As you might know if you follow me on socials, last month the campaign for Glamour Photographer has ended. However, since I got several people asking to, I decided to leave the late pledges on. This means you can still support the game, and in particular this last stretch goal that wasn’t fully reached:

It’s a… very interesting goal, don’t you think?

Some people asked several questions about the game so I thought to try answering them directly here:

Estimate release date

Hold your horses, the Kickstarter campaign just ended! haha while I’m renown for always finishing my campaign much sooner than the deadline, in this case bear in mind that I’m working with another company, and in particular since they’re going to add animated characters and other features to the game, in this specific case it also depends on that.

In any case, we have as goal to release a demo for the Steam Fest in June, and I think that by that date a beta version should be ready as well. A potential release during the Summer is definitely realistic. That’s only 3-4 months away after all!

Optional Adult Content and Steam

We want to have a game playable by anyone, so while there’ll obviously be some optional spicy content (and probably some of the hottest stuff ever seen in my games!) we also aim to have a clean, streamable version of the game.

In the base game there won’t be any nudity obviously, but not even any vague reference to some of the models kink. Some of you might be a bit disappointed, but I’d like to remind you that my previous game Thieves Of Dingirra got forced in adult only section just because of an image of a character in a leather suit with a whip. Stop, that was it. So as you can imagine, we’ll be very very cautious this time!

I just hope that sexual jokes are fine since it’s a comedy game (but you never know, the inquisition is back at full force!).

This will also mean that pretty scenes like this one below won’t appear in the base game:

As you know, lingerie = extreme pornographic content! (though I admit the image is … hot!)

As I already mentioned before, if you go in any random beach in Europe you’ll see women with micro-bikini much more revealing than that image. But that’s how the rules are, and since you can’t have a PG-14 on Steam (unless you pay some insanely high fee to get an european rating!) we’ll just play safe and not have anything even vaguely remotely sexy in the base game.

Then we’ll have a separate, free adult DLC which will let players enable the optional adult stuff (or even just lingerie outfits).

Game Length, Romances and Gameplay

Another question I got asked is how big is the game and how the romances work. The game is currently already 160,000 words and I think the final script will be close to 200,000 words, more or less. Regarding how it will work plot-wise and in particular related to the love interests, I decided to go with a system suggested by several fans.

Premise: normally my games (but any classic dating sim, really) start with a story, then introduce the various love interests, and then you unlock each character’s route scene by scene, until at a certain point you have to choose a romance (of course there are cases in which you can unlock polyamorous routes, but that’s another matter).

The problem with forcing a choice too early was that people had to save at a specific point and then redo the story from it. If there’s a main story that occur, or a lot of gameplay elements, that might take a long time.

So in this case, you’ll be able to see about 80% of the scenes for each love interest before committing to a specific character. This way if you want to see all the other characters (something that’s rather normal I’d say) you can simply go back to that point and not need to replay a huge part of the game.

Last but not least, a few of you commented negatively about the match3 gameplay. Each match takes about a minute, so they’re very short, and I already added an Easy mode. Normally you can schedule two photoshoots each month of the game. So assuming 24 photoshoots that means one year is only going to take you 24-25 minutes of match3 gameplay. That’s honestly not much!

After the first few years, you become rather famous in game and so you don’t need to do two photoshoots every month, but just 1 is enough to not go bankrupt.

I’d hope players try and play the match3 since I put a lot of effort in it, however I am also thinking about adding a Visual Novel Mode, for those who really don’t like it. You’ll still need to schedule the photoshoots but they’ll be done instantly.

If I go this route I’ll still have a few achievements related to playing the match3 though!

Conclusions and At Your Feet 2

That’s all for Glamour Photographer for now, remember that if you backed the game on Kickstarter I’ll do monthly updates on it. I’ll do almost daily updates on socials instead.

In other news, I also put up the Steam page for the other game I’m planning to work on this year, At Your Feet 2. Of course, the game was instantly forced into adult only, apparently for this screenshot:

Which I thought was completely harmless and funny even, typical comedy style. But, just writing the word “foot fetish” triggered the inquisition at full force apparently!!

So, the game ended in adult only, and because of that I have added some X-rated screenshots now. There’s nothing worse to end up in adult category and then not have anything really adult displayed…no one will wishlist the game!

You understand now why we want to be very careful with Glamour Photographer content?

That’s all for now, see you next month!

If you follow me on socials you already know that I’ve started the Kickstarter campaign for Glamour Photographer last month, and so far it’s doing well, close to the third stretch goal at the time of writing this. Below the next two stretch goals:

For a full list of the stretch goals please visit the Kickstarter page.

Since the base goal was reached very quickly, I have already started working on the game at full speed. I’m particularly happy how the comedy setting is turning out, and the addition of the “Spiritual Guides” adds even more crazyness to the story! Check for example the short video I made below:

It’s a scene happening early in Miyoki’s route, and the combination of comic-style + spiritual guides seems to work well in this crazy comedy setting. In case you missed the characters introduction on my Kickstarter, Miyoki is the model “obsessed by food” and it’s one of the most fun character routes I’ve written in ages!

For a full list of the models, their personalities and… their kinks, check the Kickstarter page updates (I posted an update for each different model).

Steam Next Fest

I spoke with my partner Andrealphus and we are thinking to have a demo of the game for the Steam fest of June, with a potential release in Summer. It’s not 100% sure yet, but that’s what we’re currently aiming at. Personally I’m at good point myself regarding writing, coding, etc but this is a big game and there’s a lot of art and animations left to do. So even when my work is done, then there’ll be animators animating the characters and so on, and that might take a couple months more, depending on various things.

But for a demo I’m confident enough we could have it ready in June.

For the final release not sure, depends on several factors. Still it should be out this Summer!

Next Project

As mentioned in my previous post, this year I’m also planning to do At Your Feet 2, which will still be a game focused on foot fetish but also other kinks, but this time using very different artists. I am planning to reuse the comic-style scenes even in this game since I am very happy about the results I am getting in Glamour Photographer.

Below, a few scenes from the game (still early work of course):

Using comic-style (which means more scenes at slightly lower quality vs a single CG) I believe works better to show what’s happening in the story visually. It’s a bit more “cinematic” vs just a lot of texts and fewer images.

The plan is, when I have done all my work (or most of it) with Glamour Photographer, while they add animations and all that, I’ll start working on this game (so around this Summer), and if all goes well At Your Feet 2 will be out this Autumn, since I plan to have it be a simple VN, so much less work than VN with mechanics like Glamour Photographer.

You can already wishlist and see the trailer on the Steam’s official page here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3996520/At_Your_Feet_2

I didn’t even hope to get this game outside the Steam adult category, so… if you’re from Germany, no worries, the game will also be on itchio or you can back it on KS later this year to get a Steam key reward!

Last but not least, towards the end of the year I might also start working on that fantasy game (still set in Aravorn) I mentioned last month, which is actually my first attempt at making a single player RPG, much more focused on actual roleplay and not just combat.

I already know it will be a nightmare to code (many skills!) and design (a lot of branching) but it’s a project that intrigues me so I want to try it. However I don’t want to push it too much, need to always be careful to not get burned out, so it’s really unlikely that this last fantasy game will be out this year.

That’s all for now, see you next month for another update!

Happy New Year again! As usual I’m doing a blog post with my goals for this new year. After posting about my previous year’s goals, this year I want to be more conservative, since doing 3 Kickstarters and releasing 3 games in a year is not so easy as it seems… I did that in 2023 but I’m getting older!

Glamour Photographer

This obviously will be my primary focus during the first part of the year. I don’t have an estimate release date yet of course, since development is still in early stages, but I think it should be definitely out this Summer!

The gameplay so far is turning out as I wanted: not too simple, not too hard. The match3 is a classic match3 with some bonus/malus depending on location, model’s unique preferences, improvements you can buy and so on. The simulation part, albeit simple, adds some strategy to the whole thing. The trends that change each month means you’ll need to adapt your location to them, you could wait to sell some photos until next month to see if they match the new trend, and so on.

Overall pretty satisfied and it seems also well balanced on difficulty (though of course I’ll also need to wait for beta testers’ feedback later).

Story-wise I’m also happy about the progresses, also writing a story set in the 1980-1990 decade is really cool, because it’s when I grew up so writing this feels almost like a trip down memory lane. Trying my best to capture those years vibes. While most of the younger players will miss many references, if you’re my age, I think you’ll really like this setting as much as I do!

ToA: Reign Of War

This will be my next BIG roleplaying game featuring 6 love interests, however I think I will work on it part-time, alongside other projects. Why? Well, it’s a big game so takes a lot of time, and as I noticed recently, it’s not a good thing for me to wait many months between each release, like happened several times in the past (Planet Stronghold 2, Thieves Of Dingirra).

I did the same thing for example with An Elven Marriage, the previous Loren spin-off. I started planning/developing it back in 2022 but I released it only in 2023, and I took breaks while writing it to do some smaller games.

You might think that this is a bad idea because it could be distracting and if I stop writing then resuming it might be difficult since I need to remember the details of the story, and so on. Well, for me personally it isn’t. Often, I write a draft of a story, and then I take my mind off completely from it, by working on another game. Then, months later, I come back to it with a different mind and I think it helped me write better stories, since I reduce the inevitable burn-out and tiredness.

So, for me this system works! And this leads to me hinting about the next game…

At Your Feet 2

Haha! Believe me, this is the latest game I’d ever expected to make a sequel, since I did the first game almost for fun / as meme game, but it did so well especially on Steam that I decided to make another. Also because feet puns are never enough!

This time though, I decided that alongside the foot fetish kink, I’ll also have each girl with a specific different kink as well, so this game could please both people into feet and people not into that.

Also, I’m going to use characters that were originally drawn for another game, that I decided to cancel. Why? Well this is the story for another blog post in future! or maybe on Patreon.

But the good thing is that they’re going to be used now in this game. And I think I’ll use comic-style scenes for the CG scenes and…the hot stuff, to have much more variety of poses/situation in them.

I plan to create a Kickstater page and show some previews in the coming months.

Mysterious Fantasy game

Life wouldn’t be interesting without a bit of mystery, right? There’s this game that I’ve been planning since several years and I got some really nice character art for it. Sadly artist seems can’t continue working on it, so I should use someone else for the CGs, or perhaps still use comic-style CG even in this case since it’s a system that was well received in Lilith.

Current working titles is simply “The Escape” and it will still be a fantasy story and I’m thinking about adding a light RPG element as well, using a single character this time, but with more detailed skills (even non-combat). I won’t reveal too much but basically you’re going to travel to a remote island as an Envoy (but this time only female, sorry) right before the beginning of a civil war and you’ll need to safely escape back to Grimoire, carrying with you two guards and two heirs to the throne. There’ll be two male and two female love interests so a otome+yuri game in practice (can’t add or change anything now since it’s all the character art I got!).

So I’d say not a small but a medium project (depending how deeply I want to go in the RPG part).

There’ll be cameos of some characters, for example above it’s this artist rendition of Breza from Loren… not bad eh? (I think I like it maybe even more than the original art!!).

Goals Summary

Before doing a goals summary, a small announcement: I’ve decided to shut down my forums. Over the years they ended up seeing very little activity (sometimes close to zero posts per year) and they had become increasingly hard to maintain, especially with ongoing security updates and upkeep. That said, I didn’t want all that history to disappear, so I put together an archive to preserve the content.

The forums had been online since 2005, which means 20 years of my indie career. It’s honestly a bit sad to close that chapter, but it also feels like a reflection of how times have changed. In the videogame world especially, things move incredibly fast. Still, I’m proud that the forums lasted as long as they did. Of course, you can still use socials or my Discord to interact with me now.

And now, back to this year’s goals!

So in the end, what are my goals? First, release Glamour Photographer during Q2 this year (like June maybe). Second, do a crowdfunding for At Your Feet 2, and release it probably around August/September (being a simple VN will have a shorter development time) and then… maybe do the crowdfunding for Reign Of War, with a goal to release it in 2027!

However I’m not sure about this last part, depends how much I’ll be able to work on it during this year. I might release another game like the mysterious fantasy game before it. In practice I would do the KS and work on that game, while I keep working on Reign Of War so then it can be out in late 2027, but mostly depends on things beyond my control like burn-out, real-life stuff happening, getting older, etc.

One thing it’s sure, I’ll do my best as always! Again, Happy New Year! May this year be happy, relaxing and healthy for all of you reading this post.

As usual, in the latest blog post of the year I review what happened and do some considerations. But first of all, my games are on sale on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/pub/winterwolves

and also on itchio: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/
(Steam keys comes with each itchio purchase)

Going back to my “New Year Goals” post earlier this year: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2025/01/new-year-goals-8/

I was enthusiastically saying “If I can achieve all that, finish 3 games and do 3 crowdfunding campaigns, I’d consider 2025 a fantastic year!“

Haha obviously that didn’t happen, indeed I finished 2 games and did only 1 kickstarter, however it still was a very productive year! But let’s start in order.

Christine’s Care release

Throughout my indie career, there have been some games that, even if they didn’t make much money, stayed very close to my heart. Christine’s Care is one of them.

About half of the story was written by an external writer, and I finished the rest with the help of my editor. I added more scenes, the Marlon/Liz triad, and other details. I really enjoyed writing a story that included a disabled character, and Hannah became one of my favorite characters from all my modern-day stories.

The Steam release went “okay”, not great, but not terrible either (especially considering how crowded the visual novel market is on Steam!). Honestly, I didn’t care: I knew from the start that with its setting and genre, it wouldn’t be a big seller (are you planning to sell a plain VN on Steam? Good luck! You’ll need it.). But it was a game I truly wanted to make… a story I needed to tell. And while Hannah is my favorite, I also really like Marlon, Liz, and Donna. To be honest, I even liked the “alone” ending!

The game’s art style is also one of my favorites. I loved it so much that for my other release this year, Thieves of Dingirra, I decided to work with the same artist again for the CG scenes.

Thieves Of Dingirra

The game has been out for too short a time to draw any real conclusions, but so far it’s performed better than I expected. While very different from Christine’s Care, in a way it still shares something with it yes because this is a game I wanted to make too, as a personal challenge. I remember when I told some other indie friend about my intention of making a town management in Ren’Py, they laughed, almost saying “are you crazy? that’s impossible”.

And to be honest, it wasn’t easy! At all. But, somehow, earlier this year I started working on it, and everything clicked together. It was HARD. Very hard. It’s the most difficult game I’ve coded in my indie career. And most importantly, I did it all alone! Yes, because for Loren I had the help of an external coder, and for Amber’s Magic Shop or PSCD: Colonial Defense as well. With this game? I did it all on my own!

I still remember early this year, I think was February and I was having a very hard time figuring out some complex coding stuff and for a moment I thought “why I decided to complicate my life with this game?”. But the satisfaction I had once it was complete is hard to express by words. Probably the closest thing I experienced before was when I finished Planet Stronghold 2, another very big game.

In the end, I spent about 10-12 months on this game, and honestly it was a bit too much, in the end I was exhausted. And this leads to the final consideration.

From lone wolf to pack member

I’ve always made games mostly on my own in the last 20 years (crazy, I know). I did only a few collaborations, but in general while obviously I outsourced stuff (art, music, writing, etc) I was the one doing the games, putting everything together. And in recent times, things went even more extreme, to the point that I was doing all the coding, writing, and even some GUI stuff or videos myself!

This year after finishing Thieves Of Dingirra I realized that I was so tired that I couldn’t even think about trying to do some marketing. Now, while I think marketing as most indie intend it is overrated (I plan to write a blog post about this in future) it’s still something that you HAVE to do. In general, I realized that what I want to do is… make games. And this is why I decided to try partnering with Andrealphus for my next game. After talking with them, and knowing that I could still develop the game on my own, and they would take care of the parts I don’t like or don’t know how to make (marketing, adding animations, etc) I thought, let’s try!

Talking with other indies, they had some positive experiences doing partnerships. I think the important is to pick the right person/team to do that. Doesn’t mean “the best or most famous you can get”. For me the best is someone who shares the same vision about the games I make, that has good work ethics, and so on.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that while before I was absolutely sure I’d never work with someone, now I’m more open about the idea, since I think joining forces can bring more benefits to both parties involved.

I will still make many games “solo” of course, but if this experiment with Glamour Photographer works, it won’t be the last time! And remember to bookmark the KS campaign page since it should be launching earlier next year: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer/

That’s all for now, I hope you’re enjoying the holidays and I wish you all a happy new year! In the next blog post I’ll talk about my ambitious goals for 2026.

It’s time to talk about my next game. Like many of my projects, its origins go back several years. I won’t deny that HuniePop has been a major influence, especially its match-3 mechanics, but once the game is out, you’ll see that it’s a very different experience.

The managerial / simulation part is bigger in this game, while not being particularly complex. I’d say is a “casual style simulation”. Yes you’ll have finances to manage, a roster of models, different locations and all that, but I’ve finished doing the tutorial now and I believe I’ve presented the information in a very simple way so that even players not used to this kind of games will have an easy time.

In the past, when coding my games, I used to skip tutorials or do them quickly. But it’s wrong, because not everyone is a fan of a certain genre or in general what it’s obvious to you as coder/designer of the game, could be counter-intuitive to a player who is not used or new to the genre.

And so I made a step by step tutorial showing the main screens of the game and what they do. For example below you see the trends screen (accessed by clicking on the magazines in the main desk hub):

In this case it’s a “unique trend”. Unique trends require a specific combo of location and model, indeed each model has a flavor/trait that matches each unique trend, like in the example Anna, the first model you encounter (your former schoolmate) has the Rustic flair, and you’ll do your first photoshoot in her family barn.

During the tutorial the trends are fixed to let players understand better the mechanics, but of course later in the game they’ll be randomized (they update once a month).

Beside the unique trends there’ll be “generic” ones that require only a specific location/set, but work with any model. For example we could have a location like the beach that will work with Outdoor, Vibrant, Public trends, or a location like the Kitchen that will have Indoor, Intimate, Cozy, Soft, etc.

The trends will be useful because when you sell the photos to magazines, if you match the current trend you’ll get bonus money, adding a bit of strategy. There’ll be other things that boost the photos value, like the model’s fame (a famous model’s photos will be worth more), the outfit (ahem, naked pictures will get a big bonus!) and so on.

There’ll be several other aspects that will influence the gameplay. During the photoshoot, which takes the form of a match 3, you’ll get bonuses depending on the model:

For example Miyoki likes Mystery (black) and Romance (light-blue) and dislikes Passion (red). Matching those gems will give you a multiple bonus (or malus, in case of Challenge).

On the right instead you see that each location has an impact on the chances of certain gems to appear: in this case the kitchen increases the ligh-blue by 15%, green by 10% and decreases purple by -10%. So certain locations works better with certain models.

The camera and lighting are two kind of upgrades you can buy, the first one reduces the timer of the move suggestion (gems will blink suggesting the move) and the other adds seconds to the photoshoot timer.

Last but not least, at the bottom of the screen there’s a bar that fills as you match gems and indicates the photo’s quality: the better the quality, the more valuable will be.

As you see, even if I just released Thieves of Dingirra last month, I’ve been very busy on this game. In the following months I hope to introduce each model (I’m still writing the story though) and share more screenshots and also announce the Kickstarter date!

See you towards the end of the month when I’ll do my usual “end of year post” in which I’ll discuss how this year went for me. And if you’re interested in Glamour Photographer be sure to bookmark this page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer/