Category Archives: indie life

Experimenting is fun

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If you follow me from the early days you already know that I like to experiment. I like to mix game genres, or at least try new things/features in existing genres.

That’s what for example pushed me to add the Social Boss Fights in Bionic Heart 2. By the way the official video is now on youtube, see it below:

And is why I’m trying to add a simplified (it won’t be Sim City of course!) colony simulation metagame in Planet Stronghold 2:

Planet Stronghold 2 colony sim

As always they’re early work in progress screenshots, but you can get the idea of what we’re trying to do. I think will be interesting to integrate the colony sim with the RPG gameplay. While we’re still working on the details, there will be some influence of the RPG part to the colony sim and vice versa.  Of course playing in Easy mode will reduce the overall difficulty, while playing in Hard mode might be interesting since you’ll have to balance both the RPG and colony building simulation aspects.

Many quests will be directly linked to the colony expansion (like acquiring new blueprints to build new building), so it will also work plot-wise.  You can see now why Planet Stronghold 2 is taking so long, it’s definitely an ambitious game! 😉

At same time, I’m trying a new GUI/gameplay system on the dating sim Nicole:

photoscheduler

instead of the game map like Always Remember Me, I’m going to try using a simplified interface, showing “pictures” that are places you can visit. Then each place will offer a variety of actions that change based on the plot, time of day, day of week, like Always Remember Me.

I’m going to try to experiment also on the plot: I thought today that rather than having a “alone ending” if you fail to romance anyone, the game will end in a different way… since there’s an abductor in the campus, the final scene will see our poor Nicole being kidnapped (of course without revealing who it is, so doesn’t spoil the fun).

More scary than the usual otome games? well for sure, but I think will be very interesting…mouhahaha 😉

Biting off more than can chew

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sleepykittens
Gilda & Grillo sleeping together, pic from a few years ago

I would like to be able to sleep peacefully as my two cats above! The reality is that in the past month it has been quite stressful, for various reasons, personal and job related.

In particular, I recently had to drop the idea of making the “two independent parallel plots” feature of Bionic Heart 2. It was definitely too much. I tried to fix the numerous plot bugs, with the help of some people but we failed. Then asked Aleema, my trusted Loren writer, thinking that maybe it was my faul, that I was just “burned” by all the recent work. But even her gave up! So at least it means it wasn’t just me.

Thinking back about it I don’t even know how I thought I could make that work. It’s a total nightmare since the game is already super complex even played as “normal” visual novel, with lots of path/branching and variables to take care of.

By coincidence, this week appeared on a games site the flow chart of the Walking Dead game by Telltale, which I enjoyed a lot last year. Immediately, I noticed how simple it was. Yet, playing the game I had the sensation of much more freedom of choices!

So in practice, to the end users doesn’t matter much if there are really 150 parallel plots. Nobody except a few people are going to replay the game from beginning to see them all. I remember when I did a survey a few years ago, only 10% of people said that they try to unlock all the endings.

I think that for all future games, I’d rather make the story longer, and use other gameplay/narrative “tricks” to give the illusion of freedom (because even in the multiple path games, you still don’t have complete freedom, is just an illusion).

Anyway, what does it means in practice for Bionic Heart 2? I thought that by removing the parallel plot thing, all problems would be solved but I was wrong again. Testers in forums were finding lots of new plot bugs! The game logic is still to complex, with too many branching points, jumps, and so on. For every problem fixed, two new ones would show up. This was going to be a neverending story…

The solution is something that I should have done from the beginning: I’m going to reorganize all the scenes in a simpler way, still providing choices like in all my games, but with a more simple logic behind it.

Nothing is going to be missing from the original script (maybe a few parts of some scenes, but I’ll try to keep as much as I can) but simply I will make it so that behind the scenes doesn’t become the huge, complex mess that made me (and two other people) lose 2 months of time (the game should have been out last month).

I think I should be able to finish it in 2 weeks max, maybe sooner. I really want to get out this game as soon as possible! 🙂

Happy Easter

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IMGP5230
a relaxing image of a sunset on the Mediterranean Sea I took several years ago 🙂

Happy Easter to everyone! Hope you’ll have a peaceful and relaxing time with your family/beloved ones!

First of all you can celebrate with a 40% off discount on all my games using the coupon EASTER until the 3rd April. It doesn’t work for preorders (Bionic Heart 2 in practice) and for bundles which have already their own discount schemes in place (though you can still buy single games at discounted price, like only Spirited Heart, or only Heileen 3: Sea Maidens for example).

Regarding Bionic Heart 2, I should have some news very soon, and of course a playable beta. As always will announce it first on my twitter or facebook and in my forums.

News about Nicole

This is very likely to be the next game to be finished, at least I hope 🙂 There’s only the writing missing, and once that is done will probably take me 1-2 months max to code everything, since the game will reuse the Always Remember Me gameplay.

I also remembered that I never made any sneak preview for that game… unfortunately I can’t show much because might spoil the story (it’s a mystery game) but I put together something nevertheless:

nicole male preview

Once I have the female romance images will do the same of course 😉 Stay tuned for more news about this game and Roommates in the next months.

Regarding RPGs, there are many discussions going on in the forums. Work is being done on Planet Stronghold 2, featuring a new RPG system that is quite innovative I think (for more info check this forum thread).

And for everyone’s happiness, Aleema is going to include a codex in the game:

Planet Stronghold 2 codex

Everything is still work-in-progress but as you can see, is looking good 🙂

Making wrong choices

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grateful
I wish I had someone like Tanya to help me out, because I would really need it.

Today I hoped to announce Bionic Heart 2 beta testing. After two months of coding/testing, would be about time!

Instead no. I have bad news. I’m at one point where I fix a plot hole, and a new one appears. I check a variable, one path works, the other doesn’t. A scene that before was fine, now plays out of order.

I’ve worked like crazy in past 3 days, I’m stressed like never before and then I came to a simple conclusion. There’s no hope to make this work. Every time I open the script I have a headache now. Writer doesn’t have time to help.

So I’m thinking what to do. It’s really embarrassing for me. Despite all the efforts, I know that I can’t make this work, unless I make some really big changes. And I’m not used to release half-broken games. Testing to find the bugs is one thing, but the version I have currently is not even to be considered “testable”. Only 3 days ago I thought I was at good point, but then I discovered that is like a house of cards, if you move a piece, everything falls apart.

It’s the first time I find myself in such situation in my life, and I’m the sole responsible of this. I should have followed more carefully the situation, instead I was busy with other projects. A wrong choice, trusting too much someone else capabilities, thinking he can do it all on his own without supervision, and that’s the result.

A pity because the story itself is really good I think.

Not all is lost though!

However don’t be afraid, I’m already thinking what to do to solve the situation. A simple solution would be to eliminate the “multiple path” feature and just have a continuous story, where if you fail the Mars or Earth path the game ends. Less cool than the original project, but probably in this case I wouldn’t have to do a total rewrite of the story, and would be faster to solve it.

Don’t worry, the game WILL be out, you will only need to be patient for a little more! I am still aiming to finish it by the end of March, even if I’ll have to rework the game structure a lot.

I’m really sorry about what happened and will make sure this won’t repeat in future.

A week as webdesigner

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Probably not many of you know that before going indie, I was a (rather poor to be fair) webdesigner. Many people probably think that being a webdesigner is a creative job but the reality is that after you do the 100th website, you start to have enough… 🙂

Anyway, this week I was waiting for some people to send me assets (writing, art, music, etc) so I was idle. If wasn’t Winter I would have use this unexpected “free time” to do some trips around here to relax, but since it is, I thought to finally begin the redesign of my website, something I’ve been procrastinating for too long!

You can see a “sneak peek” here: http://www.winterwolves.com/test/

It’s still largely unfinished and many links are broken, but that’s more or less how the new homepage will look, I think a big improvement over the current one.

Roger Steel: Arthur point of view

After the big reveal of Winter Wolves’ new steampunk graphic adventure romance RPG Roger Steel and the Human Element on this illustrious blog last week, Ann’s younger brother Arthur was somewhat miffed that most of the razzamatazz focused on her. He wants you to know his side of the story, so …

When Arthur Trevelyan’s sister Ann falls for the wrong boy yet again, he is asked to accompany her to Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, to keep her out of mischief.

But looking after Ann proves to be a challenge even with the help of lifelong friends, Neville and Christina Mortimer.

When she is inevitably kidnapped by a new flame, it is up to Arthur to rescue her and ponder the immortal question – how can two dorky friends and six perfect strangers with hidden agendas possibly be any more trouble than one headstrong big sister?

And if you want to read more, check the forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2844

Bionic Heart 2

This week reached scene15, which probably won’t tell you much. For me means line 5799 out of about 11.000 so we’re about halfway coding the game, which means that it could be out around end of the month, speaking of the beta version of course! Then there’s the testing phase and because this game has so much branching options, is going to take a while…

Thegeekandthecyborg

Tanya meets with a mysterious geek boy. Who is he?

Roommates

Time for two new reports, this time Sally and Dominic (straight romances only).

Dominicfile Sallyfile

Writer is working on the Spring Break scenes, featuring all characters in swimsuits 😉 Unofficial rumours says that the game plot might be finished by the end of this month: however don’t get too much excited, since there’s still a lot of work to be done, scripting, coding, testing… and all the background art to do. So a more realistic estimate release date could be this Summer!