Category Archives: postmortem

The Tao of indies!

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In the picture above, Gilda and Grillo sleeping on the same basket. They seem to be forming a sort of Cat-Tao (or Dao)!

According to Wikipedia, the meaning of Tao is:

While the word itself literally translates as ‘way’, ‘path’, or ‘route’, or sometimes more loosely as ‘doctrine’ or ‘principle’, it is generally used to signify the primordial essence or fundamental aspect of the universe.

Today I want to talk about the Tao of indies! I hope my English will be up to it XD

Inspired by the friend/colleague Andy Schatz and his talk at this year GDC (I wasn’t there but I’ve read lots of blogs posts about his talk) I want to remark how important it is, even for an indie, to follow your true inspiration, to do the game you want to do. Too much often I see indies working on “clone of game XZY” or “I had to change this because the publisher/distributor wanted it this way” and so on. Indies by definition should be free, free to do whatever they want.

Of course, you still have to keep some common sense and not start making the most crazy ideas that comes to mind! But the truth is that I’ve seen often projects that started as “quick diversive” (because you couldn’t find the strength to finish the “big safe commercial project X”) turn into great games. To summarize it better, I want to quote Andy himself:

“If you work on a game that’s really cool, you’ll either get recognition or you’ll make money,” says Schatz. But if you make a game to just make money, you’ll either fail, or you’ll make money. “So the way I see it is that if you make a game just to make money, that’s actually riskier.”

That’s completely spot on. I know basically… nobody who made a game he hated AND made lot of money. Every single developer I see who made lot of money (and I know plenty) made it by working on a project he really loved.

For me, last autumn was a critical moment too. After the two Vera games that didn’t sold very well, I was tired of writing VNs, and in general of making games! But at same time I felt almost like I completely forgot how to code, how to make a good game.

So, I decided to aim higher this time, and in 6 months I built a RPG framework on top of the Ren’Py engine and wrote Planet Stronghold. At first glance you might think that’s simple, but in reality it’s not at all. Writing the code for a RPG that features: a turn-based battle system, special attacks/effects on enemies and your party, inventory system, skills system, level up screen, training screen, exploration map, and probably something else I forgot, was a big effort.

But already from the first months, when I started the pre-alpha phase, and first sales started coming in, and at same time my almost desert forums started to see some activity of people suggesting new features / changes / improvements, I made peace with coding and once again I found the FUN in making the games, that I thought to have lost forever!

Because making games is fun. It should always be fun. If you’re making a game, and you’re not having fun, something is seriously wrong.

Next week will talk about progresses with the otome/lifesim Remeber Me, which hopefully will be out in April!

Planet Stronghold v 1.0 released!

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In the picture above, Gilda sleeping in a “wooden drawer” we had in our previous house. She seems to enjoy it 🙂

After about 2 months of playtesting, I can officially announce the release of version 1.0 of my sci-fi RPG game Planet Stronghold! It has been a very long journey, from the “classic” early prototypes with programmer art to the final result which features beautiful manga artwork and a very detailed combat system. I started the game at the end of 2009, worked on it until beginning of 2010 then paused it to release the two Vera Blanc games. And then I resumed working on it in September 2010, and I’ve listened to all the suggestion people made in the course of those last 6 months, implementing lots of features that people requested.

Hopefully this process made Planet Stronghold a better game (I have no doubts about it) and for that I want to send a special thank you to everyone who sent their suggestions, who supported me buying the early alpha versions back in september 2010, when the game was only a few chapter long and still quite rough, and who is supporting me in any way (offering free proofread, telling friends about my site, and so on).

I don’t know if the game will be a success or not, but I’ve enjoyed making it. And most importantly it helped me build a sort of “RPG framework”, so that I’ll be able to release new RPGs in future at much faster pace! 🙂

So, for those who don’t know yet what I’m talking about, check the official game trailer:

You can download a demo at the official website: http://www.planetstronghold.com and see more screenshots and buy it on Winter Wolves main website: http://www.winterwolves.com/planetstronghold.htm

If you like RPGs, stay tuned since I have plans to create several more RPGs in the next months, alongside my other projects (mostly visual novels and dating sims). And now for those who enjoy reading postmortems:

The making of Planet Stronghold

It was the end of 2009 when I thought would have been nice to do a visual novel with some “light” roleplay elements, so I started working on Planet Stronghold.

Initially I had picked another artist, but she was lazy and uncollaborative, so I “fired” her and found a much better one (more reliable and much more skilled). A typical mistake that I always make is to be forgiving with people, but the reality is that if you’re running a business, if you’re not an amateur anymore, and you need to do things the serious way. You can still be friendly of course, but as soon as you notice people are trying to take advantage of you, don’t hesitate to put them back on track, or you’ll end up wasting lot of precious time yourself and in the end have to change collaborators anyway!

So, at the end of 2009 – beginning of 2010 I had a very simple system in place. Then I took a break to make the two Vera Blanc games, but I was still working a bit on Planet Stronghold in the “spare time”. And then, I started adding features. I had the battles, and I thought “why characters must always use one single weapon? it’s unrealistic! and voilà, I added an inventory. Then I thought “if all heroes have same skills, what’s make them different?” and again, I added the Skills system. But what is a sci-fi RPG without some fancy replacement for the fantasy RPG magic? And so I added the Psionics skills! 😀

As you can see, with such kind of games, if you like to add new features, you can basically go on as much as you want. But unless you’re mad you have to stop at one point! And indeed when I was about to implement some sort of movement system, like a tilemap I thought “wait… I need to release this game before 2012”, and so I opted for a simpler movement system.

Then I began writing the main plot which, as you probably have noticed if you just played the demo, is VERY LONG. Once again, maybe as first attempt into a new territory (for me) I made a mistake in making such a big game. Perhaps I should have made the game smaller, to test the waters first? Who knows, I know for certain that nobody can complain about this game longevity since I can say without doubt that is the longest (and also most replayable) game I’ve ever made!

From September through today, I’ve started working on the game full-time, and I decided to try the “open-alpha” and then later “open-beta” approach. If you’re making a complex game, not necessarily a RPG, I strongly recommend doing it. Some people do a closed alpha pre-orders, and that’s fine too, but I found out that by making the alpha public I got lot more feedback. Considering I’m a small indie developer, I was surprised by the amount of feedback I got, both in my forums and privately by emails!

Overall I’m very satisfied by the game – since it has already sold well during the alpha/beta stage, so means there’s some potential for VN/RPG hybrids. I could have probably done it faster using some different coding tecniques, but now at least for future games I know how to get started quickly. Also, I have to be honest, while coding it the library I choose (Ren’Py) got the biggest update of its whole history, switching from software rendering to accelerated OpenGL, and adding a new screen language format. This was a great thing, but happened right when I was stil coding the game! So I was unsure what to do, and in the end I decided to upgrade, so had to redesign some parts of the game to use the new language.

This delayed the game, even if now plays much faster even on very low-end netbooks. Future RPGs will be done directly in the new system so I won’t have those problems anymore.

Lastly, about two weeks ago I decided to try the “Steam Lottery”. Some developer friends and I have called it that way, because you never know if you’re going to be accepted by them or not, also especially because they have no guidelines, and give no explanation when your game is rejected. Since another manga game with RPG element (Recettear) was recently quite popular on Steam, I thought to try.

Obviously, they rejected it, but this time it wasn’t an immediate email, they actually asked for demo and played it! It must mean that is my best game so far, in a way or the other 🙂

Love & Order preorders available!

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Love & Order pc/mac/linux

Yes, finally the game Love & Order, written by C. Love, is available for pre-orders purchase! You can see more screenshots and information about the game and the characters at the official page. Beside producing the game, I’ve also tested it a lot, and I can say it’s really fun and it will keep you busy for quite some time while you try to discover more about the mysterious abandoned case and at same time, pursue all of the four dateable characters 🙂

Love & Order has also an official forum now – so if you have any feedback, comment, suggestion, bug report (let’s hope not!) or anything else,  stop by my forums and write something!

A little of postmortem info about this game. I contacted Christine back in summer 2010 shortly after her game Digital: A Love Story was out. After playing it, I immediately recognized the potential that she had as game developer 😉 And since I’ve learned long time ago that my world-domination plan cannot be fulfilled alone, I asked her if was interested in writing a game for me. We exchanged a few emails and she asked what kind of game I had in mind, so I told her about several possibilities. One of them was:

“I was thinking instead of school, would be nice to have as setting work (like an office job) and have some mystery (not necessarily a murder or anything, but some mysterious event).”

And that’s how it all started. A fun excerpt from one of her emails was:

I would think maybe four dateable characters (is that a good number? three men and one woman? I really wouldn’t want to write a completely straight heroine), plus a couple of other people who work there.

(obviously had no problems with that!). There was a lot of initial brainstorming and then from about July or so it was all in her hands. She coded /wrote it while the various artists worked on the backgrounds and the character art (the character artist is the same of Remember Me, which should also be ready next month… or so).

Obviously Love & Order is quite different from Digital:A Love Story and I hope people won’t even try to compare the two games, since is like comparing apples and oranges. Our goal with Love & Order was to have a fun otome / dating sim game, with a bit of humour, mystery and lot of romance, and I think the result turned out quite good.

That’s all for now, ah no wait – I couldn’t make a friday blog without a cat picture! Here it is:

my cat Grillo seems to think “Love & Order is an awesome game, everyone should buy it!” 😉

Friday catblogging – Merry Christmas!

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In the picture above, Mirtillo and Othello sleeping together peacefully. I wonder what they’re dreaming ?

I want to wish everyone reading this blog/following me Merry Christmas! 🙂

Then, a quick status update about Planet Stronghold 0.8 (since is the game I’m currently working on). In the recent weeks had some eyesight problems, so the programming has been slowed considerably. I really hoped to have it ready by Christmas since would have made a great present… but sometimes, real-life problems get in the way and so I had to post-pone the deadline to end of the year!

I’m writing the latest two quest, regarding the Apex Rahn and Arnox races, including two boss fights. I think once you play the game you’ll realize why is taking me so long to make… because the game IS long! The part I’m writing now involves all the races, and if you side with the Empire you have to eliminate them, instead if you side with the King/Shiler you will unify them and form one single alliance.

So this part is the “core” of the game, the biggest one. If you played the demo, this part is basically 5-6 times longer than it…and you can play from two different sides, so some parts are different! That is also why the final release price will be $24.95 (so you have still one week to get it at the deal price of $9.95!). And now, for some postmortem-retrospective about the year that is about to end:

2010, The Year Of The Tiger

I admit I was excited about it (since I am a Wood Tiger in chinese horoscope). Well, my goal for 2010 was to release 5 games, and I was particularly excited about (quoting from my last year post):

And I am producing the art now for a new kind of game style that I hope will be a great success, since I like a lot writing the stories and the storyboards for it. For now I can only say that involves detectives, mystery, and a beautiful blonde girl with a French accent…

I was obviously talking about Vera Blanc, which as you might know, turned out to be a real disappointment in term of sales 😀

So, in 2010 I released The Flower Shop, Card Sweethearts, Vera Blanc: Full Moon, Vera Blanc: Ghost In The Castle. Not only I didn’t release 5 games as I had planned (even if I’m almost done with Planet Stronghold), but most of them didn’t sell well at all! So in all honesty, considering also the other real-life problems I had, 2010 was probably my worst year since I was indie. For the first time in 7 years or so, I didn’t grow my business. During the summer and autumn, I thought it was something beyond my control, the global crisis, the return of middlemen and so on (since also many other indies had very low sales during that period) but if I think about it carefully, it was my mistake for producing games without doing proper “market research”.

Vera Blanc got the most positive reviews I had for a game, on famous sites like Gamezebo & Gamertell. And it has some fans that are eagerly waiting a 3rd episode. Still, it would be foolish for me to release another one using the same gameplay system… so even as indie, you can’t simply do any game you want to do (unless it’s an hobby) but you must also identify the market you want to sell to, and make sure you have the right product. Making a good/original game just isn’t enough, if that game has a very small fan-base.

Next friday, more cats pictures and my plan for the 2011 which hopefully will be a better year 🙂

Is worth having a Flash version of your downloadable?

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That’s one of the most frequent questions I see asked around in game development forums. I released in May a flash version of my downloadable game Spirited Heart, so thought to share some info about it.

The stats are quite clear (timeframe, 2 months):

gameplays: 60-70k estimate (mochi-ads is 55k, plus a few more thousands in Kongregate, Newgrounds and other portals I submitted my game to)
unique visitors to my site:  12,886
tracked sales: 7 !!

As you can see, the visitors to sales ratio (called also CR, conversion rate) is 0,05%! Well below the standard CR of downloadable demos that is around 1% (actually, for my game it’s 2,6% well above average). If we calculated the people per sale ratio from everyone that played the game, we would get 1 sale every 10.000 players 😀

And I even put lots of “nag stuff” in the game, in several parts there was a hint that certain game functions would be available only in the “Deluxe Version” and not in the free flash demo.

That said, I probably made some mistakes in it: putting too many “hints” that the game was only a “flash demo”, pissed some people off and especially on Kongregate I got very low rating only because of that. Also, the flash market is known to like more male-oriented games (zombies, blood, violence!) so my game was badly targeted also for that.

Still, even if my game was played by 7 milion people (that would be a TOP record!) according to those visits/buy ratio I would have got “only” 700 sales, or translated in money, about $15000. But just so you know, Desktop Tower Defense, one of the most popular flash games of all times, made 15million plays. So getting 7 million would be almost an impossible task unless you have something really UNIQUE.

Based on this, the conclusion would be quite easy: is NOT worth it. However, I know some other devs doing online only games or browser MMO got much better results than me. So is correct to say that making a flash version of your DOWNLOADABLE game is a bad move. But for a online/browser game that could be very different.