Category Archives: amber’s magic shop

Amber’s Magic Shop: Introducing Ruby

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intro_ruby

Time for one of my favorite characters (ahem and not just because she looks incredibly hot, I swear) of Amber: Ruby the vampire! Here’s the introduction:

Despite her age in human years, Ruby is regarded as extremely young for a vampire and still clings to her humanity because of that.

Despite these things, she and her brother are well respected in the small vampire community that live in Icesilia. Her word carries a lot of weight and she’s not afraid to use her influence to get what she wants. Outside of vampiric politics, Ruby finds herself fascinated by Amber and strikes up a friendship with her after a few chance encounters.

Over the years, she finds it harder to resist the urge to feed of mortals and so asks Amber to find a way to return her to human form. Such a request is not without its perils but she knows without a cure she will soon lose what humanity she has left.

Ruby is an extremely outgoing person who enjoys flirting with members of any sex. As a human, she was a dancer and she still shows signs of that in the way she moves and acts.

Despite her pretence of aloofness, she actually cares a great deal about those whom she calls friends and will do anything for them. Her fear of becoming as monstrous as the legends say drives her to avoid drinking blood and often only on animals when the need becomes overwhelming.

Animals barely sate the need, however, and she often turns to Amber to help her resist the true hunger for the warm blood of mortal men and women.

As you can see from her intro, she looks like an interesting character. Her endings are great, even the “dark ones” are somewhat cool 🙂

Amber’s Magic Shop: Introducing Daniel

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intro_daniel

Time for another introduction: Daniel the apprentice mage!

Born to an Elvish mother and a human father, Daniel is Haros’ son and Amber’s first friend. The two of them work together as apprentices under Haros until their adult years. Their paths take them in different directions, however, and eventually the two drift apart.

A couple of years after Amber becomes an alchemist, Daniel rekindles their friendship. He is now a well-respected mage in the local Mage’s Guild and rising quickly in the ranks there. The Half-Elf eventually recruits Amber to help him create the Elixir of Life although he refuses to explain why he wants it. He claims it is to impress his superiors but Amber suspects he is lying.

Daniel’s main weakness is his pride. He believes that he is better than anyone. This is true for the most part although it takes him a long time to admit that Amber is a better alchemist than him. His main comfort is that at least he can use magic and she cannot.

Although he rarely talks about it, he often feels alienated from those around him. He is the only Half-Elf in Icesilia and he often feels like he cannot fully relate to either side of his mixed bloodlines. It is perhaps why he gets on so well with Amber who has a similar problem.

Amber’s Magic Shop: Introducing Amber!

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intro_amber

Let’s start introducing the cast of this game, starting obviously with Amber herself! In the image above you see the young and adult version. There are more clothes besides the two shown above 🙂

Abandoned as a baby in the woods to the south of Icesilia, Amber was found and raised by a witch called Vin. She spent all her life in the woods, never venturing beyond its borders at the insistence of her adoptive mother.

The Dark Elf grew up wanting to be a witch like her mother but Vin would not allow her to practice magic, instead concentrating on teaching her how to brew potions and other aspects of alchemy.

When Amber turned sixteen, her mother announced it was time for her to see the world and she had arranged an apprenticeship with the legendary mage Haros of Icesilia to help her become a true master alchemist.

Amber has a natural talent for Alchemy. She has a knack for finding ingredients and a phenomenal memory that allows her to remember anything she has read. As a person, she tends not to show her emotions all that much and her natural expression tends to give the impression she is in a bad mood all the time.

In truth, she is actually quite a positive person although she is terrible at showing it.

Better late than never!

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ambersmagicshop

In the image mockup above, you see Amber and Vin in Vin’s witch house 🙂

As you probably have guessed by the title, I’m talking about yet another game I started… “a while ago”, that it’s finally getting done! Amber’s Magic Shop was originally announced in this blog post, from 2011. Of those four games, Roommates was done in 2014, Queen Of Thieves is in advanced beta testing right now, and “The Hospital” it’s being worked on but as a side project (without hurry).

I must say that while of course having to wait for 5 years is a long time, I am happy that the game is being done now. Now I have much more experience, and similarly to what happened to Queen Of Thieves, which was supposed to be just a simple dating sim with no combat/RPG part, I’ll be able to add more (optional) gameplay stuff even to Amber’s game.

Go craft yourself!

In particular, one of the aspect I want to put the focus on it’s crafting. If you’ve been playing RPG games recently (but even some simulations or other genres) the “crafting” has become one of the key features for many games.

So, together with Anima (the coder) I’m building up a crafting system, not just for Amber’s game, but even for future titles. I’m building THE ULTIMATE CRAFTING SYSTEM MOUAHAHHA!!! 😀

I’ve commissioned over 150 items to PSCD artist, since he is very good and fast (and he’s only drawing objects this time! hehe). He already finished some items:

ore

This system will be expandable, which means that you (obviously) won’t see the same ingredients or recipes for all games. For fantasy games probably a lot will be in common (since the games also share the same fantasy world) but I could reuse it even for a sci-fi game (allowing people to craft weapons/armors in Planet Stronghold 2 for example) or modern settings (for example a zombie game where you can craft weapons with scrap materials).

As you can see the possibilities are endless. Obviously for Amber this is also a key feature since you play as a young alchemist, so gathering/buying ingredients/materials and crafting will be what you do most of the time 🙂

So as you can see, sometimes it’s better if a game doesn’t come out right away. Because there’s no way that the “myself of 2011” (or even 2012!) could have added such complex system to the gameplay!

PSCD – meet Mira

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mira

After a break of a few weeks, back to introducing the PSCD characters. And what character! 😉

Name:  Mira Patras
Nation of Origin:  Greece
Service Branch:  Civilian Consultant

Description:
As one of the youngest Nobel Prize winners ever, it was a foregone conclusion that Mira would make her way to Planet Stronghold.  The numerous anomolies and mysteries have drawn scientists like a moth to flame, and Mira is certainly no exception.

There are many demands on Mira’s time, however.  A true polymath, she has provided valuable insight into numerous fields, whether it is geology, or robotics.  It is known some of her research was instrumental in Lucius’ construction, for example.  This also causes a bit of exasperation for the military since as a civilian, Mira isn’t as bound by military doctrine as a soldier would be, and they worry she may inadvertantly leak some critical research.  

What initially brought Mira to the planet were reports of excessive gigantism among some of the animal species, and upon her arrival, witnessed this firsthand as a giant grub attempted to consume her transport shuttle.  Instead of frightening her off, Mira was inspired to  stay.  After all, if she could discover the source of this enlargement, it might then be replicated among other things such as food bearing crops.

Mira is also a bit of a media darling as various outlets vie for her attention.  Some of these include invitations to anchor her own show, or various movie roles.  While she makes time for inteviews, Mira usually declines these entreaties as they would. There were many broken hearts when she refused the lead role in the remake of ‘Attack of the Giant Amazon.’

Needless to say, she is one of my favorites. Not because of the piercing on the lips, or the blue eyes. Or her sexy alternate outfit. No, really, not because of that… 😀

Jokes apart, I really like all the character design of this game! And I’m also pleased by the progresses made by the writer so far.

SOTW DLC and other games in progress

SOTW Steam testing is going well, can you believe that we found some more small bugs? haha the work on a RPG is never done! They were all minor things of course, but needed to be fixed 🙂

I can also confirm that we’re going to work on a DLC for SOTW. Only 20 days have passed since the official release, but I’m confident enough that it’s worth doing it. The DLC will happen after the end of Act 4, but of course before the various “alternate endings” (since they talk about things happening far in future).

I’ll manage to keep the existing characters so keep your saves, but I think will also offer the possibility to “start anew” just for the DLC, automatically leveling up the characters to level 25-26 and picking your romance, so people don’t necessarily need to replay the whole thing!

The DLC will focus more on the story/lore and the interaction between the player and the various romances. Is a RPG, so of course there will still be battles, but not often as the main game!! Of course everything is still in early planning stages, since the DLC for sure won’t be out before next Summer/Fall (as always, depending on how the other various projects go).

Queen Of Thieves is going well too: the artist is making the new characters with his “new improved style” and what can I say? just take a look for yourself:

therjalla
Therjalla the elf healer is going to be one of the female yuri romances of the game

So, Myrth from Loren has a formidable competitor it seems! 😉 Jokes apart, also pleased by the new writer’s speed. I have no release estimates of course but if both writer and artist keep going at this pace, the game will be out sooner than I thought.

See you next Friday…the Black Friday!! 😮