Category Archives: development screenshot

Making wrong choices

11 Replies

grateful
I wish I had someone like Tanya to help me out, because I would really need it.

Today I hoped to announce Bionic Heart 2 beta testing. After two months of coding/testing, would be about time!

Instead no. I have bad news. I’m at one point where I fix a plot hole, and a new one appears. I check a variable, one path works, the other doesn’t. A scene that before was fine, now plays out of order.

I’ve worked like crazy in past 3 days, I’m stressed like never before and then I came to a simple conclusion. There’s no hope to make this work. Every time I open the script I have a headache now. Writer doesn’t have time to help.

So I’m thinking what to do. It’s really embarrassing for me. Despite all the efforts, I know that I can’t make this work, unless I make some really big changes. And I’m not used to release half-broken games. Testing to find the bugs is one thing, but the version I have currently is not even to be considered “testable”. Only 3 days ago I thought I was at good point, but then I discovered that is like a house of cards, if you move a piece, everything falls apart.

It’s the first time I find myself in such situation in my life, and I’m the sole responsible of this. I should have followed more carefully the situation, instead I was busy with other projects. A wrong choice, trusting too much someone else capabilities, thinking he can do it all on his own without supervision, and that’s the result.

A pity because the story itself is really good I think.

Not all is lost though!

However don’t be afraid, I’m already thinking what to do to solve the situation. A simple solution would be to eliminate the “multiple path” feature and just have a continuous story, where if you fail the Mars or Earth path the game ends. Less cool than the original project, but probably in this case I wouldn’t have to do a total rewrite of the story, and would be faster to solve it.

Don’t worry, the game WILL be out, you will only need to be patient for a little more! I am still aiming to finish it by the end of March, even if I’ll have to rework the game structure a lot.

I’m really sorry about what happened and will make sure this won’t repeat in future.

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.

What is Bionic Heart 2 ?

3 Replies

I realized that I always talked about Bionic Heart 2 like if everyone played the first game. By the way, if you haven’t, you should since I lowered its price to $9.99 and even if was one of my earlier games, the story is still one of the best I think 😉

Anyway, for those who haven’t played it, I’ll introduce the game. Warning there are some small spoilers about some endings/characters of the first game, so be warned before you continue reading!

The Story

The story takes place after the “Escape to Mars” ending. It’s the 2099 and Luke, Tom and Helen are chased by the ruthless Richard Meier IV, CEO of Nanotech and a very influential man who can bribe the entire London media and police. Tanya, a robot with the brain of a woman who died a century ago, escaped from Nanotech and wants to find out more about her past and take revenge against Richard.

Tanya provides Luke, Tom and Helen with fake ID and they board the first shuttle to the secret colony of Mars. They are safe for now, but what lies on Mars? Who are those people doing there, and why it’s kept secret?

So we have two parallel stories: on Mars and on Earth. The game is told using multiple point of views, so you’ll play the Mars storyline from Luke or Tom point of view, while the Earth one will be played by Tanya and Tina point of view.

Tina Gomez is one of the few police officers that aren’t bribed by Richard. She’s just a small ordinary street cop:

tickets

and together with her partner Robert Carson, they have strong suspects about Nanotech and want to find out more.

The game is structured in a way so that if you lose one story, the other goes on. You can have 8 different ending both for the Mars and the Earth stories, though some of them are just variants of the same ending. If you manage to finish both plots, you’ll get an extra 9 “combined endings” that are the hardest to get.

The cast of playable characters

I’ve already introduced Tina Gomez. She is very ambitious, her main goal is to get promoted and she hopes to do that by discovering what Nanotech is doing.

Luke Black was the main character of the first game. He is a good looking man in his 30’s, and apparently he’s calm, he’s rational, or at least he was until that night when Tanya knocked at his door. In the story, he’ll have several tough decisions to make. Does he still love Helen, or not? Will he be able to reunite with Tanya? He is the character with more interior struggles, one of the most complex of the whole game.

Tanya Vanic is a unpredictable character. Her new robotic body gives her superhuman powers. It will be up to her to decide how to use them. She can become a deadly killer, or only try to discover the truth behind her past. Who she was before they turned her into a robot?

Finally, Tom Sparks is Luke’s best friend. He often tells bad jokes, so nobody takes him seriously. He is secretly in love with Helen, so his plot will be mainly about the question: is worth breaking his long friendship with Tom for Helen? and does Helen love him?

What are Social Boss Fights ?

In the first game, I had some “interactive scenes” where you could move and had to choose action like in an adventure game. In this sequel, the game uses a classic visual novel gameplay with choices, except for one thing: the Social Boss Fights!

bossfightIn the image above you see one of the toughest “Social Boss Fights”. Tanya isn’t in a good position 🙂

The Social Boss Fights are minigames in which you must pass a sort of test/escape a bad situation. You’ll need to convince a person about something, escape from someone, and so on. You’ll have to do that finding the right sequence of answers to give to the “enemy”, before the time runs out.

Each boss fight will have slight variations: in all of them you need to pick the right order, but in some you can choose the strategy to use, in other like in the screenshot above you’ll have a counter (structural integrity) that will go down, and so on.

In all fights, you’ll be able to see the personality of the antagonist (in the screenshot above, Julia Storm) described with 3 words, that should give you some hints on what could be the right strategy to choose.

Overall I’m really satisfied by them since are quite cool to play 🙂

All right I think now you know a lot more about the game. I’m in “crunch mode” trying to finish it as soon as possible but probably will still need a week or two!

Almost there!

Leave a reply

Working on Heileen 3 has been my main focus in the past week. I finally managed to finish coding the simulation part. Below you can see the “Professions Screen”:

H3professions

The game will feature 14 unique “profession ending” with associate image

As you see to reach every ending you’ll need to master an advanced skill (currently set at level 10 but during beta testing the value might change) and also have the required sin or virtue. Initially I didn’t want to reveal them, but while playing I figured out that the combinations are so many that would have been more frustrating than fun for the player to discover all of them!

You’ll be able to change your virtue/sin “alignment” through the various cutscenes in the game.

So getting the profession ending definitely won’t be as easy as in my other raising sim, Spirited Heart 😉 but I think will be more rewarding.

Breakthrough

The infamous wheel of time and a chibi during the simulation

In the screenshot above instead you see what happens after you choose your daily activity: the “wheel of time” will start spinning and advance through the various parts of the day: morning, midday, evening, night. In some cases at a specific time of the day a cutscene will appear, and you’ll be able to play it to change your virtues/sins or the relationship with other characters.

The simulation part is all automated, since I didn’t want to overcomplicate the game too much. However there is still some strategy involved, like inviting one of the character to join you. This can give you a positive or negative bonus (or simply give no bonus). In this case you’ll have to find out the best character for each activity 😉

Also, each “land activity” (those that raise the advanced skills) will have two skill requirements. For example, the activity Dancer will require two basic skills: Charisma at level 3 and Endurance at level 1. Which means that first you need to raise Charisma at level 3. The value will change as you level up, so Dancer level 2 will require Charisma at level 4 and Endurance at level 2, and so on. In my playthrough I was able to reach level 10 in one advanced skill in 258 days of in-game time.

I titled the post “almost there” because the game is really almost finished, all that is left (beside testing) is some background art and more chibis, and the addition of a few more scenes.

I hope to be able to start testing/preordering the next weekend (8-9th December) and release the game by mid-December!

Bionic Heart 2 and moving past visual novels

10 Replies

Right now I’m finishing Heileen 3, but I’m also working on two sci-fi games: Bionic Heart 2 and Planet Stronghold 2. As the title suggests, both are sequels. Bionic Heart was one of my first visual novel, and if I compare the artwork and the writing of that first title with the new one, the difference is immediately noticeable:

Bh2mars

One of the first scenes of Bionic Heart 2, the shuttle to Mars

I am not hiding that the first Bionic Heart game was a very controversial game. Was one of the first western visual novels to get some attention in many japanese sites (probably the combo of the sexy android + romance did it) but also one of my worst selling games ever (beaten only by Vera Blanc!).

So why I made this sequel you might ask? Well first of all, I am indie because I have a passion for games. Even if I need to make money to live, I still have room to make some “game experiments” from time to time. Bionic Heart 2 will be one of them.

Second, because I never knew if the insuccess of the first game was because of the sci-fi theme, which typically appeals men more, or because of the game quality that, overall, wasn’t really good.

Apart for some “social boss fights” that are some kind of mini games to be fight picking sentences in the right order, the game plays like a regular visual novel, albeit with multiple point of views. I can say already that unless the game does pretty well, it will be my last visual novel ever.

And here I get to my title. I’m definitely moving past visual novels, at least in the immediate future (God only knkows what I’ll do in 5 years from now!). But don’t worry, by that I mean the “pure visual novels”, like the first two Heileen games. Dating / life sims like Always Remember Me or Spirited Heart are another thing.

Why I made that decision? Because I want to focus more on the gameplay, play mechanics, to reach a broader audience. I always liked to design gameplay, life simulations, and RPGs. While for RPGs I said I won’t release more than one a year, for dating/life sims I plan to do them more often.

Also who knows, maybe I could try my hand in future in making a classic adventure game, either first or third person view. Or do something different, but still story-based.

This of course, unless Bionic Heart 2 does really well. It should be out at the beginning of the 2013 so I’ll find that out pretty soon 🙂