I’ve just uploaded a promotional trailer of my upcoming sci-fi game Bionic Heart. It shows the use of the holomap to move to the various game locations, some dialogues, and a hot Helen in jogging outfit 😉
I’m quite proud of what I’ve done so far, and I think this game is definitely different from my previous dating sim /visual novels.
Stay tuned for more info coming soon…
Yes, the indie game website Gametunnel, in its popular Indie Games Of The Year awards, included my Supernova 2: Spacewar into the top5 simulation games of the year. While I think my game is more a wargame or a strategy game than a simulation, I’m still proud of have it included among the bests indie games of this year, also looking at the tough competition.
On the development side, some good news: Spirited Heart is going very well, though I think I won’t include a combat sub-game in it (I’m still not sure about that). But the characte generation is done, and also the status screen with all the various game options: Work, Study/Train, Relax, Relationship and Check Status.
It will be a weird game I think. Similar to Cute Knight, but without the dungeon part, and with a slightly different gameplay mechanic. I am also thinking to ask Hanako’s programmer to license the use the dungeon-crawler engine he used in that game, so I finally could resume working on Tower Of Destiny, which is in hiatus-mode since 2005! :/
Anyway for now I’m concentrating on Spirited Heart and 3 more “mysterious games” that will be released during next year. I don’t want to disclose too much, but each game can be described with a word: Poker, Robot and Flower.
So today officially put the game on sale. If you want to try it, click here to get on the download page.
it has been a fun experience to me writing this game, hope people will like playing it as well. Note that the game is a visual novel, so if you’re not familiar with the genre, this could be a good occasion to start with it.
I also made a promotional code to launch the game: enter the coupon BIPZ0509T in the discount code field on the order page to get 30% discount on price, is valid for first 50 orders.
The game is basically done. Waiting for the last 2 backgrounds to put in the game and some testing, but I already played the whole game several times, so should be bug free! 🙂 I uploaded a video to dailymotion, since youtube quality was too poor (the game itself is 1024×768 !).
In the video below, if you want to try reading some texts, click on the “HQ” button and then fullscreen, and you should be able to!
Beside RPG games, adventures are one of my favourite genre ever. I didn’t make any before, for two reasons: I would have to hire someone to do the art and this was too expensive for me to do in the beginning, and also I wasn’t sure there was a market for them at all.
But in 2005 I decided I wanted to try anyway, so I started to commission lot of characters art for the game Summer Love, that was the original title of Summer Session. The artist was still at art school so took a lot to finish them all, almost 1 year. Then, when I had the characters I realized I needed also the backgrounds! so asked her to draw about 20 different ones, and she was faster this time.
In beginnng of 2007 I had almost everything for the game: the idea/main mechanic, all the characters with their backgrounds and personalities, but when I started to write the game itself I realized it wasn’t easy as I thought: I built up my own adventure engine, but the main reason was the writing itself.
While I can read and write a decent english, creating a compelling story and using the right words is really another world. So in the beginning I thought to just write it in italian and then have it translated, but I wasn’t really sure all the translation money would have been well spent.
So in the end, in spring of 2008 I decided to contact Georgina of Hanako, knowing that she made already lot of adventure games, figuring that she would have been the “right man” (or better woman) to finish my project! and indeed, she did it, and also pointed me to Renpy, a really nice Python-based tool to write visual novel/dating sims.
Recently adventures seems to have gained popularity, and Summer Session sales surely prove that there is a market for adventures (of any kind). So, here I am, ready to finish Heileen, a 17th century visual novel in which you play the role of a girl, trying to discover herself with the help of a voyage to the New World. Sounds cool eh? 😀
I really hope the game will be like I have in my mind. So far, after playing it several times, I am very satisfied. Stay tuned for a beta version coming out soon. Well, as soon as I get my new background pictures delivered! 😉