Category Archives: tycoongames

Games that are or will be available on my newsite tycoongames.eu

Outsourcing or DIY ?

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As an indie developer, I asked that question myself several times. I also tried both, several times.

Recently I thought about this because one day of last week I went really grumpy because my php/mySQL code wasn’t working as it should for my online game. Then I tried reading about Ruby, a language which was suggested by a developer that follows me on Twitter, but I know php too much well and I don’t have enough time to learn a new language right now 🙁

So I thought to give up coding, and just hire people/outsource programmers. But, to be honest, my past experiences haven’t been really convincing. I don’t have lots of funds to spend on coding, but that is only a marginal aspect. I talked with several other indie developers, who have way bigger funds and they all agreed on one thing: if you want to do something right, the only way is to Do-It-Yourself.

That is, especially if you are working over internet. If you know the other person in real life, it’s going to be very different. Also, I’m talking about coding here: there’s nothing wrong in outsourcing art (I’ve been doing this since 3 years now) or music. But coding is really something you need to do yourself, or have someone always available to modify/change the code because you’re going to need him/her to fix the bugs that will inevitably be found even months after the game release (this last thing is even more true in my case, since I wanted to make a webgame).

Right now I’m finishing lots of normal offline games I started, some even last year (like Card Sweethearts) some this year (like Vera Blanc, of which you see a screenshot in this post). Because of that, for now I’m only working on my webgame a few hours in the morning, and then writing for my VN/dating sim/light-RPG in the afternoon, or just relax doing some manual works. So far it’s working pretty well.

Let me give you a suggestion, if you’re indie, never start 6 projects at once like I did this year – it’s going to hurt you 😀

Heileen 2 voiced

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Yep, finally the voiced version of the game is out, after almost 3 months of delay 🙂 you can find more info and download the voiced demo at the official page

Everyone that bought the game before can simply log-in to my server (not BMT one) and redownload it. The link is on the purchase email 😉

Now going to explain a bit my choices when doing the voiced version. As you might know (at least those who reads my twitter or blog) there were LOTs of troubles when voicing the main character, Heileen herself. In the end, I decided to leave her unvoiced. Several factors influenced my choice:

  • after trying 2 voice actress that both gave up on the project (mostly because of the length) I started to think if I would ever find one that would finish the job
  • even if I found one, the game wouldn’t have been finished before next summer (or even later)
  • leaving the game unvoiced was like leaving a “unfinished” game on sale, and I didn’t like that!
  • there are many mainstream games (Dragon Age, Mass Effects and probably some less known japanese VNs) who leave voluntarily the main character unvoiced

So even if my initial idea was to have the game fully voiced as Bionic Heart, I decided to go this way. I think you’ll agree with me that the actors involved did a great voice acting job, so I want to thank them all, in sparse order:

  • Ayu Sakata – Ebele, Marie
  • Steven Mane – Elias, Marco, Adam
  • Lucien Dodge – Black, Morgan, Otto
  • Morgan Barnhart – Lora, Juliet and Heileen kid (which unfortunately had to cut, since the main character won’t be voiced)
  • Erica Mendez – Magdalene, Marcus kid
  • Dan Conlin – Robert, Jack and some minor male characters
  • Mauri “Darkblade” Majanoja –  John, Jonathan

As you can see, quite a large cast 😉 Doing the voices was a great task though, and I don’t think I’ll repeat the experiment anytime soon! For sure not for games with lots of texts, because it’s really time consuming !

The pixel art nostalgia

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I grew up playing pixel art games. Some of the best games, first on C64, then Amiga, and lastly PC (but the first 3d or pseudo-3d games like Doom were already showing).

I really like that style, and it’s a pity that nowadays you can see pixel art only on the small devices like iPhone, Nintendo DS or cellular phones. So, I am thinking to use pixel art for one of my upcoming games! 😀 I know that this might sounds crazy in an era of 3d accelerated cards, shaders, and so on, but I think a good pixel art graphic has something really artistic that you can’t get even with the best 3d real-time art you see in most games nowadays!

Besides, I also think pixel art is very good for cute/girly games, and since one of my upcoming games is definitely made for girls (but also men will be able to play it, fear not) I really want to try. Of course, I won’t feature full 800×600 screens made in pixel art, but for example a tilemap (similar to those you see in all the games made with RPGMaker XP) or perhaps a central part of the screen where the action take place, and all around my usual window/boxes with statistics and hints/tooltips.

I don’t want to announce anything yet, not unless I have implemented some screens with the new art style, but if everything goes well maybe in a month will make a new post with a surprise, a sort of a sequel (even if it will play differently) of one of my most successful games…

The Year Of The Tiger

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I just discovered a fun thing. One of my best collaborator, Ayu Sakata (Flower Shop’s writer, voice actress / proofreader in Bionic Heart, Heileen 2 and more) and I are both of The Tiger in the Chinese Horoscope. This means that this is our year! 😀
It surely started well with The Flower Shop who is getting a positive response and nice reviews everywhere.

Now she is working on editing what should be my next game (unless I manage to finish Vera Blanc first but I doubt it). It’s a manga visual novel / strip poker game called Card Sweethearts. I started this project last year, asking Ren’Py main programmer Tom to create a poker engine out of his card game system for Ren’Py.
The poker is the classic Texas Hold’em, and will become a classic strip poker (featuring only tasteful images though) when you challenge one of the four girl depicted in the title screen image below:

I absolutely like how Ayu is reworking the original game texts (written by another collaborator of mine who had to quit). Just read at Tobias description of Miko, one of the four girl you can pursue in the game and my personal favourite:
“You mean Rocco? That old guy ain’t much, but his woman Miko. Now she’s a fine piece of work. Hottest thing out of the orient since they invented gunpowder.”

Now that’s what I call really top writing! 😀

Below a in-game screen featuring the poker part. That is really fun, and is cool how it integrates with the story itself. The game will also feature a scheduler like my other dating sims where you’ll be able to decide what to do with your week.

So basically I have in production (or planned) the following games for this year:

  • Cardsweethearts – a visual novel / poker game mix
  • Vera Blanc 1 – an american comic-styled mystery game with several minigames in it (more on this soon)
  • Planet Stronghold – probably my biggest project to date, a sci-fi RPG featuring a battlesystem, many varied enemies, an inventory for each character, a training system, a map system, different weapons/armors types, with a romance/VN background and several possible outcomes!
  • a still unnamed horror/mystery game set in victorian times that most likely will be illustrated by Zyephen (the same artist of Planet Stronghold characters / enemies)
  • a sequel of Flower Shop with a brand new game (not farming sim) seen from “the girls side”
  • an hex-grid turnbased fantasy wargame similar to the good old SSI titles

It’s going to be a very busy year as you can see!

Who really is Vera Blanc?

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After I posted the first images I realized I created a bit of a mess. I forgot a simple rule, that the first images you show of a new game will also reflect what people think/expect from it.

First of all it won’t be a erotic game 😀 Nor will be a game without any plot, based only on naked babes! In practice it will be a detective/mystery game, not focused exactly on finding clues or making logic connections, but more about the suspense and mystery since in every case Vera and his partner in crime Brandon will have to face some classic myths of horror/paranormal like zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and so on.

But how will be the gameplay? Actually, will be one of my most unusual VNs… to be honest not even a VN, even if there will be several scenes to tell some important parts of the story, in particular the introduction to the new case.

The gameplay will be similar to Spirited Heart, you get a case, travel to a place and then have several days in which you decide which location explore or what action do. Meanwhile of course things will happen: someone might get killed, or disappear, or something else. I have yet to decide if to set a fixed amount of time to solve the case, or simply use a “variable based unlockable path”, which is probably better so players don’t get frustrated because they run out of time.

Vera will be able, on each case, to select 3 skills to learn for the mission, which will modify the game in several points. For example she might learn “Science”, and before entering an old building she could understand observing the structure that there’s risk of collapsing, or could repair a broken videocamera to see if she can recover some pictures, and so on.

It will also contain at least one word-based mini-game, and several endings even if most of them will be “sudden deaths” ! Yes, will be a game where you better save often…

Sorry if the first images I posted derailed the attention to the game only on the exterior aspect of Vera and how she was dressed in those 2 screenshots I posted 😉