Category Archives: winter wolves games

news about my games, updates and patches I’m working on, and ideas for new games

What are “light-RPG” games?

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I remember when I was young, the game genres where very well defined: there were action games, adventure games, role playing games and so on.

As the game industry grew up, some interesting genre-mix started to pop up. For example now we all refer to Diablo as a RPG, but would be more accurate to call it Action-RPG. Actually, right now, we can find many “RPG elements” in lots of games. Very few “pure action” games remains.

One of my upcoming games, Planet Stronghold, is a “light-RPG” game. I consider it a visual novel with RPG elements, but stronger than those you can usually find in dating sims. What I exactly mean? I’m talking about quests, relationships, interactiveness? No, because many of those features were already present in my other “normal VNs”. In Heileen 1-2 there are quests, in Bionic Heart relationship and some interactive scenes, in Summer Session there are the stats/skills to improve and so on.

So to call the game “light-RPG” I knew I had to go forward and push renpy to its limits (well no, not really, is quite easy to achieve good results with it!). Indeed in Planet Stronghold there will be combat, an inventory, quests, character relationships and so on. There will be several kind of weapons based on the damage type: energy, piercing, explosive, etc. There will be 4 classes: psionic, soldier, guardian and scout, each one with special advantages.

BUT, the game won’t be FILLED by stats. You’ll clearly know from beginning what kind of gameplay you can expect from a certain class. Scouts will need lot of time to recharge but will be able to kill opponents with a single shot, especially human ones. Guardians will be tough and have lots of hitpoints, psionics duty instead will be to heal / protect others. That’s why I use the word “light”, because while is clearly a RPG game, it’s not hard to understand.

Clearly is not easy to create a game like that. Is actually harder than creating an uber-complex game like some I did in the past (Magic Stones or Supernova 2 for example). Because with this game, even a casual player should be able to pick up the game and after learning a few basics, being able to enjoy the game without getting lost not knowing what to do.

Space RPGs !

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There aren’t many space RPG. There is fallout, but is more post-apocalyptic RPG than pure space RPG. I remember some good wargames like Space Hulk & Co. But really very few space RPGs. Especially Manga RPG (I’m talking about Pc/Mac platforms, not consoles).

So, I’ve decided to make one! The two screenshots you see in this page are from Planet Stronghold, my upcoming space RPG. Originally that game should have been another wargame, similar to Supernova 2. But after falling in love with Python I decided that doing a space RPG (with some VN elements of course!) could have been a more interesting game experience.

The player will control the adventures of Lisa Nelson, a young cadet just graduated from the Royal Army, that gets sent on the military outpost of Planet Stronghold to train. Of course, as soon as she arrives there, the situation will go out of control… 🙂

Another rpg card game?

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Yes, I’m playing around withrpgcardgame some ideas for another RPG / card game.

After almost 4 years have passed since I released Magic Stones, I felt the need to write another RPG between a VN and a dating sim 🙂 I have already my other project called Tower Of Destiny which is in full3d but that one will require lot of time (the engine is still to be finished).

For this one instead, using python, I think I could have a playable prototype in a week or so. I have already a bunch of card hand-drawn ready to use (no more 3d models this time!) and an interesting battle system and character development.

In practice you would control “Generals”, who have under their command several units. Each unit is a real character, which his own stats, inventory and skills (or special moves). There would be 3 basic archetypes: Melee, Magic and Missile unit.

The battle would be turn based like Magic Stones but in this one you actually have Action Points. So you can do several actions in your turn. Simple actions like changing your weapon or preparing a spell would require few AP, while other action like attack, swap positions or use items would require more AP. Using skills would also require AP. Differently from Magic Stones each unit could learn several Skills / Special Attacks. There would be a set of common skills between same archetype + some advanced skills. For example the Fighter is the basic Melee unit, and it would share several skills with the Mercenary. But the mercenary would have (at higher level) also skills like dual-wield, critical strike, and so on.

Then the game would consist on release 1.0 probably just in tournaments where you fight against other teams of characters. I plan to have the initial game out at a very interesting price like $9.99 and then release several add-on pack each one priced at $9.99 but with lot of content.

Anyway, all of this is just a plan. From now to the point where the game is finished it could become anything including a online-only game 😀

The best moment for an indie

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This is actually the best moment for me, as indie. What I’m talking about? About the period of time between a finished project, and the start of the new one.

Indeed I’ve officially finished writing all the texts needed for Heileen 2: The Hands Of Fate, even if of course I haven’t finished the game itself yet. But from now on, it is just a matter of waiting for the voices / missing art, and playtesting (but I’ve already done that a lot while writing the story). So while there’s still some work to do, nothing that really require my creativity.

Instead, right now I’m thinking about what to do next. I have several other projects going on, but some are long-term ones, or are carried on by other people (I’ve other writers working on more games). For sure the first thing will be to implement a small mini-farming game for the Flower Shop dating sim, and then… don’t know. I am evaluating several ideas right now, including some light-horror stories, an investigative one, a sci-fi team combat based game with story, and more.

It’s going to be a fun end of the month 🙂

Spirited Heart – go easy on me!

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I’ve decided to do a small 1.0.2 update today, fullversion only (you won’t see the changes in the demo). What I changed is adding an EASY MODE, so everyone will be able to play the game at their own difficulty. The normal mode is how the game was, nothing changed. In the easy mode instead you’ll see that the taxes percentage is MUCH lower, ranging from 15-30% max (in normal is 35-45%!) and the skills will never drop 🙂

Of course I still prefer playing it in normal mode, and in the next update I will add some bonus to the normal version only (probably in a few months though, depending on when I finish Heileen 2). What I mean exactly? some extra events or achievement that you can  get ONLY by playing in normal mode. Otherwise everyone would simply play in easy mode since they wouldn’t have any motivation ! 😉

For those that purchased the game: you can get the update by redownloading the game from my own server (not BMT one), you got the link in the purchase email with the game.