Category Archives: development screenshot

DBA is officially out!

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First of all, as the blog post title says, the zombie-survival game Dead But Alive ! Southern England is now officially out. More info and a demo download link here: http://www.winterwolves.com/deadbutalive_southernengland.htm

By the way, did you miss that we added 2 more male romances? the image below should remind you! 😉

carlhot

I can’t make a real “post-mortem” for this game since I didn’t develop it myself, but for me was an interesting experiment mainly for two reasons:

  1. the game setting. I wanted to make a zombie (or at least horror) VN since long time. A setting more serious than most of my games, with mature content, death, etc.
  2. the game artwork. As you know if you follow me since long time, I tried only once to have a non-manga art with my game Vera Blanc, and let’s say that the results weren’t particularly encouraging 😀

Regarding the first point, you could say that some of my other games, like Loren, SOTW or Bionic Heart 2, had already “serious settings/theme”. It’s true, but they weren’t really “horror” or dark, with very tough choices (well, maybe Bionic Heart 2 was, but just that one). Since I like to differentiate, beside funny/comedy games like Roommates, I definitely want to do more games like this one in future. In Amber’s Magic Shop or Cursed Lands, there will be definitely more “serious” stuff, including the writing.  I want to offer more variety of content in my games, to suit everyone’s tastes.

About the second point, while it’s clearly too early to say (the game has just launched officially now!) already the early weeks of pre-order/beta had a positive feeling. People like the art and are buying the game. This is a sort of relief, since means that definitely there’s space for different art-styles, beside manga, for a visual novel game.

Black and white art?

This also brings me to another idea. I recently noticed there’s a new interest in games involving mostly text, like Choice Of Games, or 80 days, just to name two famous games/developers. I am thinking to do something like that: a SMALLER game (for real this time!!!) which could be finished in less time (since a complaint of some users is that my games are too long), to be sold at cheaper price. However, I really don’t want to have only texts, so I thought to use a nice black and white art style, which reminds me of some old illustrated books.

I posted this image a while ago on twitter:

locomotive

And now I can add another mysterious one:

chapel

It’s from a new game in development in collaboration with Highcliffe again, but it’s still too early to talk about it in detail. However, I am thinking to try making a game using this art style myself too, maybe in fantasy setting. I personally love the “comic” black&white style, as said it has an “old book charm”… what do you think? 🙂

Summer In Trigue – Mia

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mia

What is better in this hot day of August to introduce a “hot” girl from Summer In Trigue? 😉

Introducing Mia

Mia is an outgoing and athletic woman who works in Trigue as a tourist guide and instructor for several activities. This is much to Mia’s liking, for though the work can be tiring, it allows her to constantly experience the beautiful sites that can be found in Trigue. Mia loves the outdoors and is especially found of scuba diving, and so she is super happy to have been born and raised on an island like Trigue.

She also likes living in Trigue because the island’s name lends itself to puns. Mia is a huge pun lover, and enjoys making her friends groan with them. Her overall sense of humor is a bit dark, and she often jokes about how her job lets her know the perfect places to hide a body. At least most people assume she’s joking. She is pretty frightening when angry though…

Mia loves spending time in nature, but she has other hobbies. She is a fan of books, particularly those that have dark and disturbing stories with a hint of optimism. She also really enjoys watching terrible movies and laughing at them, especially if friends and alcohol are involved. And she has an interest in art, especially tattoos, and though her own skill at drawing is pretty basic she is interested in learning more.

Mia’s work with tourists often has had her interacting with stressed out couples and families, and so she has seen how ugly things can get between the people closest to each other. Her own personal experiences with both romance and family have also been complicated, and they have left her a bit jaded and cynical. But she doesn’t let that color her interactions with people, and tries to remain friendly and pleasant most of the time.

Queen Of Thieves update

After almost two months of “forced break” due to the crazy climate here (every day was over 35°C !!) I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things. Currently coding the sixth level of the catacombs, where things starts to get tough:

airelementals

The minor elementals that were boss fights in level 2 are now regular enemies, and they brought their “big brothers” this time! Don’t worry thought since I’m testing the party progression for each level, battles should be balanced. It should be 3 party levels each catacomb level, so something like:

level 1 => party level1
level 2 => party level3
level 3 => party level6
level 4 => party level9
level 5 => party level12
level 6 => party level15
level 7 => party level18
level 8 => party level21
level 9 => party level24+

and so on. So while on catacomb level 2 your party should be around level 3, when you’ll encounter the battle above your party should be 12-13 levels higher, and that makes quite a difference!

Of course that might be slightly tweaked during the testing, but I don’t want the player able to “clear” the catacombs in one single try. Something to do in-between the various robbery missions. Also they’re optional, so not required to win/finish the game.

Writing is going well too, the only thing slightly behind is the art, since usually I liked to have it almost finished at this point. Anyway, beside the ending CGs, the base game art is basically done 🙂

Summer In Trigue – Sybil

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sybilfate

I’ve noticed that I never introduced the main character of Summer In Trigue: Sybil herself! So here’s the Sybil official introduction by the writer:

Introducing Sybil

The protagonist of Summer in Trigue, Sybil is a young woman with a very particular view about fate. Back when she was a child, Sybil often noticed a lot of strange coincidences occurring in her life. Her friends told her it might be fate or destiny, but Sybil didn’t believe such things actually existed… not at first that is. Now that she is an adult, Sybil has become convinced that Fate with a capital F does exist, and that it hates her guts.

Or, at the very least, she feels it enjoys playing oftentimes cruel jokes and tricks on her, as shown by the fact that the “strange coincidences” have continued to occur with alarming frequency throughout her life, and have often been unpleasant and oddly specific. Sybil has developed a strong sense of determination and perseverance by weathering all the stuff Fate has thrown at her. No matter how many times life beats her down, she gets back up, usually a bit stronger, and perhaps a tad bit more paranoid as well.

Sybil can sometimes be impulsive and rash, as experience has shown her that all the best planning in the world sometimes doesn’t matter, and she wonders if doing something spontaneous sometimes makes it harder to Fate to mess with her. She has a very morbid sense of humor and a moderately active imagination, and sometimes indulges both when people piss her off too much. But she is very much a good person at heart, just someone with a few quirks.

Before her arrival in Trigue, Sybil was quite happy with her life, as she had a stable if boring job, a loving girlfriend, and a nice apartment. Those were enough for her, plus she was very much looking forward to her and her girlfriend’s planned two week romantic vacation in Trigue. After her arrival in Trigue, with Fate having reared its ugly head again, Sybil is initially sad and angry and alone. But she is hopeful that maybe she’ll catch a break for a bit, and the vacation will go smoothly and give her time to recover.

Sadly, she has no way of knowing she doesn’t star in “Two Weeks in Trigue”…

The other games are making progress steadily. I am still somewhat unable to work reliably because of heat and some life problems: had a cat with health issues, had to drive around town, etc. I’m starting to believe in Fate like Sybil! 🙂

Queen Of Thieves “crafting”

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crafting

In the screenshot above you see the “crafting” system I’ve just implemented on Queen Of Thieves. It’s nothing complex, and to be honest calling it crafting is a bit too much: you just place gems in the various items sockets, similarly to what happens in Diablo/Torchlight.

Anyway, even if simple, it’s quite addictive, both for casual players but also for nightmare-mode players. For the former because it’s just fun to place the various gems and see the stats go up. For the latter, because using the right combination they could find a new strategy to beat a difficult battle. I tested myself in an early catacomb level, and while leveling up to acquire new skills is what makes your party more powerful, I was able to beat a particularly difficult battles with gems alone (even if I used a cheat mode to get powerful gems early).

So in summary I’m very happy about the result, and I think was a good idea to add it. I think it’s balanced, because it can give you the edge in a battle but not completely change the difficulty.

And most importantly, since you can apply gem to any armor piece, it means that you can always equip the outfit you like most (as said before, the items you wear are reflected in the sprite in this game). Yes, everything started when users in forums wanted a solution to this problem! 🙂

I’m still unsure if to allow the gem-socketing for weapons too. I might need some more time to decide, but I think not. After all players have already a lot of stuff to customize!

This week I’ve resumed the catacomb exploration coding, hoping to finish it by mid-July at the latest. After that, I’ll only need to wait for the writer to finish the otome routes, and the artist to do some missing artwork but most of the work is done.

riddle

The catacombs will have “only” 9 levels, but I’m trying to make each level unique. Currently I’m doing the second level, which will feature a mad priest asking riddles thorough the level, like the one above. Obviously if you answer wrong…bad things will happen 😉

Quick update about the other games

This week made good progress. Just to name a few (there are much more but can’t list everything):

  • the intro scene of Cursed Lands, with the character creation done by talking to Apolimesho. Quite cool 🙂
  • more writing for Loren 2, though obviously it’s still in early stages
  • more writing/art/music for Never Forget Me (Always Remember Me sequel)
  • more Heirs & Graces scenes and CG sketches… very hot and with a good amount of fanservice!
  • more screens for the yet-to-be-announced yuri game. More fanservice for yuri lovers 😉

So even if the month of June is almost ended, it was a good month for the development, like May. Sooner or later all those games “in progress” will be finished… and it could happen that I’ll release 2-3 of them in sequence, since there are several that are “almost done”! 🙂

Digging you – a preview of the otome C14 Dating

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prettyguys
It’s still a work in progress screenshot, but looks already good!

So… puns aside, I’m really digging how C14 is coming out! In case you missed my earlier posts (from past year) you can read more about the game here: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/category/dating-sims/c14-dating/

In summary: it’s an otome dating sim set in the archeology world. And it features a cast of REALLY diverse characters. There’s a boy with a prosthetic arm, another with a cochlear implant, the nerd boy, and so on.

The main story is already over 140,000 words! And the writer and the editor are still tweaking/editing some later scenes 🙂 so it will be another very big game, featuring a lot of scenes and funny/cute/interesting moments. If you’re interested in the archeology world you’ll love this, and if you aren’t… you might become interested after playing it 😉

What is mainly missing are some sprites, the ending CG images and a few things here and there, like some GUI buttons, a few minigames to tweak/balance and so on, but overall it is in a very advanced state, as shown by the screenshots.

c14datingscheduler
The weekly schedule screen, with a lot of different activities showing as animated chibi!

Now I know what you’re wondering… when it will be out? Well I don’t want to say anything to not jinx it 😀 but it shouldn’t really take too long (talking about the beta, the official game for sure won’t be out before this Autumn).

I hope you’re excited as I am to see this game finally out!!

Queen Of Thieves update

This week I’m also trying to come up with a new battle layout for this new RPG in the works. The idea was to make it more user-friendly, maybe even “mobile-friendly”, and simplify the interface. So far I’ve made this:

newlayout

As you can see if you’re familiar with Loren/SOTW battle interface, I removed the battle log at bottom, and you can toggle it on/off with a button (the “L” button). If the log is turned off, you would see the selected character stats there.

The idea is that I already display almost all the info directly on the portraits: attack (sword), defense (shield), hit points (heart), SP (star). The only stats not shown are speed and critical which aren’t so essential, since the movement order can be seen on the right, and critical is a percentage of doing double damage but can be seen in character’s screen.

The skill or effect description would show on the left too, in the frame below the one in which the log is displayed.

If you have any feedback/ideas about it, I’ve made a thread in forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3624 to discuss 🙂