Category Archives: development screenshot

Friday catblogging – moral decisions in RPGs

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In the picture above, the young cat Maja. I found her while on a trip in Croatia and decided to bring her home. She lived with me for 7 beautiful months (sadly, she’s not here anymore).

I’m writing right now the Planet Stronghold quest with the Matricks. They’re giant rocky humanoid, very resistant to physical damage but weaker against Psionics. During this quest, if you side with the Empire you’ll face a big moral dilemma: you have the option to kill their “breeders”, as sort of distraction so you can fight the King Rock (the evil tyrant of the race) with less defenses. Of course, even if we’re talking about aliens, killing breeders is always a bad thing! And indeed, some party members will be seriously disappointed if you do that.

I like how the “Empire side” is turning out. Because even if the ultimate goal is to submit all the alien races, it’s a somewhat grey territory – the decisions you make might seem inevitable since there’s a big war going on, but you’ll often wonder if what you’re doing is ethically correct, and you can still choose to act differently.

About the mid-december deadline, I’ll try my best to met it, however after the Matrick race I still need to write the Arnox and Apex Rahn quest, and then the final battle. My goal was to finish the game plot, apart for the romance subplots that can be done anytime since they’re not connected with the main plot (except when you decide to do the final fight). So I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it, it might be more like 20-21st december.

I want the next version 0.8 to have the full plot so anyone who preordered can play/test it and let me know any problem. Note that after 0.8 is released, I’ll raise the price to $19.95 and then once the final version is out, to $24.95.

Finally, I also got the new boys images for Spirited Heart new game. You can see a mockup below. Frebo is always the best! 😀

Replayability in a CRPG?

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Today’s question is: does make sense to have replayability in an indie CRPG ?

After venturing deep inside the crystal castle to discuss with the supreme wizard of gameplay design face to face (that’s me looking into a mirror), I’ve come to this conclusion: No.

Let me elaborate. With a visual novel or dating sim, or even life simulation like Spirited Heart, having a gallery of several different endings could make sense. Since it’s part of their gameplay: replaying the game choosing a different path, job, skill etc. But a decent RPG should have hours and hours of fun!

Story-based RPGs like Planet Stronghold can last quite a lot of time: I am now writing the part where you venture into the wastelands, and some battles can even lead to “game over”, but in general if you lose a battle you can retry in most cases. This means that you can spend 15-20 minutes in a battle and lose it, and retry with a different party configuration / approach. Even assuming that you will win all battles at first attempt, right now there are already 30 battles in the game. Multiply 30 battles for 4 minutes each (4 minutes is an insane low amount of time, totally unrealistic!) and that makes already 2h of gameplay just for the first 3 chapters (a really low estimate as I said, since doesn’t include dialogues either). The final game will have 10 chapters.

What does this means? It means that this game once finished can last 20-25 hours or even more, like commercial AAA games. I know that SOME people probably replayed Dragon Age or Mass Effect to see different endings, but how many really? I never did that, because I don’t have the time, but even if I had it, after playing the whole game from beginning, I don’t think I would like to replay it from start.

As indie, making CGs is expensive. The ones of Planet Stronghold will be absolutely beautiful, probably the best one ever seen in one of my games. If each ending corresponds to a single CG (like happens with my other games), most people aren’t going to see them all, and that’s a pity. I feel like wasting my money for content that only a minority will be able to see.

So, I’m thinking what to do. Those CG were intented for the romance endings, so each CG would be Joshua or Lisa with one of those characters (won’t say which ones but you can guess). I thought about two possible solutions:

1) I was thinking instead if to integrate them in the story, like The Witcher did (a CG in certain specific point of the plot, with voiceovers, I think that worked really well) or 2) at least make it possible to see them allfrom a certain point of the game.

For example, while each character relationship will influence how well he/she fights into the battle, at a certain point of the plot you will be able to save and from that point you can reach any possible romance ending, no matter what you’ve done before. That way at least player could have only to replay something like the last 2 chapters or so.

I think this solution might work well and that’s the one I’m probably going to adopt, since I want everyone to be able to see all the various endings without having to replay from start.

Obviously, since you pick the gender at beginning of game, if you want to see the ending of the opposite gender you WILL have to restart from scratch with that one 🙂

What is a “casual RPG”

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As you probably know, I’m working on a RPG game called “Planet Stronghold”.

I am trying to do something slightly different with this RPG. I would even dare call it “casual RPG”, since it misses some of the classic “hardcore” gameplay elements. In particular:

  • there is no in-game currency. You can’t sell or buy weapons. This is probably the biggest difference from… well, ANY rpg I’ve ever played. What does it means? That you’ll have several weapons and armors at your disposal, but you won’t have to buy them. To get the best ones, the only way would be to solve some quests you’ll encounter through the story.
  • there is almost no “permanent death“. You can’t really “lose” in the game. This is also very different even if something similar could be already found in recent casual RPG like Torchlight, for example. In my game, if you lose a battle you’ll simply have the option to fall back and try it with a different team/equipment configuration. Of course there will be a few exceptions: in some particular plot situation you’ll face a hard battle but you’ll be warned to save before it. But I hate the mechanic of “save/try/reload” that is used in many RPG just to give the players the illustion that the game is longer (but in reality you’ll spend most of the time loading and saving)
  • there won’t be a huge map. I mean, a tilemap or detailed map as it is in many RPG, mostly JRPG. I was dubious if to implement this or not, but given the nature of the game, I decided to skip this. Since the gameplay follows the main story, you will be able to use a small map with instant traveling between each different location to complete side-quest, but not like you do in normal RPG/JRPG. If you hated walking endless hours in those insanely huge (and repetitive) tilemaps, you’ll like my game. Otherwise…I hope you’ll like the game anyway 🙂
  • very few grinding. You won’t have to kill 500 rats  to get to level 2. The leveling up will be slow, and you won’t get much XP from battles, but you’ll get a big boost if you solve quests. Anyway, being the game linear, I’ll be able to craft each specific battle so hopefully that should lead to more interesting enemy encounters.
  • There also won’t be endless random encounters, unless you choose to adventure in the wastelands (so, there will be but will be entirely optional). I understand that random encounters are a good way to raise your characters levels without doing side-quests, so I’ll leave that option available for those people who prefer to fight than solve quests.

As you can see it’s quite different from a “standard”, traditional RPG. I hope the direction I took will be appreciated anyway, so far the feedback from the Alpha testers was quite positive (many says it’s the best game I’ve made so far, even if isn’t finished yet! :D).

Note that this won’t mean that the game will be easy. It will be if you choose the “easy” option. But if you pick the “hard” option, in the game you’ll have to face some really tough fights! That’s all for now, I’ll get back to writing more plot and coding more enemy battles.

p.s. For those who like traditional RPG, fear not. My other RPG game in development, the Dungeon Crawler “Tower Of Destiny”, will be much more similar to the classic “hardcore RPGs” 😉

Living in a fantasy world

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Who wouldn’t like to? Stop playing the Sims and enjoy a fantasy life with Spirited Heart!

Ahem, sorry about the ad. I wanted to talk about the spin-off of my fantasy life simulation game which I released last year. First of all, I’m still in the early stages so is hard to tell when it will be finished. Previously I said maybe for Christmas but at this point I doubt it, since I want also finish Planet Stronghold first.

I can reveal a bit more info about the game itself. While Spirited Heart was set in the imaginary town of Triberg, and the whole game took place there, in this spin-off there will be already a major difference: you’ll be able to relocate in any town of a whole region. Have yet to decide how many towns there will be, but is very likely the amount will be around 20 or so.

This choice won’t be purely to provide more content, but will greatly influence the whole game, for example:

  • some towns will have exclusive crafting materials. For exeample they will be built nearby mines of various precious metals, essential for certain jobs
  • some will have Masters of certain skills, for example Master in Tailoring. During the game you’ll be able to train and learn skill like before, but to unlock special skill levels you’ll need specific trainers found only in certain towns
  • each town will have different quests: yes, there will be combat in the game! \o/ I always wanted to introduce combat, so people won’t describe this new game as “it’s a visual novel with RPG element” but as true RPG! 🙂
  • based on your character race, season, origins there will be a specific “global quest” that will involve performing certain tasks spread through the whole region
  • being the game online-based, new towns with new features can be added anytime to the game

About the last point, I already explained how this game will take advantage of the online feature. The game on each run will auto-update itself, to provide the user with the latest version available. At same time will notify of new features like new towns, quests or items. That is my goal for this game, to start moving finally to the new era of online games. So, except for last minute technical difficulties, the game will be online only (a big step for me, but I feel is necessary for this kind of game).

As you can see from the thumbnail on the side, I’m also investing lot of money on assets to produce a game with great art. I really believe this will turn out to be one of my most beautiful games 🙂

The title and everything in that picture is just a mockup, so definitely a Work-In-Progress! But I think it already shows off the kind of art you can expect in the full game.

That’s it for now, I’m really eager to begin working on this game, but since is probably my most ambitious game ever, I’ll take it easy and cure it in every small details!

Flower Shop spin-off

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I can officially announce that the original team (me, Ayu Sakata and M.Beatriz Garcia) started working on a spin-off of The Flower Shop 🙂

I call it spin-off and not sequel because, even if you’ll re-encounter several characters from the first episode (Uncle Sam, Clara, Marian, and so on) the point of view, the minigames and several other aspects will be completely changed. The first major change is the point of view or perspective: you’ll play as Natalie, a cute young girl which you see sketched on the left of this post by Deji (Garcia nickname).

As you might have noticed from the kind of clothes she is wearing, is definitely NOT summer anymore: it’s cold, it’s winter! The game indeed takes place at end of autumn/beginning of winter (we’re still planning the story so that’s why I’m so approximate) and will see Natalie helping Susana in the flower shop. So the farming-sim of the first game will become a “flower raising sim”, but there are other minigames and metagames that will be present. And they’ll be perfectly integrated with the story! This means that you’ll be able to spend the money you’ll earn in a very interesting way (I don’t want to announce it yet but is really a neat idea) and it will definitely affect more the endings than reaching a minimum earning thresold like was in The Flower Shop.

The game will be called “The Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook” (working title, subject to a possible change) and of course, being a spin-off, it means that it’s a completely stand-alone game: those who played the Flower Shop will be pleased to see again some characters and “familiar places”, but the new players will be able to experience the game completely even if they haven’t seen/played the first one.

I can speak for all the team saying that we’re very excited to work on this game, which should be out soon, probably after the summer!