Category Archives: amber’s magic shop

November update!

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A mockup of the character inventory screen for Queen Of Thieves

The image above is a mockup I made for the GUI artist, for the game Queen Of Thieves. Does anyone remember it? 😀

When I first announced it, was very long time ago. Yes it was February 2011!! Lots of things happened since then, and to be honest I am almost glad that I had to put the game on hiatus for a long time, since now I have the knowledge and the resources to make the game as I wanted and much better.

Most of what I said in that post is still valid. The main change in the game is that your mother is not dead but being held captive. “Oh noes, a damsel in distress!” Well yes, but to save her there are 3 other younger damsels 😉 There will be the father/husband but he will only be present to give advice and run the shop.

Artist resumed working on it, currently he’s adding 3 new female characters since I’m going to have also yuri options (not as DLC, but all in one). The romances are 6 for each gender, in practice each girl will have two romance options. Obviously, this will make someone unhappy (why Joanne can’t date Fredrick! Why Thalia can’t date Tiberius! etc) but is normal, so I’m not too worried about that 😉

It’s another “experimental game”, since for the first time you control all three the characters. It will be strange maybe, sort of “The Sims”, in which you kind of play as God and decide their fate (including the romances). I am still thinking how it will work in details regarding the romances, currently it works like this, at least the first scenes (click to enlarge the storyboard):

storyboard

Tiberius for example (the guard captain): can be romanced by Kira and Joanne. But only by ONE of them. In the game, you’ll control all the girls, but depending on your choices, only one of those two will get the romance. This means that in theory, there can be only one combination in which each female character gets 1 romance each. In all other cases, there will be two.

However, considering I have to rewrite the game from scratch (the current writing was 3/4 done but the quality doesn’t match my recent much higher standards, so I have decided to redo it), I could change that, maybe just have one romance each girl, since I don’t want this to become “yet another monstrous game that won’t be out before YEARS” 😀

As for the gameplay, I am thinking to reuse the one from the SOTW maps/dungeons, maybe with some changes. There will also be two other “mini-games”, I still have to decide how to  code them. I’m in the design stage in practice, so while I’ve resumed working on this, definitely doesn’t mean will be ready anytime soon!

Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense update

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It’s fun to see the original artwork and the revamped version of the same alien race!

Above you see the Matrick from Planet Stronghold 1 (the RPG) and the same alien in a new style, the style of PSCD. They’re very different but both cool 🙂

The writer has written a good amount of the initial missions, and also planned the whole storyboard. Of course, even in this game are still in early stages, since there isn’t yet a single working mission 😀 but hopefully I’ll have something to show in the next weeks!

Finally, about Seasons Of The Wolf, the soft release is going well, with only some minor bug fixes/rare bugs and improvements done in the last couple of updates. So really I’m quite happy how things are going so far! 🙂 Definitely next Friday I’ll officially announce it.

Amber’s Magic Shop sneak peek

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This week was really busy working on the monkeycoder VN engine, burocratic/financial stuff and webdesign. Yes it wasn’t really a great week even if togeter with a new writer (who seems really good) we managed to lay out the first draft of the main plot outline for Loren sequel – not the expansion, but the sequel that will be out not sooner than next year.

Why do that now? because the artist was free from previous tasks and also because making the art for the first game took almost 10 months, so better start in advance!! 🙂

Speaking of writers, and about the title of the post, unfortunately yesterday got an email from Lorelei, Amber’s writer, who told me that for personal reasons she can’t continue writing the game. I am sad but I wish her luck in her projects. They’re doing a very interesting BxB game called Break Chance Memento, check the official website.

I’ve already got several submission from writer, I’m going to decide very soon who’s going to write the game. Meanwhile check two juicy sneak peek (if you follow me on twitter you already saw them):

Amberromances Ambercast

In the first image you see the possible romances. From lef to right: Daniel The Wizard, Stan the Noble, Bernard the Bounty Hunter and Ruby…the vampiress! 🙂

In the second image, you see other secondary characters: Lynn the herbalist, Manuel the adventurer, Vin the witch, Amber with the new look, Haros the wizard, Roy the noble (Stan’s father) and Thomas who is Ruby’s little brother.

The game will be a life/dating sim with a potion-making gameplay element. I thought about turning this into a RPG too but… I need to breathe 😀 maybe will add a resource / ingredients gathering minigame, but in general will be a dating/life sim.

As you noticed there are 3 GxB and 1 GxG romances, but each one has four different endings! Yes, because the game is based on the concept of Light (Good) and Darkness (Evil). Based on your choices during the game, you’ll end up with one of the 4 possible “alignments”: True Light, Light, Dark, True Dark, and the game endings will reflect that.

It’s definitely a “serious” game with adult themes and some shocking scenes. The art for the game is almost all done, so I’m eager to have the plot fully written so I can code it 🙂

Frozen development!

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In the image above, the view from my office window!!!

The title is a joke but explains well my current situation. I’m working on several games, mainly Loren RPG, and every 2-3 hours I go outside with temperatures ranging from -4°C to 10°C (even during the day) to shovel an incredible amount of snow!

It has been snowing since the first days of February, and this situation HAS slowed down considerably my development, since beside the time spent shoveling, when I get back to work I’m exhausted 😀

Anyway, I got almost all the items artwork for Loren, and hopefully by next weekend I’ll have it all. Code-wise we added some more features, like the possibility to randomize a bit each vendor. So the items on sale will change through the course of the story, based on your progresses and the current equipment you have.

Also, each vendor has a specific “lore”: the human town of Grimoire is specialized in heavy blade and armors, while in the capitol of the Elves, Grandtree, you can find many excellent bows and magic items.

Not only RPGs!

But progresses are being made also in other games, in particular Heileen 3 and Amber’s Magic Shop. For Heileen 3, I got a bunch of sketches for all the ending images, and I can assure you that some are VERY interesting…! The writing is also at a good stage, the writer reached the 60th scene, so more than half is finished!

Now admire an image of Morgan in a more casual outfit. What do you think, girls? 😉

Morgansexy

I must also say that even if the writer isn’t a native English speaker (so had to ask a friend to proofread the script) her writing is really very funny, and perfect for Heileen 3 mood. I laughed lots of times reading some of the scenes she wrote, in particular those with Juliet and John 🙂

For Amber instead I got already the lineart of many of the characters. As I said, I was lucky to be able to hire Loren’s artist again, and the results are great. They’re still uncolored, so for now will just post an image of Vin, the witch and adoptive mother of Amber:

Vin

I really like her “floreal dress” 🙂 but even the other characters are all quite cute. Once I have the finished colored images will post more previews!