Before going into the focus of this post I have several good news (at last!):

All my games are on sale on the Steam Autumn sale:
https://store.steampowered.com/pub/winterwolves

And second, we’re only waiting for a missing animation (the animator is on holiday right now) before we can start the Glamour Photographer beta! It is a matter of a week or so now. Also, we’re planning to release the game next month, in early November!

Last but not least: things are getting better at home, so I was able to work hard again, and we might even release At Your Feet 2 sooner, like in December!!

And now back to the topic of this blog post, that is the current state of the market:

Market changes

Being indie since over 20 years has taught me that the market can change over time.

So far I used to think that yuri games are the best ROI for visual novels. However in the last months, I had some very interesting results. If I add the amount I got from Kickstarter for my two latest yuri games (Christine’s Care and At Your Feet 2) I slightly beat the amount I got for Glamour Photographer alone!

However, if I look back just to 2024, games like TFTU: Lilith or House of Chavez, even if yuri only, raised both more than Glamour Photographer.

It’s always hard to draw conclusions to be honest. It could be many things:

• the market for modern setting / slice of life games is really shrinking. Indeed fantasy games, or horror games did better, regardless of the kind of romances
• BxG games are getting more popular even on Kickstarter. I already knew they’re popular on Steam but maybe now even on KS?
• it’s just the market in general that’s doing badly. Indeed, while I’m happy for Glamour Photographer result, such a big game with so many love interest (nine!) maybe could have done much better if done 2-3 years ago?

As you see it’s really hard because there are so many factors to take into account that’s really impossible to pinpoint the exact reason.

So what I’m going to do next?

First of all, the bigger games (like the RPGs) I will always have all the romance combos, so those are “safe”. I mean, they are a pain to create since are very big, however they always have all kind of romances, so that should make everyone happy: I’m aware that some games (like ToA: Reign Of War) don’t have an even amount of male/female love interests, but that’s because they were originally started… 10 years ago, while for all future games will try to have an even amount of love interests!

For the smaller games, I’ll keep doing more yuri games but also more BxG games at this point, also I want to do some more experiments with some more gameplay-focused games. For example, I still have the artwork for Spirited Heart 2 that one day I might want to finish.

Also, while I need to look at the market, sometimes I might want to make games only because I want to do that specific kind of game, sometimes finding artists that can draw males well is hard (and that’s why I haven’t done many games with male protagonists or love interests!), other times an artist who was supposed to draw female protagonist/CG first and then the male version disappears suddenly, leaving you only with the female art, etc etc

So: there can be a gazillion of reasons why that “game A has only male / female protagonist and/or love interests” and many times isn’t even what I really wanted to make but I’m forced to do that because of external factors. Players ignore this but it’s a very common issue across all VN developers.

Conclusions

I already posted this on Patreon a while ago, and people misunderstood: I am not saying that from now on I’ll ONLY make straight BxG games!!!

I’m going to try adding a variety of other genre combos, more BxG, even more otomes, etc. As I said, mainly depends on which artists will be available and what they are capable or want to do (some artists don’t do gay stuff for example, etc).

I think the best combo for the shorter games would be that I’ll try to have GxG and BxG games so I could make my “core” fans (yuri) happy but also reach new people who are into straight stuff. And this only because I’ve recently found an artist (the comic CG one) who can draw well also male anatomy and has no problem with adult stuff.

I’m a bit shocked that some people thought I was IMMEDIATELY STOPPING ANY YURI GAME DEVELOPMENT. Where did I write that??? lol!!!

Stay tuned for Glamour Photographer testing later this month!

The title of the post paraphrases the “Slow Food” italian institution, promoting quality food vs fast food.

If you follow me on socials, you might have already heard about our decision to delay At Your Feet 2 after Glamour Photographer‘s release. I listed the various reasons in the Kickstarter update, but in summary: I was too burned out, the wishlists amount was too small (releasing a game with not enough wishlists is always a bad move), I found some last minute things. On top of all that, I currently have some serious family issues, and in the end we didn’t want to rush a game out.

Definitely not one that was funded only two months before! I mean, do I have to mention that there are some project still not out YEARS after being funded? I guess I can take a few months more…

Learning my lesson

So this brings me talking about the title of the post. Because of how I am made, I always chunked out games quickly. I still remember back in 2016 when I released 5 ! (back then though I had five different writers and various external collaborators! I’m not a machine).

However, in hindsight, I think that for some of those games, I could have maybe done things differently. If I took my time to check and improve the story, the writing, polish it, etc etc the final result would have been better.

In my KS update I mentioned TFTU: After Midnight, but basically for most of my recent games like Hazel or An Elven Marriage, I used the same method: I wrote first draft, then I did something completely different, and came back with fresh mind to finish the story. Sadly, last year I couldn’t do this. I had just finished Thieves Of Dingirra which was honestly a pretty exhausting game to do, lots of writing and coding (and testing!).

I thought I wasn’t burned out back then… and started working on Glamour Photographer. But the burn out isn’t something that warns you in advance, you can maybe ignore it for some time, but then, especially if combined with some other serious personal life issues, it comes out violently.

This is what happened in the beginning of June. I thought I had under control, but I was wrong. I explained to the publisher the situation, and we agreed that it would have been a mistake.

Of course, the GAME IS NOT CANCELED! It’s just delayed. Probably early next year. In the KS estimate release I put January 2027. Not saying it will be out right that month, but I’m not late (the KS ended in June…)

So this is it. This whole thing however taught me a lesson. I always thought that the best thing as indie was to constantly release stuff. And I still think you need to regularly release things. BUT… not 2-3 games at once! Finish a game, then start the next one. And take your time. Also, wait at least one year from the announcement to release, since you need time to gather those damn wishlists for the “Steam algorithm”…

My main mistake was to boldly announce a release, knowing how burned out I was, not thinking about last minute problems or real-life issues (those are always unpredictable to be fair), instead of taking it easier and ultimately release a better product. But from now on, “Slow Dev” only!

Conclusions

So, the new plan is to release Glamour Photographer in November (with a beta in October) and after that At Your Feet 2, probably in January (releasing it in December I think is not a good idea? we’ll see). The good news is that I saw some of the finished animations for Glamour Photographer and are… really good!! Will maybe share one on my Patreon later this month.

That’s all for now, stay tuned for Glamour Photographer beta announcement next month.

First of all, a short announcement: At Your Feet 2 is progressing very well and we believe we’ll start the beta testing phase shortly after mid-August. The game turned out very nice, with A LOT of content, including some very hot and cute scenes, and a nice pin-up image which I managed to add inside the game in form of a dream that Linda has the first night in Trigue! You’ll recognize some familiar outfits and faces 😉

Remember that you can wishlist the game now on Steam to be informed when it’s out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3996520/At_Your_Feet_2/

And now, back to the topic of this post.

Today I’m going to talk about a very controversial topic, that is indie games marketing. I’m referring only to small indies, not “indies” with a team of 20 and a marketing budget of $50k!

When I read games post-mortem, especially those who didn’t do as expected, inevitably someone will comment like “what marketing did you do?” or even sentencing clearly “you didn’t do enough marketing!”

But what is “marketing” essentially ? For small indies?

I’m going to say this immediately: if you rely to “free marketing” tecniques, then good luck to you. Unfortunately this is what most of those commenters refer to.

The only way to do proper marketing is through paid ads. Unless you have a lot of followers on socials, your posts are going to be ignored by 99% of the people except your most loyal fans which probably already know about your game. Reddit posts are going to be banned 9 cases out of 10. It’s kind of hilarious to see all the strategies indies plan to make their reddit post seem not about their game 😀 No really I swear, I’m talking about coding this and that, about an effect, about retrogaming. Then casually putting their game link in comments. (I did this too BTW! it doesn’t work)

Here’s the harsh truth: all those efforts will maybe impact your sales by 1%. If you’re lucky!

Social and the illusion of marketing

Am I saying that you should delete your social accounts? No, obviously not. I’ve seen some indies that I know and that started around same time as me, that have greatly increased their reach by basically LIVING ONLINE 24/24. Something that maybe you can afford to do when you’re 20-30 years old, or if you have no life (sorry haha) and so on, but once you grow up like me… you can’t. You can’t spend your entire day be online AND develop games at same time.

When I was younger I was indeed online a lot. I remember clearly, every time before going to bed I was thinking “I must post something before going to bed!”. Like i the future of my business depended on that!

Here’s a trick: if you want to get more followers and you talk about your games… you better make a good game. Instead of spending 3h online, spend 3h working on your game. Not necessarily coding or writing, but even doing walks and think about the gameplay, the story, whatever. It’s much more productive.

If you want to get more followers in general you should use socials for what they’re made for: write controversial posts, catch attention (both good and bad), divide the public opinion, etc. That’s why they were made. Not to promote stuff. The only ones really getting rich for sure, are the people who control the socials.

I repeat again: I’m not saying you should delete all your socials. I keep posting. I post around once a day though, not more. I provide an update on what I’m working on, so true fans can see it. But that’s it. If I had 10-15k followers, my posts probably would get more attention or have a bigger impact, sure.

But how you reach that? I’m not going to post about politics, climate change, vaccines or all that stuff that has nothing to do with games. I want to talk about games. To get more people to talk about my games I need to make better games, as simple as that.

Conclusions

I’m sure that many people will disagree with me. It’s fine of course. This is my experience. However, I have spoken with a big number of indies over the course of my career, and maybe the 10-15% of them got success through socials… or maybe not even that. I mean, they were people (I won’t make names, but some of them made very big VNs and at one point had 20-25k followers on Twitter/X) who made good/great games. That’s it. That’s the great recipe for success.

THEN, they also were online a lot, posting about various topics, BUT the key point remains: they made great games. I know really a few who made good money with average games, and that was only by pure luck, being at right place at right time, or making a meme game that went viral (0,000001% chances of repeated success) and so on.

Sorry if my view is so negative but I am getting a bit tired of reading desperate indies and the usual comment “you should have done more marketing!” and “how your game can sell if no one knows about it???”.

Well, here’s the Steam stats of one of my recent releases, Christine’s Care:

This is the traffic that Steam directed to my game, lifetime (so far). Then I did some research wondering how much I’d have to spend to get that traffic. Well, with a CPC (cost per click) to get those 45k visitors I’d have spent an insane amount of money into ads! to get those impressions (which don’t automatically translate into visits!) the amount is lower but still around $3-5k. And it’s also a very targeted traffic (people who play games, not random people).

What does this mean? That if you release your game on Steam, you already get traffic (at least for now!). And if your game is a good fit (not “good” in general, but a good fit for Steam) it will gain traction and get more traffic. Of course, it’s extremely hard nowadays. And yes, you can try to use socials to increase the wishlists amount, but so it’s doing everyone else.

So you should focus on your game, and in case of a visual novel (but not just that to be fair) on the “hook”. Here’s a final stat, the traffic my other game “Save The World” got in same amount of time:

A slight difference, uh? I guess that “alien comes to Earth and listen to every word you say, how will you shape the world” is a better punchline than “Christine cares for disabled Hannah while meeting free-spirited Marlon and Liz. Torn between them, she faces love and life-changing choices.”

Or perhaps it’s just the art-style, or something else. It’s hard to tell, if it was, everyone would know exactly what to do. But clearly depends on the game. For the record, I think both games have great art style and Christine’s Care story is much better written, but it clearly lacks the “hook” of Save The World.

Now you know how to better spend your time: first make a great game and then, only then, focus on the marketing.

If you have been following the blog lately, you know there is a lot happening. Between making game demos and working on At Your Feet 2, we were very busy. However, when we look at how fast the projects are moving, something interesting stands out: At Your Feet 2 might actually come out before Glamour Photographer!

This might surprise you, but let me explain. Glamour Photographer is a huge game. The story is already over 200,000 words long, and about 90% of the main work is already finished. So, why is it taking so long? The simple answer is: animations.

As you probably know already, while the normal character animations are done, we are also trying to have some animated intimate scenes. Glamour Photographer has more art than any game we have made before, with over 150 comic-style pictures, and so we’ll have budget to animate a scene for each love interest, but still that takes some more extra time.

This delay shows a common problem in making video games: the choice between working alone or in a team. As you know, I’ve worked mostly alone in my whole career.

When a developer works completely on their own (or almost), they have total control over the schedule. They don’t have to wait for other people, ask for approval, or depend on outside help. Working alone is fast and predictable. On the other hand, when you work with a bigger team or a publisher, delays are bound to happen. It takes time for everyone to stay on the same page, and waiting on different people can slow things down. That is exactly what is happening right now with the animation team.

However, think about the other side of the medal: working with a bigger team is the only reason a game like Glamour Photographer can exist! One person can only do so much by themselves. A larger team brings the extra hands needed to create much bigger, cleaner, and more beautiful games that a solo developer could never make alone. That is the big trade-off.

Because At Your Feet 2 is being made as a simpler, classic visual novel without complex extra features or animations, it is moving very fast. While we wait for the team to finish polishing the animations for Glamour Photographer, don’t be surprised if At Your Feet 2 beats it to the finish line sometimes around this Summer!

Last but not least, all my games are currently on sale on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/pub/winterwolves

And also on itchio: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/

That’s all for now, in the beginning of August I might have an actual release date for At Your Feet 2 (just need to implement custom scenes and other minor things).

We’re happy to announce that the Kickstarter for our next yuri visual novel, At Your Feet 2, is live since the end of May!

Now, before we get into more details, I want to answer an obvious question: what about Glamour Photographer? Well, things are going well! I’ve finished the game (of course will need some testing) and the reason why we’re launching this Kickstarter is simple: to optimize time.

Because right now the team of animators is working on adding all animations to the game. In particular, extra characters added later during development, the spiritual guides, etc. And also, the… ahem, “intimate scenes” (you know what I mean). Of course not all of them otherwise finishing the game would take 3 years (there are over 150 comic CGs!!!) but we’re aiming at around 3-4 animated events for each model which is definitely great, but still takes a good amount of time.

So in summary: I’m doing this Kickstarter so I can already start producing content for At Your Feet 2 while the animations are being added to Glamour Photographer. You know I don’t like to remain idle!

At Your Feet 2 game

I’ve already hinted a bit about this game in the past, but now I’ll go into more detail. First of all, the game will be a comedy, but a different kind from Glamour Photographer, which had some really absurd moments (the spiritual guides appearing, Filippo constantly triggering hilarious situations, etc.). The comedy here will be more subtle and refined, and it will revolve mainly around Linda, the main character.

While Emma from the first game was a sort of disaster — shy about her kink, a bit clumsy — Linda is an interesting contradiction. She looks confident on the outside, but inside her mind there’s pure chaos: she’s constantly overanalyzing everything. After all, she’s a psychology student, and she’s convinced every glance, every gesture, every micro-expression has some deeper meaning. The best comedy comes from her inner monologue: the gap between the composed adult she’s trying to be and the feral, dirty-minded brain that keeps betraying her.

Adding Tommy, her best friend since childhood, makes the whole thing even funnier. Tommy is the only person in Linda’s life who knows about her kink, and he happens to be into feet as well. So throughout the story, whenever a “foot situation” arises, the two exchange knowing glances, tease each other, and play off the secret only they share.

The fact that Tommy is still hopelessly convinced he has a shot with Linda adds another layer to the dynamic. Don’t worry, though! Tommy will have his own moments with Paige, Linda’s ex, who is also coming to Trigue… specifically to chase after him.

And what about the three love interests?

Jennifer — The ultimate extrovert. If there’s a party, she IS the party. A bisexual, polyamorous free spirit and unapologetic exhibitionist who treats every outfit like a performance. Chaotic on the surface, but more thoughtful underneath than people give her credit for, and the one most likely to push Linda outside her comfort zone.

Rose — A wealthy, prim-and-proper “good girl” from a strict family, on her first solo holiday and ready to slip the leash. Soft-spoken, easily flustered, with a clear submissive streak that only emerges once she feels safe. A locked garden quietly hoping someone will find the key, and her arc from blushing newcomer to confident woman is one of the most rewarding parts of the story.

Alex — The sultry singer from Summer in Trigue, returning in a timeline where she never got together with Sybil. Magnetic, commanding, in full control of every room she walks into, but the femme fatale persona is partly a mask. Underneath the dominance is someone who cares, ferociously, about the people she lets close.

The current draft of the story that I’ve been working on and off since the beginning of the year is already around 60,000 words and I suspect the final game will surpass the 100,000 words (so will be much bigger than the first title).

If you’re interested in knowing more, check the Kickstarter page, I’ll be constantly updating it as the campaign goes on!