Category Archives: general

posts about general topics, even not related to computer games

Vera Blanc: Full Moon is out

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Vera Blanc pc/mac/linuxI’m very happy to announce that finally this game is out. I’m quite proud of it, because I think is something new, for the art-style and also a bit for the gameplay (a mix with visual novel/mystery/minigames).

Those who want to skip the rest of this blog post can head straight to the download links on the official game page.

Now, a bit of background / making of this game. I always loved comics: indeed, as soon as I was 5-6 years old I started drawing them. As I grew up, unfortunately I moved away from them, until recently when I started being an indie developer and in 2008 made the first visual novel / manga games.

I like manga art style, but I also like the standard comic (more realistic) style. I also believe that for this kind of game, which has a strong supernatural and mystery setting (and also a bit of horror), the manga would have been a bit out of place. So I think this other style fits the game perfectly.

The making of has been divided into 3 stages:

  1. game conception: I remember I pitched this game style/character to a developer friend of mine who expressed some interest in entering the visual novel / dating sim area, but then changed idea.  I thought it was good and worth a try myself, so I first wrote down a storyboard in Openoffice, containing all the game details (character, story, objects, events, etc).
  2. coding/writing: this was the most fun part, coding all the various minigames and write the story. Writing the story was really hard though, because of the many different paths the player can take. It caused much headache, indeed in the sequel that I’m writing right now I’m going to make it more linear, also to make it easier to test.
  3. testing/proofreading: this was the less fun part. The game was started the 1st february and finished the 1st april. So took me two months to make. It is ou now, the 1st July. All this time was due to delays in proofreading (and also some testing of course). No need to say, I am really eager to resume working on less text-intensive games!!! 🙂

If you follow my tweets, you already know that I’m writing the second episode (I am at a very good point). So if you liked this one, you know that another one should be out very soon (this time the proofreading stage should take much less time).

And after the second? I don’t know if I’ll make a third yet: as you might imagine it largely depends on the sales of the first two episodes, so if you enjoy the game and want to see more, spread the word about it! 😉

Will social / online games completely replace traditional offline gaming?

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Short answer: No.

Long reply:

If you’re a developer or just a player, you’ll have noticed reading all around the net that social /online games “ARE THE FUTURE”. Literally everyone is doing it. Even Google, with his NaCl and the upcoming Chrome Appstore (at least with it people will be able to use their existing code and not use Flash or Javascript!).

But what exactly does this means for players, for indies and for the big AAA studios. I honestly belive that this is just a hype, a bubble that is going to explode. Still, we’re at the very beginning so many YEARS will pass before it’s gone. Let me explain better what I mean in some points:

1. I think players just look at the GAME, at the experience, they don’t care much if is online/offline or in which language is written to.
2. Social games right now are doing most damage to casual games. Also while I don’t have any real figures I really believe that this enormous amount of free content is going to damage everyone in the casual games industry, so that at one point it will have to end or shrink. People that once used to buy casual games from portals, now spend MONTHS playing the social games spending a ridiculous amount of money vs the time spent on them. Maybe also the crisis is helping this?
3. “Downloadables are dead”. This is far from being true. Steam basically is a giant, huge, downloadable webstore. There are many indies doing GREAT with downloadables. I’ve recently been selling Eschalon Book 2 as affiliate and honestly the download market doesn’t seem dead at all… 😉
4. There isn’t just one type of gamer, but several types. There are also taste changes based on the age and time constraint. I myself was playing Everquest almost 10h a day when I was at the university (doing nothing), then when I started to work seriously I completely quit that game and now I don’t play any MMORPG at all. I’ve noticed this same pattern amongst many other friend I know. So, a people’s tastes can vary/change greatly over the years
5. I know many younger people that don’t care about Facebook or social games in general. It’s a bit like saying that nowadays nobody reads books anymore because everyone watches TV or play games 😉 That is not true. You can still make quite good money with books, as well as other creative mediums.

So, while it’s clearly true that right now your best bet to make money is a social, online or MMO game (I’m doing some online game experiments too), this doesn’t mean that everything else is going to be dead soon. It all depends on your target market: if your target are teenagers or casual people, your best bet is to make a FB game now, rather than a downloadable (and still, a decent game on top10 of a major portal like BFG can bring in still LOT of money).

If you’re into niches like I am, you definitely don’t need to worry about which system you’re using. If your game can benefit from being online (for example to reduce the impact of piracy), then do it, otherwise you can just keep doing downloadables like Spiderweb is doing: he just announced his new game series called Avadon (I find hilarious the name because is very similar to Avalon). It will be a downloadable as always, he’s doing it since 1999 (or sooner, I forgot) and it’s surely easier than changing completely the kind of language/platform/system.

What about me? I am making some experiments right now with a Renpy downloadable client+php/mySQL server, and I must admit is VERY HARD. I am making it though 🙂 But I have intention of keeping this project running as a “side-project” because I want still to make normal downloadable games as well.

Time for a screenshot I think:

Not hard to guess what kind of game it is… 😉

Outsourcing or DIY ?

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As an indie developer, I asked that question myself several times. I also tried both, several times.

Recently I thought about this because one day of last week I went really grumpy because my php/mySQL code wasn’t working as it should for my online game. Then I tried reading about Ruby, a language which was suggested by a developer that follows me on Twitter, but I know php too much well and I don’t have enough time to learn a new language right now 🙁

So I thought to give up coding, and just hire people/outsource programmers. But, to be honest, my past experiences haven’t been really convincing. I don’t have lots of funds to spend on coding, but that is only a marginal aspect. I talked with several other indie developers, who have way bigger funds and they all agreed on one thing: if you want to do something right, the only way is to Do-It-Yourself.

That is, especially if you are working over internet. If you know the other person in real life, it’s going to be very different. Also, I’m talking about coding here: there’s nothing wrong in outsourcing art (I’ve been doing this since 3 years now) or music. But coding is really something you need to do yourself, or have someone always available to modify/change the code because you’re going to need him/her to fix the bugs that will inevitably be found even months after the game release (this last thing is even more true in my case, since I wanted to make a webgame).

Right now I’m finishing lots of normal offline games I started, some even last year (like Card Sweethearts) some this year (like Vera Blanc, of which you see a screenshot in this post). Because of that, for now I’m only working on my webgame a few hours in the morning, and then writing for my VN/dating sim/light-RPG in the afternoon, or just relax doing some manual works. So far it’s working pretty well.

Let me give you a suggestion, if you’re indie, never start 6 projects at once like I did this year – it’s going to hurt you 😀

Projects status report

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A lot has been going on lately for me. In random order, here’s what happened in last months:

THE BAD

  • google hates me – I had a -25% drop of traffic from google and I have no clue why 🙁 I neglected the marketing side a bit, despite having released quite some games recently (Flower Shop just in february!). But I hope to catch up soon (see below point)
  • some artists I use to work with, are no loger working for me – this was a real pity. I’m talking about Rebecca Gunter (all my visual novels so far, from Summer Session to Heileen 2) who now is booked until NEXT YEAR! Well, I knew that working for me makes people famous, but wasn’t expecting that 😉
  • I had to find replacement for “lost artists” (even if some are only temporarily out). This is very frustrating as I want to have VERY HIGH art quality in my games. And browsing deviantart portfolios is really time consuming. Then, I have also to see how the artist work: some are very good but disorganized/lazy. I had to replace Planet Stronghold artist with a new one (you see an image of the new one on the right) because the 1st was simply too slow and also cheating on reason she was busy – not very professional!
  • The FB/social/MMO hype. I was caught into it as well 🙂 I spend several weeks doing researches on the technology behind those kind of games, so I worked less on my regular offline games. I am not really sure if I’ll ever make one, but at least now I know much more about it.

THE GOOD

  • Card Sweethearts and Vera Blanc 1 are almost done! The first game is being finished by Ayu of Sakevisual, and the second is being proofreaded/edited by her as well. The original proofreader had many university exams to do, so I thought was better to let Ayu finish the job so the game could come out soon.
  • Planet Stronghold is coming out very nicely. I love the new art, and the story is starting to be interesting. The battle engine was polished even more, showing some special effects and lot more feedback on the kind of weapon/armor/item equipped (added new icons for each item). While the first battles are easy, once you start to get some 3 vs 4 or even 4 vs 4 encounter the fight gets much more strategic. I think I am starting to balance it properly.
  • I have now completed an auto-patcher/updater which I plan to use for the pre-orders beta of all my future downloadable games. What is it? Simple, if you preorder one of my games, not only you’ll get a download instantly but the game will check for an update every time you launch it, auto patching itself to the latest version. Very useful for testing (as you know, pre-orders beta are essential to get user feedback, and change things making the game better)
  • Spirited Heart Flash – I had someone make a small flash version of Spirited Heart that I plan to put live this weekend in some major flash portals. I even put the game on Flashgamelicense for sponsorship but of course it was ignored: it has no violence, zombies or blood in it 😉

There would be still interest in a dungeon-crawler like Dungeon Master?

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You might remember some time ago I posted some screenshots and even a video of a game called Towers Of Destiny. It was a first person 3d rpg, both outdoor and indoor. However, the project has been put on hold, for several reasons:

  • the expenses needed to make a decent-looking game would have been very high, probably x2-x3 times the amount needed to make one of my current games (VN, dating sims, etc)
  • a compromise would have been to go for a less detailed art. But I had fear that it would look crappy, even if judging by Spiderweb Games success, people playing old-school RPGs aren’t much interested in top-quality art
  • was still a lot of work – when you make something in 3d, there are many more problems than when doing a simple 2d game. Compatibility, performances, bugs, different programming tecniques required and so on

But now I was wondering if would actually make sense to make such a kind of game. Would YOU play/buy a sort of Dungeon Master 2010? 😀

I liked those games a lot, but I’ve played them when I was a teenager, so I’m not really sure if I would play them now. There was Might & Magic V on sale at GoG and I didn’t even buy it (also because I don’t have much time to play games anymore). Still, if I have to choose between the tilemap games (think about RPGMaker XP games) or a first person indoor/outdoor game like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder and so on, I would have no doubt which one to pick (the second!).

Sometimes I think about hiring someone to code a simple 2d dungeon crawler game, maybe even in flash so can be played directly in the browser. But is not that easy, even the art required is a lot and needs to be planned carefully (you have to build up the visual with several layered images/tiles for the floor/walls/ceiling).

It sounds complex? It is 🙂 Bah maybe I should hire people to do something else like a classic wargame or another card rpg game (since I love those).