Category Archives: general

posts about general topics, even not related to computer games

Making an indie game is like climbing a mountain

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The weather is getting better over here, so like all years, this is the period where we can finally start doing some short trips on the mountains nearby. I always loved trekking and walking in middle of the nature in general. While I was in one of those trips I was thinking that in some way, doing indie games is like climbing up a mountain.

When I started working on Cursed Lands, my idea was for it to be a small game ™ – you can laugh obviously – however as time passed, new ideas came to mind and every time it was like “would be a pity to not do this” and “this character should definitely have a scene showing her weaker side” and so on. The result is what you can actually play here: there’s even a free demo! One of the few indies still doing them!

While it might not be necessarily true for all games, in particular small games (for real, not like my 300,000 words / 50h+ long small games!) the process of making a game is really like climbing a mountain.

Whenever I start a new RPG, for example right now I’m working on Planet Stronghold 2, I am super enthusiast. Defining the characters, setting, the general plot, thinking about plot twists, and on the gameplay side the various classes, skills, combat system, items, weapon types, etc etc. It’s great, no doubts.

Then, the climbing starts. And slowly but steadly the initial enthusiasm fades away. It’s normal, happens to everyone. I’ve never seen an indie say “it was great working on this game from first to last day”. If someone says this, he/she is lying! 😉

As time passes, the climbing becomes harder, people find bugs, give you feedback, maybe not the kind of feedback you want to hear (the game is not fun! you should rebalance all the battles! and so on) until the end is on sight. The top of the mountain, you can see it! It’s there. But… you’re tired, very tired. Because you climbed the mountain until now, and you can’t wait to finish, to reach the top and then begin going back downhill.

This is the hardest part. This is where you should stand a few minutes on the top of the mountain and wait, looking around you. Look at the path you did to reach the mountain, think back at the experience. Did you do what you wanted to do? Is the game… yes being fun is important, but even more: it’s the kind of game you wanted to make? Is there still something you could do to improve things, without stumbling on your way down the mountain (spending too much time/money?)

The downhill is when the game is released. For many people it’s a nerve-whacking process, and I’m no exception. It’s when you know if all the efforts you put in climbing up the mountain were worth it or not. Though, in the (rare?) cases where I actually manage do finish a good game, it’s really nice to hear the customer’s feedback, the compliments, and the revenues, knowing that yes, you can still afford another trip. Yes this wasn’t the last one!

If you like something an indie made, spend 2 minutes to let him/her know. Send a short email, post on their social media, write one of those infamous reviews on Steam, spread the word, do what you want, but let them know, because it will make climbing the next mountain easier.

Cursed Lands is finally out!

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Yes! As the title says, Cursed Lands, my new RPG, is finally out. The game official page is here: http://winterwolves.com/cursedlands.htm

Like my other games, even Cursed Lands will also be available for mobile and Steam: I only need a bit of time to optimize the game (whenever possible) for mobile, and to do the Steam setup (achievements, trading cards, etc). To be honest I also need a small break haha, but you can still expect mobile/Steam to be available shortly.

And now, I asked the game’s lead writer to write a “guest post”, so here it is. You’ll laugh like me reading the part about “a smaller game” 😀

Hey, I’m Justin Kuiper, lead writer on Cursed Lands. It’s been quite a journey, starting way back in 2015. Celso Riva was considering creating another game in the Aravorn fantasy setting, and I happened to have several ideas for a high fantasy story, including the concept for an “alignment” system based on the four temperaments and using social talents to avoid or escape combat. We decided that these ideas would be a good fit for a game in the Aravorn setting, and I began working on Cursed Lands, a story set before the events of Loren: The Amazon Princess.

I recently went back and read the initial email exchange, and noticed that one of his messages contained this sentence:

“I’d like this to be a smaller game (the others are huge, over 180k words of texts)”

I had to chuckle when reading this message with hindsight, because at over 300k words, Cursed Lands is the LONGEST Winter Wolves game to date! So much for this being a “smaller game,” a game that I originally expected to be done in under a year ended up taking three years to complete. That being said, I’m really glad that we took the time to include all of the story and content that got added, and despite the fact that this game is over 300k words, I don’t feel like there is any “filler:” everything that’s included in the game is there because it serves an important purpose to the story or the characters.

The story of Cursed Lands takes place across several lunar cycles, and the player is tasked with defeating undead that can only be confronted at night, with major story events coinciding with the full moon. The fact that the game’s major story events consist of investigating a castle and battling vampires and various ghouls gives the story a distinct gothic horror feel, but I’d say that Cursed Lands treats gothic horror more as an aesthetic than a genre. Cursed Lands is, at its core, a high fantasy story about traveling the continent and forming a group of allies to do battle against a powerful evil. The characters you recruit and the relationships that you form what I consider to be the real heart of Cursed Lands, whether that means romance or just forming bonds with your companions through conversation and shared experiences. Of course, there’s no better test of friendship than going on a vampire-slaying mission together.

One of the things we decided early on was that Cursed Lands would be a cast of mostly original characters. Karen and Apolimesho appear in the story (along with a cameo appearance by a young Princess Loren and a few other familiar faces along the way), but all of the party members are new original characters. This gave me a lot of freedom to write the story without having to worry about how the personalities and experiences of the characters would affect the Aravorn canon. For example, it wouldn’t make sense if a certain character had visited Castle N’Mar during the events of Cursed Lands, then later appeared in Loren: The Amazon Princess and had no memory of the events from the prequel; creating a new cast allowed us to avoid these potential issues, and also provided me with a lot of latitude in writing the game’s various endings. Having a fresh cast of characters also gave me a lot of freedom to come up with original backstories and personalities for each of the characters, which allowed me to try out lots of different ideas and give each cast member their own little quirks and unique traits.

At the same time, one of the fun parts of working on Cursed Lands was getting to familiarize myself with the lore of Aravorn. While the characters are new, many of the places you meet them are locations you might already be familiar with from other games in the Aravorn universe. You can travel to Hammerhands and do business with the dwarves, or go to the Great Forest and consort with the elves. Having an original cast of characters also made it possible to explore new facets of those areas, moving away from the populated areas of the Great Forest and traveling off the beaten path to discover where the outcasts live, and to explore some of the corrupt aristocrats that form the ruling class of Hammerhands. I think each of the game’s settings represents a mix of familiar and new, taking fresh ideas and enmeshing them with the rich lore of the series.

If you’ve never played a game set in Aravorn, welcome! I think you’ll find Cursed Lands to be a good entry point into the franchise. And if you’re a long-time fan of the series, I hope you enjoy this fresh take on the setting you already know and love.

Happy gaming,

Justin Kuiper

Corona Borealis: June

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Let’s start the characters introductions for Corona Borealis! For each one I’ll show two outfits and an “older” version (in the game there are epilogues happening several years later).

But first I realized that in my previous post, I didn’t even write what this game is about! Oops. So here we go, directly from the writer:

“June Pinegar is forced to spend the summer working at her father’s quaint country café, far away from her urban home in New York City. Will romance spark with the dutiful barista or friendship form with the bubbly cashier? Or perhaps she’ll mend the strained relationship between her and her quirky father. One thing is certain: with each passing day, June is finding herself more and more charmed by the intoxicating mystique of the Southern town and its residents.

Corona Borealis is a heartwarming story that shows the lasting effects our lives are capable of having on others, as well as their effects on us. Rather than just providing the player with romance options, it aims to explore the depths of non-romantic relationships, too.”

And now the introduction of June herself:

“June is Basil’s daughter and the reluctant new employee at his café. At first, she prefers to keep her distance from the others, but she matures and opens up as the game progresses. Player’s choices will determine how hardworking or friendly she’ll be, which will in turn affect how other characters perceive and interact with her. However, she remains a sassypants throughout the game regardless of player decisions.” 

That’s all for now. Next time we’ll introduce a new character of the game!

Cursed Lands and Love Bites update

Everything is going well with those two games: for Cursed Lands, I’m at good point with act 3 (the last one), so much that I think I could do the final update with all the content next month. It’s still a beta and still a complex RPG so probably the final game will be out 2-3 months after the beta is out. I think June/July could be a good potential release date.

For Love Bites, same, I should have all the writing finished by end of this month, so depending how long it takes to get scripted, the beta might be out next month as well 🙂

Announcing Corona Borealis

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First of all, a short PSA: Cursed Lands new beta is live. It contains the full act2, a lot of content ! For more info see my forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=4083

And now let’s talk about today’s announcement. Or better, re-announcement, since it’s a game originally ideated by Jill Harris, who gave voice to Myrth in Loren and helped me write Never Forget Me. A while ago she approached me asking my help to finish the game, so I accepted.

I accepted also because beside the cute story, Deji was doing the art for the game and she said she would gladly finish what she started time ago. It’s a “smaller game” compared to my crazy standards and to be honest will be a good distraction while I finish some huge games like Cursed Lands (which now broke the 275,000 words barrier already!).

Of course since the story was already largely written, I didn’t want to change anything. This means you won’t see any of the things I promised I’d do in future games (optional adult content, male/female protagonist, etc). I only wanted to clarify before someone complains 😉

The game reminds me closely the Fairbrook series, romance and friendship above everything. You play as June, and there are two otome routes, one yuri, and… not sure how to call it, maybe “father friendship route”? A path in which you make peace with your father, with which you have a shaky relationship.

In the next blog posts I’ll introduce (as usual) the various characters of the game. There isn’t a fixed release date yet, however the writing is basically all done (maybe some more events for the scheduler but nothing big) and the art is at good point too. This is one of the various “surprise projects” I mentioned in a previous blog post, stuff that was going on behind the scenes since long time (I was involved in this project starting from Summer 2016 but the game was in development since longer).

I’m sure some people will rejoice seeing a more cute/friendship-focused game, but for the others who like more sexy stuff, don’t worry, all the other games in production have that option!

The ‘vocal minority’, feature creep and keeping yourself sane

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One of the many custom screens I added to Cursed Lands. Feature creep? yup

I always wanted to write a blog post about the topics in the title, so here I am. First let’s start with a premise: what makes a successful game? of course gameplay, art, music, etc. But if we want to analyze a game’s success there’s a simple formula: a popular/successful game is a game that matches tastes of as much people as possible.

I think the above statement is inconfutable: the more people like game X, the more copies will sell and more successful will be. Then of course if the company doing it spent too much time, or money, it could still be a financial failure for them, but it still would be a popular game.

OK now that this is clear, what is the so called ‘vocal minority’ and how can impact the development of a game? Nowadays is very common to have an open development, with alpha/beta demos, early access, etc. Almost everyone is doing it now, but the same principle works even if you’re doing a closed beta with only 20-30 testers.

Now let’s say that the 10% of your fans/betatesters want desperately feature A. They’ll start posting in forums, sending you emails, and so on. It’s like if they’re fans of a soccer team. “Really, you should implement feature A because the game will be SOOO much better!”. In some cases, they even know it will be easy, even if maybe they have no programming skills whatsoever “I could program it myself in an afternoon”. And so on, even with veiled threats “If you don’t implement feature A I’ll ask for a refund!” or “your game won’t sell a copy!” etc 🙂

If you’re a developer, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with all this, and if you’re a player or an user, trust me, this really happens (but probably you saw such posts too).

Note that I’m using a fun tone while writing this, but for the person on the other side, the developer, the situation is often dramatic: maybe they invested a lot of money, mortgaged their home, or simply spent already so many hours on their game. But for the player of course this doesn’t matter (it shouldn’t, since they’re judging the game and not how much the developer worked on it or how much money they spent).

Anyway, what happens now? The developer can either follow the suggestion, think about it, or refuse to implement the new feature. As you can imagine the last option will result in an uproar in forums and some insults to the developer. But even if developer agrees to do it, is in all cases a good choice? No, it depends.

Back to the starting point: if the feature A that the 10% of people want is something that once implemented even the remaining 90% will like (the so called “silent majority”) then, all good! But what if the new change is disliked or even worse, hated by the other 90% or part of it?

That’s the big issue that developers have to face on a daily basis. In some cases the suggested changes are obviously a good idea. In others, devs have no clue themselves: is making the RPG more complex a good thing or not? Is using randomized items a nice feature? better turn based or real-time? etc etc.

There is no clear answer in some cases. It’s a bit random, really. Unless your game is selling so well that you can afford to do changes on a new beta, gather new feedback and just in case revert to previous version, then it’s a minefield. You could implement the feature and risk losing players, or you could gain more fans. But in most cases developers aren’t sure themselves about what is going to happen, while one thing is sure: adding the new feature will cost time and money.

The devs are the only ones to know well how much time and money they’ve already spent, how much money and physical/mental energies have left. And they must not fall into the famous “feature creep” for which they keep adding feature after feature, thinking to make the game better, when maybe that’s not always the case. Or simply, it’s not worth all the extra time/money spent to add the features.

In summary, I’m not writing this blog to say that players’ suggestions are bad. I have added a lot of nice features in my RPGs exactly thanks to players’ feedback. What I’m saying is that as developer you need to learn when to say ‘no’. When you have no more money to spend. When you have no more time or energies (because adding a feature when you’re burned out it’s not a good idea, trust me). When to say “OK, I know I could probably keep working on this game for years, but I must release it now.”

And as player, you need to understand that (in most cases at least) when a developer tells you “sorry but can’t do this”, it’s not because he’s a bastard, he’s lazy, or he necessarily disagrees with your idea: it’s very likely for the reasons stated above.

I’ll end with an analogy because many players find odd that someone would want to stop working on a game, adding new features they suggest because it will likely make the game better. To make a comparison with a game developer, imagine if one day the boss at your daily job calls you and tells you that you should stay in office doing overtime every day for the next month. At the end of that month, and only at the end, you might get paid for the overtime, or not. You don’t know before, but the boss still asks you to do it, insisting saying that “yes, maybe I’ll pay you more”. What would you do?

Now maybe you understand why, sometimes, us developer don’t add all the new features you request, especially if they require a lot of time/money to implement them 🙂