Category Archives: gameplay video

“Bad Blood” SOTW DLC is in beta

greatwolf

I’ve decided to open the preorders and put the beta version of the DLC for download in my forums! For more details, you can check this forum thread:
http://winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=3610

In short: the only missing thing right now are the ending scenes. There are 4 scenes, one for each romantic couple, plus another one (can’t say what because… spoilers!).

Speaking of spoilers, for those who have ALREADY finished the base game, this video illustrates the contents of the DLC:

Unfortunately like with Loren, I can’t really make a “demo” of the DLC, but I hope that the video above will help people to make their decision. In general, I think if you liked the characters and the story you should like the DLC too.

The DLC focuses more on the story and characters relationships, with several lines and even scenes that change depending on your love interest. Because of that we thought to add a menu at beginning of the DLC, so that once you played the story to the end, you can replay choosing the starting conditions quickly with the menu (without the need to start the game from beginning or keep a lot of different savegames).

Of course, there are still battles, and thanks to the main metagame of “rebuilding Ninim” also some strategy. Let me know your thoughts about the difficulty: I am not sure that in the current beta the game can be beaten in Nightmare mode… πŸ™‚

If everything goes as planned I should get the missing images by mid-April, so that’s when I’ll release the DLC officially.

Work on the other games goes on as planned. I keep getting weekly updates for more or less all of them. I definitely want to have one of the dating sims in progress out during the Summer πŸ˜‰

shiori_sybil

Also, Roger Steel writer made a very interesting post in my forums with an update about the game itself: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3612

The bad news is that it won’t be out soon, the good news is that it will be much bigger and very similar in gameplay to Loren, with even a greater emphasis on choices and relationships. People who want, will be able to play it in pure visual novel mode, using choices to raise skills and fighting battles automatically πŸ™‚

Planet Stronghold on Steam


As you probably are aware already if you follow me on the social networks, my sci-fi RPG Planet Stronghold is now available on Steam. Above you can see the game trailer (the info at the end is outdated though, the game is also available on iOS).

I’ve already talked in the past about the game, in particular shortly after I released it, and is fun how Steam rejected the game back in 2011, and now 3 years later there it is! They have underestimated the power of the Wolves! πŸ˜‰

Jokes apart, while I still consider Loren my best game, I’m quite affectionate to this one for two reasons: was the last game I wrote completely on my own (however is better if real native English writers take care of this aspect now!) and the first RPG/VN hybrid I made, which saved me from a sure bankrupt and put me back on track to stay indie for more years.

Seasons Of The Wolf Beta

Meanwhile, SOTW beta made a lot of progress in this last week. I admit I am a bit burned out because of how many bugs I fixed and how much balancing tweaks I made!!

First of all, while the stats-derivation method was delivering really well balanced fights (as expected) it had a huge problem: since everything was based on players behaviors, I had no reference for the battle difficulties. I couldn’t tweak a battle, I couldn’t lower or increase HP, Attack, Speed of the enemies because every time they would be different for every player πŸ™‚

So, I had to discard the system after a few updates. Oh well, I’ve tried. Live and learn!

Then started to rebalance the game again, but I forgot a small detail: the level scaling was off, so the difference of difficulty between Easy and Nightmare wasn’t big (and instead, should be VERY big). So I had to rebalance the game completely for a second time!

At one point I even took a screenshot of all the 4 difficulty mode of a boss enemy to compare the differences:

balancing
The Huge Kodiak is a boss battle in a sidequest

…yes as you can guess, I went a bit insane πŸ˜€

All of this while fixing at least 5-6 major bugs daily (in first days even 10-15!!). It is good of course, and now that I have a much bigger following is even expected, but it was quite exhausting for me. Anyway, now everything seems to be working, so I can move on coding the second Act of the game.

I’m probably going to open preorders once I have finished the second act (and is in beta) so I’m at a good point of the game.

Stay tuned because next week will resume talking about C14 Dating, the new upcoming otome game πŸ˜‰

Roommates officially out + video!


Here’s the official Roommates video trailer with theme song “My Name In Light” by Leetstreet boys!

That was the last thing missing to officially release the game Roommates. More info and download/buy links here: http://www.winterwolves.com/roommates.htm

I have also submitted the game to Greenlight, so if you liked it, please vote for it:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=233332314

The game is also available for iOS:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/roommates-visual-novel/id827116639?mt=8

and Google/Amazon appstores for Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winterwolves.roommates
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IK44NA6

Meanwhile…

…work on the other games continues! C-14 Dating is coming along nicely, found a new writer for Nicole yuri to speed things up, but fans of RPGs will be pleased to know that I’m going to add more unique skills to my next RPG Seasons Of The Wolf, for a total of 108 unique skills!

I’m also going to remove the “skilltree” system and just make all the skills available to learn in any order, like you see in the work-in-progress screenshot below:skills

So in summary, combined with the more attributes (6 in total vs the 3 of Loren) the game will offer much more customization possible for the party, hopefully increasing the replayability / fun πŸ™‚

This is the project that personally I’m working on, and I have almost everything needed (I just got the lineart of the kissing scenes!) so you can expect quick progresses in the next months. My current deadline is to finish the first Season of the game (Winter) and begin the beta-testing/preorders in April.

This doesn’t mean that the game is going to be split in parts, but simply that I’m going to begin testing as soon as I complete the coding of a part of the story (Winter in this case). Then, as testing continues and I finish new parts of the game I’ll make them available as well, until the full game is ready πŸ™‚

Creepy stuff!

If you follow me on the various social networks you probably already saw the two videos below:


Nicole mystery scene video, part one

Nicole mystery scene video, part two

Scary stuff, eh? πŸ˜€ is one of the scenes of the mystery path of Nicole dating sim otome version, which should hopefully be out at end of month or beginning of October (there are some last minute things still to finish).

For those who don’t like scary stuff, you’ll be able to play the game with the mystery/scary stuff, or like a regular otome dating sim. Though so far based on the feedback people seems to enjoy that kind of things, at the point that I’m seriously considering doing a horror game in future!

Meanwhile, somewhere in Aravorn…

Seasons Of The Wolf development continues. I finished the inventory screen and the skills screen too:

traits
The new skills subscreen of SOTW

I am still pondering some changes to the skills, not to the system (I’ll use the same skilltree system as Loren) but maybe I’ll add more variety of skills since there are less characters in your party.

As for the Traits, they are permanent bonuses that you’ll unlock once you reach certain values in your character’s base attributes, which you see on the bottom of the screen. Obviously unlocking them all will be impossible so you’ll have to plan your strategy accordingly πŸ˜‰

That’s all for now, I’m pretty busy so this was a short post. More news about the other games coming soon!

Promo sale & Roommates video preview

Back To School promo

In case you missed it, despite the newsletter and all the social network promotion I did, you can use the coupon BACKTOSCHOOL during the checkout process to get 50% off any of my games.

Doesn’t work on Cinders since is not my game, and with bundles because they have other predefined discounts. So for example if you want both Flower Shop games you have to buy them separately, using the coupon every time.

Expires Sunday 1st September!

Roommates update

Today I thought I would be able to talk about SOTW skills, but had other problems to solve this week, so wasn’t able to do it in time. However, it was a very productive week for Roommates and I was able to make the video below:


This intro video provides just a glimpse of the crazy humor present in the game!

I plan to do more videos like that in next months, introducing each character of the story separately.
The writer has finished editing 2/3 of the game, and I hired Aleema to finish it (playtesting/coding/final polishing) so I can work fulltime again on SOTW to hope to finish it before end of the year.

Speaking of Seasons Of The Wolf…

Don’t be surprised, but the game is turning out bigger than expected πŸ˜€ Why I have this Deja-vΓΉ sensation? (it happens every time, I always say it will be a smaller/simpler game and then…).

The game is already over 30,000 words, is still on the second season (Spring) and that doesn’t include any camp talk conversation.

trait traitresult
An example of a decision you’ll have to do for in the traits screen

Coding / design wise I just finished the “traits selection” screen, in which you’ll be able to choose an event from the twins’ early life that will reward them with a unique trait, and I think turned out nice to play.

As for the remaining stuff, I’m a bit behind but only because I decided to rework the skills, since there are “only” 8 party-members, beside having more attributes (as seen in last week post) I want to make the skilltree more complex than Loren, with some branching decision, so that you won’t be able to unlock all the skills but you’ll have to choose.

Luckily once that thing is out of the way, I think I can go on with the battle coding much faster since I had already redone the battle screen months ago πŸ™‚