG as last since that will require more testing.

As usual there could be some “surprises”, like games I’m not talking about much that suddenly get a boost and could even be released before the 3 above. You never know what’s going to happen! It’s the magic of working on so many games at once with different people all around the world.

Volleyball Heaven – Introducing Emily

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Last but not least, Emily. Originally was supposed to be a “secret route”. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned doing many games, is that those secret routes remain secret for maybe a day… 🙂

So I thought was pointless to keep it secret. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be secret / bonus stuff to unlock! Right now artist is working on an awesome MILF character who takes part in a completely optional sex scene in the game that you can unlock 😉

And now let’s introduce Emily! If there’s time I might tweak her hair style since maybe looks a bit weird right now, but otherwise I think she’s good to go.

Emily Madison, 28

Born in the Maritimes and growing up with her Métis mother on the Canadian western prairies while her Indigenous father, a residential school survivor, worked on oilfields, rigs and ships, rarely returning home, Emily Madison has always prided herself on her self-sufficiency, discipline and focus. As a hardworking and dedicated student, Emily’s athleticism and drive took her to the verge of representing Canada in the Olympics until a training injury wrecked her dreams.

Since coming to terms with her sexuality as an undergraduate, and after a couple of brief unsatisfactory affairs, Emily recognized that her happiness lay in a committed long-term relationship. Her first such relationship lasted until she graduated, and the second took her to Asgard College, where she took up a scholarship to study sports medicine, recognizing her days at the pinnacle of competitive sport were over.

After gaining her doctorate, Emily was offered a position as junior lecturer and encouraged by the College’s commitment to developing a semi-pro college beach volleyball team – building upon the town’s boast of being Beach Capital of the World – set about founding the Asgard Valkyries on top of her other academic responsibilities. The first year proved to be a disaster on several fronts.

Despite their deep and longstanding personal differences, both Marksons proved to be elite players and easily won places on the team, as do Rika and Lana. But the Marksons’ mutual antipathy, Rika’s overriding desire to prove herself as an investigative journalist, and Lana’s personal issues combine to leave the team on the verge of imploding, consequently dealing Emily’s reputation and fledgling career a heavy blow.

In a final humiliation, her partner ends their relationship into which Emily had invested a lot of emotional energy to take up a position on the West Coast. At the beginning of the new academic year, Emily finds herself in an uncharacteristically fragile emotional state, with personal responsibility for a dysfunctional team, and her competency under question.

Into this maelstrom, Kayla arrives. Let down by Lana, who had briefly taken on the team captaincy lacking other suitable candidates, Emily sees in Kayla a final chance to help relaunch the team and her reputation. Feeling guilty but unable to see any other way out of the predicament she finds herself in, Emily gives Kayla the captaincy and can only watch in trepidation as the young woman struggles to combine the unwanted responsibility with her academic workload… and all the while, trying to keep unwanted yet powerful feelings from leading her astray, with life-changing consequences for all concerned.

Volleyball Heaven – Introducing Jade

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The writer and I refer to this character as “the ultimate babe”, and you can probably guess why 😀 Jokes apart, I really like the character design of Jade, one of my favorite of this artist together with Shiori of Summer In Trigue.

And now, everything you need to know about Jade directly from the writer:

Jade Markson, 21

The most traumatic period in Jade Markson’s childhood occurred when her parents adopted Zoe after her cousin’s parents were killed in a light aircraft accident.

The cousins had never been close despite being the only girls in their generation of Marksons, and Zoe’s sudden unavoidable presence turned her life upside down. The only comfort Jade could see in this tragedy was that while her caregivers were busy dealing with the constant fallout of Zoe’s latest escapades they effectively ignored her and let her do as she pleased.

Jade had always been a reserved, quiet and studious girl, most content when drawing elaborate costumes and imagining herself the natural daughter of a simple artisan couple who would one day show up on her fake parents’ genuine marble doorstep to reclaim her and take her back to share their humble existence.

Never comfortable being the heiress to what Rika refers to, with only a little bitterness, as ‘the magic Markson kingdom’, and painfully aware of the moral, ethical, and personal compromises that have to be made in building and maintaining great wealth, Jade retreated into her comfort zone, trusting few would value her for herself as opposed to her wealth, her beauty, and the position into which she was involuntarily born.

When she enters Asgard College – which her family helped found and where her father sits as a regent, with the pretension that it would one day become known as the Harvard of the Gulf – she is resigned to the fact that Zoe will be there too. Their joint presence at the young campus symbolizing that even the local elite see Asgard as every bit as prestigious as the northern Ivy League institutions.

Athletic and sporty, she is virtually press-ganged into the Asgard Valkyries when few other college women are willing to play alongside Zoe, who is not only difficult to get along with but whose outspoken brand of activism has given the whole team an unwarranted reputation in this socially conservative state.

When Kayla arrives on the scene, she is unsure what to make of the rough-hewn young woman. Being a friend of Lana’s, Jade is not expecting much of her. But when Kayla is unexpectedly drafted into the captaincy and as the consequences of her decisions play themselves out over the course of the year, Jade realizes that this extraordinary woman might change her life even more profoundly than Zoe did over a decade before.

Volleyball Heaven – Introducing Rika

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I must say that I have a weak spot for asian girls 😉 Probably I’m not the only one! Anyways, she has a cool look and hair style, and an interesting backstory… read below the writer’s official intro.

Rika Yukimura, 19

From a young age, American-born Rika felt a tension between her traditionally minded Japanese immigrant parents and the freewheeling culture in which she grew up immersed. When she was 12, amid rising familial tensions, her father finally returned to Japan, leaving Rika and her mother – who was already having an affair with the man who would become her stepfather – to continue life in Asgard.

Perhaps because of her experiences, Rika has always been interested in the complex relationships between appearances and reality, truth and lies. From a young age, with a precocious appreciation for such films as His Girl Friday, Ace in the Hole, and All the President’s Men, she set her heart on being an investigative journalist. When she entered the Journalism program at Asgard College she considered it a stroke of luck that among her fellow students were Jade and Zoe Markson who, rich and privileged as they are, would surely have a few skeletons just waiting to tumble out of their closets.

Now, a year later, as an unsuspecting Kayla enters their orbit, she is wondering whether it was a curse wrought to trap her personally. After unearthing information which she believed would lead to the scoop of a lifetime, naivety, poor judgment, and carelessness has turned her dream to lawyer-infested nightmare. Not only has she made enemies of the Markson cousins, but even the College administration has put her on notice that she might be expelled should she put another foot wrong.

Outwardly calm, friendly, and diligent, inside Rika finds herself constantly tense and on edge, not helped by her tendency towards social anxiety which she has always struggled with. When Kayla joins the Asgard Valkyrie’s, Rika dares to hope that fate has given her a chance of redemption, but first she has to use all her guile to determine where the new girl’s loyalties and ambitions really lie.

Volleyball Heaven – Introducing Zoe

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As usual, in the next few blog posts, I’ll introduce the characters of my newly announced game “Volleyball Heaven” with the help of the game writer 🙂

We start with one of the most controversial/unique character of this game (well, she’s in good company though!). The only thing I’ll add is that fans of the Chambara’s romance CGs from Loren can find a new mistress in Zoe 😉

Also, in the introduction images I will show the character in the volleyball uniform and casual outfit. However there are several more outfits and, ahem, underwears that you can see in game… if you really must see the girls dressed. Otherwise, we got you covered! 😉

Zoe Markson, 22

According to Lana, if Zoe ever wrote a self-help book it should be called ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’.

After her parents die in a light aircraft accident when she was ten, Zoe was formally adopted by Jade’s parents – her paternal uncle and aunt, who perhaps hoped her assertiveness and self-confidence would rub off on her far more reserved cousin.

Never shy of being herself and precociously self-aware, at the age of 14 Zoe announced she was a lesbian. When she was 16, she founded and front-lined Asgard’s first (and as yet only) lesbian death metal band, Apocalypse Sunrise, whose legend lives on even today.

Unmoved by the oft-expressed opinions of her dismayed foster parents but lacking the disposition to acquiesce to the overwhelmingly macho culture of the music industry, she wound up the successful band just shy of her 18th birthday and embarked on the one true cause of her young life – encouraging women to free themselves from patriarchal tyranny.

Using some of her inheritance as a scion of the wealthy and politically powerful Markson family, she founded Diana Gyms, a chain of women-only gyms, concentrating on self-defence and assertiveness training, in part marketing, – perhaps unwisely – to female immigrants and their daughters from cultures even more conservative than the southern United States.

When Kayla arrives, Zoe is entering the final year of her business and sports science studies at Asgard College. Zoe’s boundless energy, abrasive attitude, and extreme competitiveness have given the Asgard Valkyries a notoriety out of proportion to their league performances so far.

Being the final season in which she can play on the squad – and there are quite a few supporters and players who can hardly wait to see the back of her – she is determined that this is the year the team ascends to its full glory and senses in Kayla potential for realizing this goal.

Summer Sale has started!

Last but not least, I’ve started a Summer sale on my own site, which will last a week (so until next Friday, the 28th July). No need to enter any coupon, the discount will be automatic on checkout.

For games released in past years (before 2016), the discount is 66% off, while for games released last year, the discount is still a very generous 50% off!

Browse the catalogue of games and make your choice!