I know the title seems weird. After all Heileen 3 is a dating sim, a life sim, but not a RPG. So what’s about this level up thing? Well, first of all, in the game there will be all the classic relationship bar/values we’re used to in dating sims, as you can see in the screenshot below:

The romance subscreen in Heileen 3 status screen

Before going on I want to clarify again, that the main game will have otome romances but only because the yuri version was delayed – this time it wasn’t my plan to release them separately, I wanted to have them both ready on launch day, but alas had some problems during the yuri development path 🙂

The next screen could still be common in a life simulation or a dating sim, even if the theme is quite original (the Seven Sins / Virtues):

The Seven Sins / Virtues subscreen in Heileen 3 status screen

Those aren’t bars, but “sliders”. Meaning that they don’t fill up, but the thumb can move towards the left if you’re a “Sinner”, or on the right if you’re a “Saint”. The values will be a requirement to get a specific ending.

What I’m talking about, regarding the leveling, is the new skills system I have designed. In my previous life/dating sims, you had a bar with a value from 0 to 100 (usually). It was ok, but this time I wanted to do something more interesting: the skills are divided into levels. So for example you start at level 1 of Wisdom, and donig certain activities you raise the values up to 100, after that the counter resets but you gain Wisdom Level 2. It works exactly as the experience bars of a RPG.

The Skills subscreen in Heileen 3 status screen

This will have several implications on the gameplay and will make the game more interesting. Differently from Spirited Heart, your skills values will never decrease, but if you had a bad day they will just increase by a slow value: in this context, even gaining values like 2-5 points is not a big improvement, considering the scale 0 to 100 and the level which will probably go up until 10 or later.

Other examples of new features include the possibility to ask one of the characters to join you in your activity, and depending on the choice you’ll get a bonus or not. For example asking Juliet to do Fencing will surely be a good idea, while asking her to help you in Farming… well let’s just say that you might not get a very polite reply!

Discovering who likes what will be part of the game fun and I’m sure will require me to write a strategy guide or walkthrough later in my forums 😉

One of the new background locations of the game

Right now the music of the game is being done, using only natural instruments (live guitar, etc) and the background artwork is being finished. I still believe the game should be out in the beginning of December, at least the preorder phase!

Stay tuned, and next week will talk about a very different game, Bionic Heart 2.

I think is time for an overdue update on Heileen 3 status. First I said would be ready last Summer, then this Fall… well, tecnically could still be out this Fall, since Winter begins the 21st December 2012, and I really hope to have finished the game by then! 🙂

You might wonder why such delay… well first of all, even if is not a RPG, Heileen 3 is probably one of the most important titles of my visual novel/dating sim category. So I am trying to make it more polished than previous titles. Check the two screenshots below:

Heileen on the ship bridge by night, nice atmosphere

Heileen and Marie in a farm / flower plantation

As you can notice I hired a pro artist to do the backgrounds this time, since they always were a weak point of my past games. While not super detailed I think they look quite good with the characters in the foreground.

The downside is that since I found the artist only last month, and such backgrounds require some time, only the backgrounds will probably take 1 month of work. However it’s not artist’s fault, but mine because I waited too long before starting commissioning the backgrounds.

Yesterday also decided to have a full OST for Heileen 3, not with many tracks, but beside the main theme song, even the other 4-5 tracks in the game will be custom. I plan to offer the OST as download during the pre-order phase.

Finally, in case you missed it, the game is not going to be a pure visual novel, but more a life sim. You’ll be able to learn several skills and like in my other game Spirited Heart, you’ll be able to get either a romance ending with one of the 4 boys (and later the yuri version will be released which adds 4 girls) or you can get a “profession ending”. Indeed, if you raise your skill high enough in a particular field, you’ll become a master in that profession and the game will end.

Just to complicate the things, each profession ending is tied to the virtue/sin system. For example, to become a nun, not only you need to have a high Faith skill, but obviously you also need to have a high Chastity virtue. We could argue that a good nun shouldn’t have any “high sin level”, but well for sure the Chastity is the most important! (and for gameplay reason I need only 1 virtue/sin associated to each job)

So as you can see even coding this part is not going to be quick to do. While is not a complex RPG like Loren, it still requires some extra coding/testing before I can start the pre-order stage, which should only reveal some well hidden bugs.

I’d dare to say that my estimate release date for Heileen3 is the first week of December, approximately 3 years after the second chapter! crossing fingers 🙂