Category Archives: queen of thieves

small indies growing…

Otello has found a comfortable (?) place in the bathroom…!

Today’s blog post is a bit different. I want to talk about a side-effect of when small indies grow 🙂

Back in 2007-2008, I was doing some “research” on indie CRPGs and of course I’ve checked also Jeff Vogel’s site (Spiderweb games). He’s one of the most famous indie doing RPG, so I was curious to see how he was doing. I was surprised when I read in the official forums that “he used” to post there, but now he doesn’t even show up anymore. I was thinking “What? how is possible, he doesn’t care about his users?!”.

Now, several years later, I understand completely his reasons! When you start growing your business, when you have more titles under your belt, the things to do increase exponentially.

Just think what there’s to do for each game:

– support: that’s the biggest problem. No matter how fool-proof you made your registration/full version delivery, there is always going to be an issue with it. But not just that: hardware configuration problems, sometimes files are downloaded incompletely so people think are corrupted, false antivirus positives, etc. It’s just insane, believe me! Some indies I know have hired people to deal with that, but I honestly wouldn’t trust anyone (since I should give access to orders database, Steam keys, etc). So I do it myself…
– marketing/promotion: I honestly don’t do much of this, but even in this case, there are many things to do. Send press-releases, answer journalists, do interviews, send press-copies, etc etc
– social presence: nowadays is essential, so I try to post daily updates on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and so on. Is not a big amount of work each: but if you sum everything, starts to add up (5 min there, another 10 there, etc and voilà hours are gone!)
– game production management: emailing people, checking what they’re doing, etc. Note that I don’t include the actual game coding in this part, and still is big!

OK I’ll stop here, I think you got it 😀 so what is happening is that (luckily) this year was very good for me, but also means that my “free time” has greatly decreased…and I don’t mean to be rude or snob people, but I won’t be able to answer anymore people emailing me “to chat”, or “to know how is going”, or asking “when game XYZ will be out” and so on like I used to do in the past. I simply don’t have the time anymore! 🙁

Of course I’ll still provide support for customers, I don’t plan to disappear from my forums, and will try to reply on the various sites (blog, twitter, Steam forums, etc…there are so many!) but it will depend on how busy I am in that moment.

I also realized that I’m spending really too much time in front of the computer: I want to stay more with family… the wife and pets 🙂

End of the rant! Now, for some quick update on the games, check those screenshots:

The skills screen of Queen Of Thieves

Attributes screen, similar to SOTW one (work in progress)

I got new GUI art done by a new artist who did a great job in my opinion. Is still work in progress but you can see the “return of skilltree” that some players liked so much in Loren 😉

Stay tuned for more info next week…Christmas is coming! 🙂

PSCD – meet Lucius

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It’s time to talk about the first robotic male love interest of my games! Before, there was only the female Tanya of Bionic Heart that was an android, but she was more human-like. Instead Lucius looks like… a real robot, as you can see above 😉

And here’s more about him directly from the writer:

Name: Lucius
Nation of Origin: –
Service Branch: Imperial Robotics

Description:
Built by Luna-Ferrix Industries, Lucius is a rarity; he is among the first generation of self-aware robots developed by humanity. This isn’t to say there weren’t robots before as the RoboAnts demonstrate, but Lucius is definitely something on the cutting edge.

Though constructed as a male adult, Lucius is innocent in his interactions with others. True, he has the accumulated knowledge to draw on, but he has no context to place it. As a result of this, he is very curious about what goes on around him, and will sometimes place himself in situations which, if he was human, would be hazardous to his health.

Lucius is a direct, if trusting soul, and still has some trouble distinguishing between turns of phrase and direct commands, much as the kitchen staff found out when he proceeded to bake enough pies to fill the cafeteria.

Lucius’ construction also raises some further implications. Luna-Ferrix sees Lucius as the first in a wave of robot servants and soldiers which will net them a healthy profit, but other people wonder whether it is morally appropriate to allow one’s ‘tools’ to be aware to start with.

However, despite others’ distrust, Lucius has shown himself to be a reliable, loyal person to those around him.

I am quite curious to see what people will think about his “romance story” 🙂 I am looking forward to it!

Various games updates

Progress have been made on several games:
Roger Steel script is now 100,000 words long! Is still not finished, though 🙂 The game will also feature a very particular theme song by Boossara (same singer of SOTW theme song).
PSCD script is at good point too (the main missions at least).
Queen Of Thieves art is being redrawn by artist and I’m very pleased by the results! Just take a look at the picture below, featuring the new female romances of the game:

From left to right: Therjalla the elven healer, Moirgane the human bartender and Mary-Ann the human blacksmith.

Story-wise, the new writer is fixing the old script, so this part is going fast (since scenes have been written already, she can change some parts but doesn’t need to brainstorm/spend time thinking what to write for most of it). For the yuri romances I guess will take a bit more time. Anyway this time I want to release the game with both romances genders available, so to not repeat something like Nicole… At least there are “only” 3 characters to write! 😉

PSCD – meet Mira

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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 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!! 😮

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):

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

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.

The relax week

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As you know if you follow me on twitter, after Loren RPG release I decided to take a break for a week. Break from coding, but not really a total break from work 🙂 During this week both good and bad things happened:

Good things

In the first week of release, Loren is the best selling game I’ve ever made. However I must not forget that it is also the most expensive and the one that took most time, so I haven’t even recovered costs yet, and sales are starting to decrease already (that’s normal).

Of course, just a week means nothing, will have to wait at least one month or perhaps 2-3 to judge better, but so far the early results are somewhat reassuring and I don’t exclude the possibility of making more deep RPGs like this one in future.

We’ve started working already on the expansion that should be out sometimes in the next 2-3 months, depending how much content we decide to put in it 🙂

Also, the press release outcome wasn’t bad as I thought: I said last week that my PR was mostly ignored. Luckily, I spoke with a veteran indie, Chris of Arcengames, who enlightened me about how PR actually works. It’s uncommon, if not very rare, to get press coverage for a game after just one PR. You need to chase journalists, send follows up, and so on. He stated it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

So I followed his advice and sent some review codes to some journalists, and while I cannot be sure when they’ll do it, they said will review the game. This include two of the biggest review sites online, so if a review appears in those sites that would be pretty good 🙂

I made good progresses also in the other games. I got new texts for Queen Of Thieves, Roommates, Nicole. I got new art for Nicole and Planet Stronghold: Warzone. Below you can admire the Marada Knight, one of the new enemies:

And this is Kurt from Nicole game, one of the 3 dateable boys:

One last thing, curiously Bionic Heart is my best selling game on Android. I would have never thought about that, and while Android sales in general are very poor due to the rampant piracy, it’s interesting, since on desktops that game definitely doesn’t outsell Heileen or Spirited Heart.

Combined with the many ports of Flash games I’ve seen, I’m thinking that Android is a mostly male-dominated market, while iOS is more neutral or even more female oriented.

Bad things

Of course, also some bad things happened. First of all, I realized how wrong I was to commission a J-pop song for a RPG. Basically, lots of people don’t like Loren theme song, and even those who like it say that is out of place. I’ve now removed it from the main game menu (you can listen it in the credits screen) and I’m thinking to replace the trailer in the game page as well, since I’m quite sure it was hurting sales.

Even if I have already commissioned Heileen 3 song, I’m thinking won’t make theme songs anymore in future, since that money could be better spent in making the game bigger with more art or texts.

Another bad thing was the reaction of some people to the game art. I realized that as a straight male, I simply cannot understand if a female outfit is too skimpy/sexy, so from now on for the games that need to appeal both genders, or only female players, will ask the feedback of female friends.

Right now, the artist is redoing most sprites of Amber, the main character of Amber’s Magic Shop, because as my writer Aleema suggested, her outfit was completely wrong for an otome game! And beside Amber is supposed to be an alchemist and I haven’t seen one with such outfit in any game yet 😀

Of course I plan also to have games with more adult themes, like Bionic Heart 2 will be. Lots of fanservice and sexy outfits, horror/mystery, betrayal and blood. Well, like most tv series airing on TV lately, no? 😉

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva