Category Archives: roleplay games

Spirited Heart is out on Steam

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Another weekend, another Steam release. This time is my fantasy raising/dating sim Spirited Heart. You can get it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/293920/

The whole Heileen series was also Greenlit, however I have to keep working on SOTW and also I found new writer(s) for Nicole yuri so I’ll need to take some time to manage her. I can still guarantee that the first Heileen game will be out next month, but probably Heileen 2 and 3 will be postponed to July (they take a bit more time to test!).

The curse of Nicole yuri

As you probably know, I’m having a lot of troubles completing this version of Nicole. I decided to replace the second writer because of communication problems (she had connectivity issues) but I’m quite confident on the new one. Is still early days, but she seems very motivated, so this time I have hope 🙂

It’s crazy thinking that the game was out October last year, and to compensate the yuri fans, I am now talking with other writers who applied for the position but weren’t picked. I thought that since they are quite good (my main criteria this time beside quality was the speed) I thought: why not start some yuri/yaoi exclusive games ? After all, I promised it to my fans and I always try to keep promises 😉

Yuri and yaoi power!

In the next week, between all the crazy mess that is my daily job (Steam release, SOTW testing, etc… madness! lol), I’ll try to find the time to talk with them and get them started. Two of them already replied and are interested. No official announcements yet (I am now waiting until the whole script of a game is almost finished before announcing anything, like I did for C14 dating) but I’m working on it.

Now excuse me, must get back to work! 🙂

Good games takes time!

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tavernbrawl
a classic tavern brawl in Dingirra (act 2). The “throw chair” is a powerful attack!

From the title you could imagine that this is a blog post announcing some delays on my next games. No, definitely isn’t! but erm, yeah there could be delays in the next games 😀

Don’t worry nothing big, only talking about a few extra months but I think is inevitable, as my games become bigger and more polished, I need to put more time into them. If I compare them with the ones I was making only 2-3 years ago, they all have custom tracks, custom backgrounds, higher art quality and more polishing in general. Also if you check other indies, they usually make 1 game a year, or max 2. So far I was still able to release at least 2-3 a year, and I believe of good quality.

RPGs in particular take a very long time, and wouldn’t be really fair to tell people that I can make more than one a year. Who knows, it MIGHT happen, since in practice I always work on the games a bit randomly depending how the various partners/collaborators do (if some works faster, I usually work on those games more). But that would be an exception 🙂

The good news

I have good news nonetheless regarding upcoming games:

About SOTW: I made good progresses on the main plot, made a lot of battles in act 2 up to the point where you have a full party (with Riley and Krimm joining you). Battles with full parties are VERY different from the first act, that’s why balancing was hard: I was focusing on the wrong way, I needed to balance act 2 and then if necessary fix some act 1 battles. Since the game must be balanced with a full party, not with 3 party members (for those who didn’t play it yet, in the first act you can control only 3 characters).

Vaelis and Rowinda background/personal quests are being added. The other romanceable characters already had them, but those two were missing. So Taleweaver (the game writer) is working on those. This won’t delay the game release since they can be unlocked in act 3, and independently from the main story.

About C14, because of my collaborators real-life tasks (relocating, weddings, etc) work will resume in July, but is at very good point and beta might be out that same month 🙂

Nicole yuri and Planet Stronghold 2 writing is going on very slowly, but making progresses at least.

Lastly, I have some news about Roger Steel. I will talk about it next month, when finally I hope to have also some artwork to show 🙂

Planet Stronghold on Steam

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As you probably are aware already if you follow me on the social networks, my sci-fi RPG Planet Stronghold is now available on Steam. Above you can see the game trailer (the info at the end is outdated though, the game is also available on iOS).

I’ve already talked in the past about the game, in particular shortly after I released it, and is fun how Steam rejected the game back in 2011, and now 3 years later there it is! They have underestimated the power of the Wolves! 😉

Jokes apart, while I still consider Loren my best game, I’m quite affectionate to this one for two reasons: was the last game I wrote completely on my own (however is better if real native English writers take care of this aspect now!) and the first RPG/VN hybrid I made, which saved me from a sure bankrupt and put me back on track to stay indie for more years.

Seasons Of The Wolf Beta

Meanwhile, SOTW beta made a lot of progress in this last week. I admit I am a bit burned out because of how many bugs I fixed and how much balancing tweaks I made!!

First of all, while the stats-derivation method was delivering really well balanced fights (as expected) it had a huge problem: since everything was based on players behaviors, I had no reference for the battle difficulties. I couldn’t tweak a battle, I couldn’t lower or increase HP, Attack, Speed of the enemies because every time they would be different for every player 🙂

So, I had to discard the system after a few updates. Oh well, I’ve tried. Live and learn!

Then started to rebalance the game again, but I forgot a small detail: the level scaling was off, so the difference of difficulty between Easy and Nightmare wasn’t big (and instead, should be VERY big). So I had to rebalance the game completely for a second time!

At one point I even took a screenshot of all the 4 difficulty mode of a boss enemy to compare the differences:

balancing
The Huge Kodiak is a boss battle in a sidequest

…yes as you can guess, I went a bit insane 😀

All of this while fixing at least 5-6 major bugs daily (in first days even 10-15!!). It is good of course, and now that I have a much bigger following is even expected, but it was quite exhausting for me. Anyway, now everything seems to be working, so I can move on coding the second Act of the game.

I’m probably going to open preorders once I have finished the second act (and is in beta) so I’m at a good point of the game.

Stay tuned because next week will resume talking about C14 Dating, the new upcoming otome game 😉

A roleplaying weekend !

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mainmenu
The game main menu, really happy about the look!

Seasons Of The Wolf: Winter Is Coming!

Haha forgive the pun 🙂 But yes, the first act/season of the story is now available for beta-testing ! I am quite enthusiast of the result, and hopefully you’ll like it too. In this first season, for plot reasons you can play only 3 characters, but don’t worry, as story goes on you’ll recruit the others.

As you can see from the main menu image, the official title is Tales Of Aravorn: Seasons Of The Wolf. Why? Because I want to enter the Guinness World Records for the longest game title, that’s why!! 😀

Talking seriously, the “Tales Of Aravorn” will basically be a series of games all set in the same fantasy game world, featuring references, cameos, etc of characters and places from other games.

Beside this one, there is already in the works the two Loren games (Reign Of War, Reign of Peace), and Amber’s Magic Shop. Plus Queen Of Thieves, which I haven’t forgotten, even if I put it on hiatus (I can’t work on so many games at once anymore, I’m getting old!).

The game version already reached 0.75 (at the moment of writing this post) and had a lot of initial bugs fixed. If you want to read more and download the beta, check my forums here:

http://www.winterwolves.net/viewforum.php?f=40

I haven’t opened officially the preorders since I think is a bit too early – I don’t know yet when the final game will be released, probably in the next 3-4months but with RPGs you never know.

Today my other RPG Planet Stronghold was also supposed to go live on Steam, but there’s a big sale going on at the moment, and besides I’m also broken after fixing all SOTW bugs, so I decided to postpone the release to next week! Sorry about that, but will be just a few more days 🙂

One of the biggest enemies of indie devs: the “feature creep”!

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initial
This shows starting conditions effect in a battle, useful to reproduce time-critical situations

If you look at the definition of “feature creep” on Wikipedia, you’ll read:

Feature creep, creeping featurism or featuritis is the ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product, such as in computer software. Extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and so can result in over-complication rather than simple design.

Wise words! 😀 And indeed the screenshot above is very likely the last new feature I’ll add to SOTW. Don’t get me wrong, adding new features is good, and normally can make games better. But also, delay the game. Every new feature needs to be tested, both in functionality, and in balancing. In complex games like RPGs, often what started as a simple/innocent new feature can have repercussions later in the gameplay, screwing up the balance of the game, even HOURS later. So as you can see you need to be very careful 🙂

In the two past RPG I made so far, Planet Stronghold and Loren, had two very different approaches. In the first, I needed to get it done ASAP for money/time reasons, while for the second I could plan things more carefully. I’ve already compared the two games step by step in the past, but what I want to say here is that NOT NECESSARILY the game with more features is the most fun one. Sometimes, simplicity will lead to more accessible and fun games, reaching maybe a different target market, but not necessarily worse/smaller.

During SOTW development so far, I added many new features: item levels, randomized item creation/random loot, autobalancing enemies, isometric map, item rewards for quests, battlefield conditions and starting effects, and more (lost the count lol).

But I also TRIED to add some features, and then canceled/removed them because I realized that would take too much time to implement them correctly (like the skills with various levels of effectiveness) or that the mechanic wouldn’t be very clear to users (like the turn limit during battles).

In summary, even on this aspect of making a RPG (or any other complex game) you need to have a clear vision of what you want to do. A complex, detailed game? or a simple, very accessible game with a few rules? both ways can lead to a good game. What is worse is keep adding new features, without properly testing them, and as result building a worse game in the end.