I’m happy to announce that I launched my first Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/tales-from-the-under-realm-hazel

Since it was the first time for me, I decided to pick a “small game” (remember that small for me means medium-sized for almost everyone else!). I did this on purpose since I didn’t want to stress myself too much as first attempt!

Anyways, it’s going rather well (I picked a very low base goal since wasn’t sure exactly how much to ask). But what is this game about?

It was born by an idea of making a series of “dark fantasy” games, having a common denominator: they are narrated by the Nameless God, who rules the Under-Realm (this idea was mentioned briefly in the other Aravorn games, but never explored so much).

This first “episode” (but they’re all disconnected from each other, so no recurring characters) will see the witch Hazel who was captured and imprisoned.

In the same room, she’ll meet with the first love interest, the beautiful assassin Sasha:

And the second and last love interest is the paladin Tori:

And if you think the outfits are too unrealistic, don’t worry: in the game you’ll be able to pick all the options, like a full plate armor for Tori.

You can find even more info in the Kickstarter page. It’s a bit weird I know, since this game’s story actually takes place AFTER all the four Loren spin-off games I’m going to do in the next years, but the base idea (that Hazel is one of the last witches remaining, and there’s this order hunting down witches) can work only in this specific point of the Aravorn’s timeline. A bit of a spoiler maybe, but I think people will forgive me!

Final considerations

As you see I tried to put a very unusual starting situation, also because, I forgot to say, at the beginning of the story you (Hazel, the main protagonist) are dead! But… how that happened? And there’s a way to cheat death? You’ll revive the last days of life of Hazel with the Nameless God powers and find out !

The game will have as usual a very deep story and the characters will gradually reveal more of their background, motivations and in some cases even show surprising change of heart. There will be some darker scenes but nothing “extreme” like torture or rape, so don’t worry about that!

I also made sure to include happy endings so that all the romance plots will end in a satisfying manner (even more important considering it’s a LGBT game).

The Kickstarter is about to end, and while I put as estimate release June next year, if everything goes as planned, I think that is very likely that the game will be out much sooner than that! Stay tuned!

As you probably already know by now, Volleyball Heaven is officially out. You can get it either on itchio: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/volleyball-heaven

Or Steam (you need to have adult content enabled to see it): https://store.steampowered.com/app/618010/Volleyball_Heaven/

Sadly we couldn’t make it censored+DLC patch on Steam, since they told us that the game was too explicit even in texts (I think it also depends on who of Steam staff reviews it). Anyways after resubmitting twice, I decided was pointless to try to censor it when it was a game clearly made to be adult only.

What’s Next?

You might wonder what I’m working on now. As usual I am doing many projects at once, some announced and some not, so let’s see.

Curse Of Mantras (ex Undead Lily)

I finished doing the storyboards of almost all Curse Of Mantras characters, and it wasn’t an easy task believe me! Because each story has two different endings with a plot twist, and without spoiling it too much, one is the bad one (default) and another is the good one which can also unlock some extra stuff. The romance scenes will always trigger towards the end of each route instead.

Of course the storyboards are just the first step! Then there’s the rough draft and then the final polished text. Still LOONG way to go (obviously since it’s still one of those super-huge games!). At this point I hope to have it out next year, since this year will be clearly impossible.

Roger Steel remake

Last month I also hoped to announce Roger Steel “remake”, which was supposed to feature a match3/Puzzle Quest gameplay but just before announcing it we found a lot of crazy bugs, so I decided to give up with that system. Probably doing such a game in Ren’Py wasn’t the smartest idea…!

I still plan to do the game though, but I’ll need to find a valid gameplay replacement, either some new card system or even reusing the RPG gameplay, but this game had a fixed amount of battles and each fight should have been more like a puzzle with minimal grinding. Anyway it’s just paused for now, but I still plan to do it.

Summer In Trigue

Summer In Trigue rewrite is at good point too, and all the romance CGs are done. I decided to try and use a different artist for the CGs, and early feedback seems to indicate that it was a good move.

I don’t have an estimate release ready but it’s very likely that this could be the next game to be out! It has changed quite a bit vs the first versions of the game but I think overall should be more in line with what my players now expect. It will have both censored/uncensored versions of CGs and texts.

Many secret projects!

Personally I’m writing/storyboarding more “secret games”, but still too early to announce them. For those who don’t know, I am going to announce officially a new game only when I’m sure it will be done in a few months, not before. I want to give a hint of what they are about though:

• a fantasy story about escaping in a land devastated by a civil war
• a dark fantasy story about a witch, a thief and a paladin
• a modern/slice of life yuri game
• one of the four ex-Loren 2 games (still early stages!)
• a new horror VN mixed with point’n’click adventure gameplay

All those games are following my new anti-burnout rules, that is plot not too long and/or gameplay not too complex. Many of them are going to be VN only indeed.

My games on consoles!

I am finally free to talk about this (before I couldn’t do it due to NDA). We’ve partnered with Ratalaika games to port my games to consoles (PS4, Switch & Xbox). The first one is Nicole, but we’re planning to port more or less all of them in the following weeks/months (obviously the RPGs will take a long time to port since are very complex and needs careful testing).

I’m very happy of course, and it’s funny – only last year more or less in this period I was writing a blog post about Google Play banning my games, and in general mobile was really doing badly. And now I’m announcing this. I’d say that overall it went for the best since at the moment the console market is much better than the terrible mobile market!

Conclusions

As you see I have a lot of things/projects going on. I think I could maybe have Summer In Trigue done, and perhaps one of the other secret games in beta before end of year. Next year Curse Of Mantras (at least the beta) and maybe some more minor games and then finally in 2022 the first of the four Loren spin-off/episode games. Of course this is just my guess, we’ll see what actually happens!

Today I wanted to clarify since many people wondered about Loren 2’s fate. Yes, Loren 2 will not exist anymore as originally intended: a single, huge, impossible to write and code game with 16 love interests (seriously, what I was thinking when I planned it?). But I got an idea, so keep reading and don’t worry.

Remember that Planet Stronghold 2 took me one full year (working full time on it, while I usually work on 2-3 games at same time) and it has 10 love interests. Loren 2 originally had 16 planned, so even 6 more than PS2!!

Even if I already thought to split the game in two parts, in the end everything had still to match together, since they both were still part of a single story. So I had to pay attention to plot-holes, branching, romances, etc.

Planet Stronghold 2 has some of the best reviews and overall review rating of ALL my games. And yet, it wasn’t worth it from a commercial point of view (which sadly, since I cannot pay bills with “review score” is important lol). Market change, “high” price, sci-fi setting curse or simply bad luck: one day I’ll do a full postmortem about that game, including the super-weird Steam traffic graph which might have completely broken the release exposure. Yes, you heard it well, it might have been just “bad luck”.

Whatever the reasons, the conclusion is: I cannot risk doing this again, last but not least for mental/physical reasons – after finishing PS2 I was completely burned out, in a way that it never happened before to me. To be honest, I’m still a bit burned out even right now, 3 months after the game release. Think that I even thought about quitting making games after 15 years! Yeah, definitely not an experience I want to repeat !

When you see the credits of those big branching RPGs like Bioware, you see there are like 10-20 writers (in addition to all the coders). I am alone just using some part-time external collaborators. It’s just crazy to think about it already. I cannot be so cocky to think that I can do what 10 people do and not get burned out…!

But wait! Not all is lost!

This doesn’t mean though, that I can’t make more “normal games” with the same characters! I recently spoke with Aleema (Loren’s original writer), and we brainstormed the possibility to split the old+new cast into 4 games with 4 love interests each. It’s a much better solution under all aspects, since will let us make a better job with each character and give them the space they deserve.

Yes, because even if I’m doing it mainly because after Planet Stronghold 2 burn-out and stress I know I wouldn’t want to do it again for my own health, in the end it will be even better for players because they’ll be able to finally get their games, and the smaller cast will reduce the time I need to spend making sure there are no plot holes, and at the same time give each character more scenes than they would get if was a single big game.

Indeed not having to worry about a huge cast will make development easier, since I don’t need to remember what character X said to character Y or the current world situation, etc etc. so I can focus my efforts on creating content instead of worrying about breaking existing storylines (PS2 was really crazy under that aspect!!).

A fair treatment for everyone

Just think for example that while Karen was listed in the romances, already in the draft of the original sequel story her “screen time” was considerably shorter than others. It was hard to justify her presence for longer parts in the story when I had SO MANY MORE CHARACTERS, old and new to deal with 😉 Now instead? She’ll be part on a specific new story with 3 other romances and she’ll get same treatment, as a true TOP MILF like her clearly deserves!!!!! Lol jokes apart, it’s really better even for each single romance route.

Last but not least, only because there will be 4 romances each game, doesn’t mean the other characters cannot be present in the story: they can be, but they will appear as secondary characters. Of course as always I’ll make sure to indicate clearly on each game which romances are available in the game page description.

One of those 4 games will still be about the demons’ threat and will feature Jul of course. I will be able to reuse a good amount of texts already written for the main story originally done for Loren 2. The others? They will be about different topics/settings but still feature a good mix of some old characters and the new ones.

Conclusions

I know that probably some of you won’t like this, but really, it was either this way or I was ready to cancel the game. It’s not about what I want to do or not, but is about my mental/physical health and it’s not something to take lightly, trust me.

Of course we’re still talking a few years in future because first I need to finish Curse of Mantras, but after that one I will start to work on one of those games. And this time won’t take me many years to finish and it won’t drive me crazy because they’re too big for me to do them alone! 🙂

First, an announcement! Volleyball Heaven new beta is out: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/volleyball-heaven

The base story is the same but we’ve made several adjustments to a certain abrasive character (Lana lol) and fixed some endings (like Zoe’s final kiss scene for example). Also, it should be generally easier to win all the volleyball matches to unlock all the beautiful CG scenes. For a full list of changes check my forums or itch.io latest version.

All the changes were based on the feedback we received from the first early beta versions, thank you all !

Being stubborn doesn’t always pay off

In today’s blog (or better I should say this month’s blog, since I’ve started blogging regularly only monthly from this year) I want to talk about something I wish I had done more times: when a game, an idea, is not working, in most cases it’s better to cancel it and start something completely new.

I did this only once so far in my indie career, and it was when I canceled Nicole yuri, but I can count at least 2-3 other cases in which I stubbornly finished the games, but it would have been better to not do it.

I am going to make some examples, but for all those games it’s only my fault, since in the end I was the one who took all the important decisions. No one else is to blame.

A classic situation was when I made a series of games, without knowing how the first did. It’s crazy. Doing sequels in general is not a good idea (I made a blog post long time ago talking about that) but sometimes it can be worth it, like Planet Stronghold 2 since I wanted to explore more that world and I felt that enough players were still interested in it. The very high review scores seems to indicate that the final result wasn’t bad !

But other times I did sequels, or even series of games set in a world, when it was really better if I paused first and looked at the numbers before going on, like with Vera Blanc for example.

The “cursed” games!

Other times instead, it’s even hard to find a reason why the project isn’t working. It can really be just bad luck. You know, when every single thing you do, doesn’t work. And maybe you start thinking it’s the writer, or artist, or it’s you, or you picked a wrong genre, or any other reason, but the reality is, and you might laugh at it but I swear is 100% true, that there are project that are lucky, and others that aren’t!

For example, when I did Loren, or Cursed Lands, I knew already from the very first steps that I was going in the right direction, not that there weren’t any obstacles or problems (those are ALWAYS present in any game I made) but that I knew I would overcome them, it’s hard to explain by words but was like I had faith, trust in the game. And then it continued, with first beta versions that people were really loving it, strong early sales, good Steam reception and so on.

But the same can be said in the opposite case. Games that starts badly, replacing writers/artists 2-3 times for example, or having hard time to design/plan a good gameplay or story, cold reactions even from fans when I post some previews, and so on. In those cases, I should have stopped and reconsidered everything.

Get early feedback

Another tip, even if it’s not always easy especially when doing story-based games (because it largely depends on personal tastes), is to get early feedback. Both during beta (like we did with Volleyball Heaven) but also in the very early stages, if you’re not sure about something.

For example last month I had an idea for a fantasy story, but as I was writing it myself, I had some doubts. It turned out more grimdark than what I usually do, and there were also other problems. I showed it to some trusted writer friends and their feedback was super enlightening.

Basically by doing so I saved myself a lot of time (rewriting /adapting it when it was only in the early stages was much simpler than doing it after I wrote 50-60k words!!) and I also understood how I had to write the remaining part.

From now on I think I’ll be doing this (asking private feedback) whenever I have some serious doubts about a story I’m doing. So in short: don’t have fear of cancelling games, or question your own ideas even in the early stages. It will pay off in the long run!

As the blog title says, Volleyball Heaven beta is finally out! You can find more info here: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/volleyball-heaven

The final gameplay and themes

As said before, the game was turned into a plain visual novel since the gameplay system wasn’t working, so there was no point in adding it if it wasn’t fun to play. Also, this game is very different from my past ones, including more mature themes and strong language, so be warned. This not to say that there aren’t many funny situations or moments, but there is also some kind of content that you’ve never seen in my games before.

So far from the initial comments I got people seems to enjoy it, and of course let me know what you think about it, if it’s something you’d like to see more, or not, in future games.

The end of an era

I just wanted to go back for a moment about my previous blog post…! Planet Stronghold 2’s reception was very good, and currently it’s my RPG with highest review score on Steam! This makes me very proud as you can imagine (also because I wrote it all myself).

However, what I wrote in past blog still remains true, and it’s not only about the market and potential sales but the burn-out aspect. I am going to simplify things but I will still add RPG elements or mix between visual novels and other gameplay genres (sim/strategy/cards etc).

The Curse Of Mantras will be my last game to have a huge cast, but at least the card gameplay is easier (not by that much, but it is) compared to RPG gameplay.

For example if I had to redo PS2 today, I would:

• make the main plot shorter lol, obviously
• not have 12 love interests but 4-5 max
• choose a starting romance or start as single and romance new characters only (and not the madness of breaking existing romance to pursue new ones etc)
• have RPG gameplay but much simpler, more casual, less fights or quicker fights

The only thing I’d probably keep is much of the branching, but as said a shorter story. With all those changes, the game would have probably took me 6 months (because I am fast and work hard!) instead of 12 months, and I probably could have priced it more accordingly to today’s market.

Mine are just suppositions anyway, because this market changes so quickly that even us devs don’t really know what’s going to happen. It will be interesting to see my upcoming games like a match 3 / puzzle quest style game that I hope to announce on next month’s blog post!