Super Heroes and Heroines

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Is Vera Blanc a Super Heroine? No, not really. She is human: she has fear, she feels sympathy or love for certain person, she is jealous, and she can die like anyone else.

Recently I’ve been writting a lot of those “sudden death” endings. It might look weird, but they’re fun to read. Like in the old “Fighting Fantasy” gamebooks: I remember I was always reading the “death” scenes with great interests, even if they meant I had failed in my quest. I don’t know exactly how to express it, but I thought those description were really cool to read, and they’re to write too 🙂

During the game, Vera’s investigations can encounter a premature end in many different ways. However, beside “saving often” (which is always a good advice for all kind of games) I also try to give the player some hints, like subtle warnings, of what might happen if they’re not careful, or what dangers they could encounter. Anyway, it is definitely a different game from my other ones, you won’t be able to rollback and you will also have to think carefully each move. In the game there are LOTs of menu, much more than my other games. It is more interactive, and after the introductive chapter, the game becomes very interactive, with a daily/weekly planner, a map with places to explore/investigate, and a sort of diary (or “cluebook”) where Vera writes down all the clues/info she will discover during her investigation.

The game will also feature a few minigames, the most important being the “Mind-Reading” one. Yes, because one of Vera’s superpowers is the capacity to read other people’s mind. Check the video below for a good explanation on how the minigame works:

Note – of course the game will be completely edited/proofreaded by native english speaker before being released 😉

That’s all for now – next post I hope to be able to show you a video introducing Vera’s story, including her superpowers!

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!

Follow the leader: about characters in a party RPG

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As some of you might know, recently I fell in love with Bioware’s latest title, Dragon Age.

Of course there are MANY reasons to love that game: but as game designer, the most interesting new feature (never seen before in a RPG game as far as I know) is the party management / relationship between the main characters and his/her companions.

Beside the possible romance outcomes, which are very nice, I also liked in particular the skill bonus that each NPC can get if you have a good relationship with him/her. I definitely want to do the same in my game Planet Stronghold. Beside raising the skills the “normal” way (through Training or winning battles / earning XPs) I also want to have a relationship value with each of them, and that value will give bonuses to combat. Of course also a negative value will give a negative bonus to combat.

Another very interesting feature is that the NPC actually interacts during the exploration dialogues. Evil / selfish characters will be annoyed if you try to help too much everyone you meet, while generous / brave characters will be pissed if you do evil action or if you refuse to help the weaks. This will require a bit more planning during the dialogues to check for all the possible companions present in that point, but will definitely add much more atmosphere and realism to the game.

I always liked the idea of your party NPC being not simple soldiers that will follow the leader blindly, but real characters with their own morals / thoughts that will change their opinion on you based on your actions.

Planet Stronghold – New characters

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Today got more pictures for Planet Stronghold + new sketches for the new characters. I must say the improvement is great, and the game is changing from a “cute” look to a more “adult” look, but still using manga art. Michelle is the new character that was redone, and I like it a lot. She’s a small, thin girl but she is very determined in becoming a good soldier for the Empire!

Click on the thumbnail on the left to see it bigger, is worth it! This is her “casual dressed” version.

The new sketches looks also very promising. Rebecca, who is my favourite character, an aggressive and sexy woman of the Scout class, and also your training Sergeant, will have a big role through the whole game. While the older image was cute, the new one (just saw the sketch but I’m already loving it) will better represent her personality.

One last image showing both Lisa and Michelle in their uniform, during the training session. I’ve also started coding the Training Screen where you’ll be able to train your heroes skills without going to combat, but I am still doing some balancing / UI work so probably won’t be able to post any screens before 1-2 weeks.

I’ve also started another artist on the inventory/items art, since I decided to switch from just displaying text lines in the inventory to a standard icon inventory, so player will be able to recognize instantly the item from the shape/colors.

Flower Shop released + making of

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First of all, in case you don’t know, the game is now out! You can get more info at the official page here: http://www.winterwolves.com/theflowershop.htm

Then I want to give a brief background history on this game in case someone is interested. It all started shortly after I found out about Ren’Py engine and the visual novel / dating sim world. I got to know the LemmaSoft community (which has been very helpful for me in making those games since then) and several great people like Tom Rothamel, Ayu Sakata and M.Beatriz Garcia. Those two last people were later fully involved in the game.

Summer Session, a dating sim made together with Hanako games, was released in July 2008 and was very successful, with mentions on Gamasutra, Macworld, and so on. So I wanted to make another, but at same time go on with my other projects (Heileen, Spirited Heart would get released in the next months). While browsing Lemmasoft forums I found out Deji (Garcia nickname) and of course I was impressed by her skills, but also by the fact that at those times (if I remember correctly) no games (even freewares!) were ever released with her beautiful art.

I thought to ask her if she was interested, and I still remember after I sent her my initial game idea she wasn’t much motivated because of the “guy goes after girl” theme: but when I expanded it mentioning one of the main girls would be a Flower Shop owner, she immediately changed her mind! Also, in the beginning, the game was really like another Summer Session. But then (luckily I think) I decided to ask Ayu Sakata to write it completely on her own, just following my original plot idea, but leaving all the dialogues to her.

Was July 2009, she had just done some proofreading /editing for Bionic Heart and I really liked her work, so asked her if she wanted to take care of the project, and she did. She changed the player perspective from the classic male point of view (the one of Summer Session for example) to a more delicate, romantic view (I’d say definitely more female!).

Meanwhile Deji was going on with the pictures, but was a bit slow because had to do an internship. In late 2009 the plot was fully written but there was still several pictures left: I still remember Marian was the last girl to be added, and some of her poses were paused for over 3 months 😀 But then, the internship ended and I must say I was surprised to see Deji motivation and speed (quality was NEVER in discussion) ! She finished all the remaining art in December, and the main menu in early January.

The background art was done by other external contractors and the interface… is my fault in case you’re wondering 😉 In December 2009/January 2010 I had lot of fun programming the farming sim part: I wanted something casual, not very complex but not too easy either, and I think I made it. Once again I was pleased to work with Python which is without any doubt the best language ever to do … just anything, from games to any other kind of programming task!

So that’s it… basically the game from its original concept in October 2008, was finished more than 1 year later, in January 2010! Of course, there were lots of pauses and dead moments so isn’t like the game took 1 year of actual work to make!

And now, what’s next? I am already discussing with Deji and Ayu about a possible “girl side” version of the game. I agree, I think many girls would like to deal with nice guys like Jacob and Trent…!