Category Archives: general

posts about general topics, even not related to computer games

Volleyball Heaven – Introducing Lana

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Do you like short hairstyle in women? I must say I like it, and it fits Lana’s character well. But enough talking, let’s introduce this new character/love interest for Volleyball Heaven!

Lana Reddlyn, 19

Lana and Kayla have been friends since they met as five-year-olds on their first day of school. While Kayla grew up on her family’s farm, Lana lived with her dysfunctional family in the county town of Coleville. However, thanks to Kayla’s mother, who took her out to the farm as often as possible, Lana and Kayla spent most of their childhood playing together and forming the strong bonds that would unite them again in Asgard.

As Kayla’s interests changed from playing pioneer explorers in the woodlands surrounding the farm, to reading everything she could in the school and county libraries, to resurrecting old cars liberated from their decades’ old rest in neighbouring barns, Lana was always there, learning from (or more often latterly, enduring) her friend’s offbeat interests, hobbies, and occasional wild escapades.

Finally, her home-life disintegrating and feeling that she would never achieve her dreams of fame and fortune if she didn’t escape Cole County, Lana semi-reluctantly left Kayla behind to pursue her dreams in Asgard.

Once Kayla arrives in Asgard, she quickly realizes Lana is no longer the carefree girl she remembers and, perhaps, idealized. Lana has joined the Valkyries because being in the proximity of money, power, and fame – epitomized in her mind by Jade and Zoe – is the next best thing to having them herself. But being impulsive, headstrong and determined to leave her impoverished upbringing behind forever, Lana has made some unwise choices, the consequences of which will strain the friends’ loyalty to each other and to the other Asgard Valkyries.

Only time – and Kayla’s fateful choices – will reveal whether the two can repair their friendship or doom it and the future of the team forever.

Announcing “Volleyball Heaven”

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Hey, what time is it? TIME FOR A NEW GAME!!! Yes, and following what I said earlier this year, I would announce a game only when it’s quite advanced. What does it mean? Well at the time of writing this post, the main story is all finished and it’s being reviewed/polished.

As for the art, the main cast and several CGs are finished, but we’re planning to add several more CGs (including some VERY spicy ones…).

So the missing stuff is more CG art and scripting the whole thing. I believe it could be out before the end of year, of course depends also on the other games (if Love Bites comes out first, I’ll need to take a break of some weeks to test it).

This is a yuri-only game. This will make many people happy and other unhappy. However, I think I really owed the yuri fans something, considering all the delay of the <cursed game> and the “missing yuri routes” of Amber.

The training screen, where you decide what skill each character should try to improve

This is also a dating sim, with an emphasis on “sim”. Because as you could guess from the game name, you are going to manage a team of beach volley! And this includes training, and playing matches.

Playing a game week, each day several events can happen (skills increase and other stuff)

Regarding the matches: first of all, you will be able to skip them with instant result. So those who only want to play the game for the story won’t need to play them.

If you decide to play a match, you’ll need to pick the two players (in beach volley you play 2 vs 2):

Then, the match will play. For now in my current build, the match is non interactive and the outcome of each single action is based on the skills/stats:

It even features small animations for each action type (Dig, Smash, Serve, etc). I might introduce some more interactivity to the match later, like maybe some strategy that could modify the overall stats with bonus/malus system, for example “Play Aggressively”, will give a bonus to Strength and Determination, but will lower Teamwork and Technique and so on, so players could influence the match itself not just based on the players’ stats 🙂

Then, there will be the story, with choices, and the love interest (you can see them above but I’ll make a proper introduction for each one of them in the next blog posts). The story and writing is definitely MUCH MORE MATURE than anything else I’ve done before. It’s risky but personally I think will be worth it. You’ll be able to play the game “censored”, even if some hot scenes are key part of the story/characters. So… be warned 😉

And now I leave the word to the writer’s official game announcement!

Announcing: Volleyball Heaven

When 19-year-old Kayla Perrin leaves her eventful small-town past in rust-belt America to take up an athletic scholarship at upstart Asgard College on the Gulf Coast, she thinks she has reached heaven on earth. Imagining only a chance to start afresh after a troubled adolescence, and reuniting with her childhood best friend, Lana, little does she know what lies in store for her as she makes new friends and faces unexpected adversaries.

Abruptly drafted to captain the College’s nascent Asgard Valkyries volleyball team, which has experienced its own troubled development, Kayla soon finds herself striving to balance academic life with managing the squad and her social life.

As she tries to build a cohesive team with aloof heiress Jade, aggressive, hyper-competitive Zoe, controversial, secretive Rika, and unpredictable, newly estranged Lana, under the supervision of their driven coach, Emily, Kayla finds herself re-examining her past even as she strives to figure out her friends and her future. As for the present, Kayla must ensure that the team attracts publicity and sponsorship without becoming the object of salacious rumor and gossip.

Volleyball Heaven is a unique visual novel focusing on female friendship and love amid the complex social currents of contemporary America. Coming soon from Winter Wolves.

Hopefully, this time it’s soon and not “soon ™”* 😀

* it’s a joke often made in my forums, so that “soon” would in reality mean “it will be out ONE DAY” haha

Where your money goes: PSCD manga version!

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A long time ago (wow, 4 years have passed already!) I made a blog post explaining a bit what I do with the money I earn, and also about the power consumers have and how everyone should try to give back in any way they can. It was called “Where your money goes“.

Now, as I wrote already in that blog, I know I’m not special. I think what I do should be “the norm”, even if sadly it isn’t. I think when you’re so lucky that you do a job you love (and I love it, even if occasionally I get very grumpy especially during beta testing! :D) you should really feel blessed and try to give back to others (animals, people, doesn’t matter, you choose).

I recently setup a Patreon page. It really helped me in the past months due to a sort of mini-crash of the indie market (things are very tough now!) also known as “the indieapocalypse”. But beside funding my living expenses and new games, I always said I was going to use that money also to do “extra stuff”. Things that maybe would have been too risky to do them myself without any support, but that I believe would be appreciated by my fans.

So I’m here to officially announce that I used a good amount of that Patreon money for… the Manga version of PSCD!!!

For those who don’t know it, PSCD (Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense) is a game I released last year, and while the gameplay and story was well received, let’s say that the art style… wasn’t! Or better, most people didn’t like it (I know well that a minority liked it).

A while ago I contacted Undead Lily’s artist (who did a very good job with that game and I can’t wait to release it) and asked her to redo all the images of the game in manga style. But it’s not just that! As I mentioned in another recent blog post, the vast majority of people seem to want more… spicy stuff 🙂 And who am I to say no?

Because of this, I decided to have the romance CG redone so that the censored version would show underwears, while the uncensored version… you can imagine 😉 I’ll need to change the game rating because of this but I suspect people won’t mind (judging from the early reactions in Patreon they were rather happy about this!).

In summary the game will feature manga art for the characters and hotter romance CGs (for the manga version only obviously). The rest will remain the same. Since I did this with Patreon money I don’t want to charge anything extra (even if some people suggested this, doesn’t feel right to me). This means that once it’s ready, it will be a free update. There will be a button in the game options screen and you’ll be able to switch between the two art-styles instantly!

I don’t know yet exactly when it will be available since the last romance CGs are still being colored, but I guess in the next 2-3 months should be finished.

That’s it for now, next time I’ll publicly announce a secret yuri only game I’ve been working on in the recent months and that’s in a good status. Stay tuned!

Amber’s Magic Shop officially out!

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First of all, public service announcement: after a month of very intensive testing, my dating sim with optional crafting gameplay Amber’s Magic Shop it’s finally out!

You can download a demo and get more info at the game’s official page: http://winterwolves.com/ambersmagicshop.htm

As usual, if you buy from my site you’ll also get a free Steam key once it’s out there (not sure yet when, but should be in the next months). A mobile version is also planned and should be out probably around June on Android, followed by the iOS version later.

Gameplay and prototypes

Today I also wanted to talk a bit about what I’ve learned in the past months. As you know I like to try different things. This lead to two “experiments”: Queen Of Thieves’ randomized missions, and Amber’s Magic Shop crafting simulation.

While I know many people who liked both games gameplay, I am the first to admit that the result was less fun than I originally planned. Talking with people in forums and other devs, I think I found some basic mistakes I have done:

  • First of all, for both games I had the story written BEFORE the gameplay, and that forced me to tweak the gameplay based on the story and not the opposite
  • I didn’t really make any prototype for both games. I did one for the combat of Queen Of Thieves, but not for the whole “robbery missions” thing. Doing prototypes is essential to know if a game is fun or not early during development
  • Last but not least, I don’t enjoy particularly sim games. I mean I like playing them, but I’m not obsessed. My tastes have also changed with age: when I was 20 years old I remember playing very long games with Civilization (can’t remember which version was). Nowadays? I can barely play for a few hours. While for example I played a lot games like Horizons: Zero Dawn, starting the final battle at level 44… 😀

The conclusion I can draw from those observation is simple: if I decide to try again doing a game with more different gameplay, I should really either have a beta prototype to get early feedback from players, or at least code it myself first, and then worry about the story later. Otherwise, the final result it’s never going to be as good as it could have.

For VN/RPGs the thing is different, since you can tweak the battles as you play/read the story, that’s what I did both with Loren and SOTW, and both games are the ones which got more praises for gameplay. Same thing for PSCD, which probably has the best gameplay of all my games (unless you really hate card games…!).

In summary any kind of game that has a story mixed with combat/fights at certain key point of the story it’s safe to do for me. For other kind of games, I really need to try a different approach, to have a better final result 🙂

Last but not least, Love Bites coding/playtesting is progressing well. Below you see a fun scene where Brandon tries to invite Viktor to dance 🙂

Love Bites & Cursed Lands update

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In the image above, the usual “character selection screen” from Love Bites! Yes I’m starting to work on this game now, coding the various gameplay parts. First of all, yes there will be a scheduler but there won’t be any stat raising!

See, I listen to what you tell me 😉 I’m not against stat raising games of course, but they need to be very integrated with the story or the gameplay mechanics. Skill checks to pass, and that change the events of the story for example. I agree that if all the stats have to do is just make the gameplay a grind to reach the required value, it’s better to not have stats at all! And that’s why I decided to not have them in Love Bites to unlock the endings.

However, there will still be a scheduler and a few variabls, which together with the in-story choices, will unlock some endings or variants. The current plan is:

  • each love interest has a job to offer to the protagonist. Depending which jobs you take, you’ll unlock more scenes and advance the romance with the love interest.
  • each weekend (Saturday/Sunday) there will be the chance to have a date with one of the love interests
  • in the visual novel scenes, there won’t be anymore a “right or wrong” choice, leading to an increase of relationship. Instead, each choice will alter some hidden variables which will lead to endings variations. I’m not sure if I’ll keep those variables hidden or even show the effects on the choice text itself, have yet to decide it.
  • the only variable in the scheduler will be Energy, Money and another one which I’m not revealing for now (could be called “Stress”). They can influence the game ending and even lead to a sudden game over (don’t worry, it’s not easy to “lose” in this game) and relative achievement, which will be fun 🙂

Love Bites beta should begin this Summer or early September, though not sure yet when exactly.

Cursed Lands news

Good news: the script of Cursed Lands (in the screenshot above, the game main menu) it’s at very good point, and should be completed this year. Of course this doesn’t mean that the GAME will be out this year! 😉

Currently the story is already over 150,000 words, so it’s likely that the final story will be close to the 200,000 word range. Yes, I managed to make another “small game” ™!

Jokes apart, I think for a RPG with a good story, recruitment missions, loyalty/relationship/friendship/romance paths, male / female main character, side missions etc… 200,000 words are needed.

This game, without any spoilers, consists in 3 phases: the intro, where the player is “hired” for an important mission regarding N’Mar. A central phase where player must explore the world and recruit new party members to help with the main goal. A third phase where the “final battles” is played and everything it’s resolved.

In the image above you see a prototype of the central phase, where players will spend most of the time. Yes it’s similar to Amber’s, but the similarities ends with the left GUI 🙂

What about the gameplay? For now I can tell you a few things about the RPG/combat:

  • you can use special skills (Talents) against normal enemies and, with reduced effects, against bosses. Your playing character possess those talents which can lead to interesting results. For example let’s pick the following talent: Bluff – May cause enemy to flee and drop an item. Obviously, with normal/regular enemies this will work (of course during testing I’ll limit certain talents to once in a battle, and also will depend on the target level, etc) but with bosses not (otherwise there won’t be combat lol).
  • if you remember the very old announcement post, I posted a screenshot of the love interest, 6 in total. However, you can recruit MORE people to help with your quest! There are two dwarves, Dasyra and Galan, which are each one the opposite personality/class (Dasyra is a healer, Galan a berserker) and we also decided to allow some secondary side mission which will enable the player to recover also characters that maybe were abandoned in the first mission (where a choice is forced). A total of 10 characters can be recruited in total, and with all of them you can increase your relationship and unlock a “friendship bonus”.
  • because of previous point, to avoid micro-management madness, I’ve decided that each character will have 4 or maximum 5 inventory slots: main/off hand, ranged, armor, jewelry/accessories. I think I might reuse SOTW system with randomized items but for sure have unique items that will be more powerful than anything else.
  • same for the skills: I prefer to have less skills but designed better, so 5 skills for each character, for a total of 50 different skills (enemies might have others though). I haven’t made my mind about the attributes yet, could use same system as SOTW since it’s already well tested.

As you can see, this is definitely NOT a small game by any means even for the complexity of gameplay. The script should be finished towards end of this year, so I might even be able to release this game next year. I know this is a game I started only recently, but as I’ve said many times, I cannot control how slow/fast writers work, so it can happen that games started not long ago are finished sooner than games in the works since years.

Well, at least means a new RPG will be out relatively “soon”, right? 🙂