First of all, short update on Tales From The Under-Realm: After Midnight. I am at good point, I’m finishing to script the ending scenes and waiting for some art, but overall I believe I should have a beta out next month!

And now let’s get to the topic of this post.

Many people use Steam reviews to judge a game success. And up to a point, it’s a valid metric. If a game has an insane amount of reviews (in the order of hundred or thousands) in a short time, one thing it’s sure: has sold a lot of copies!

But what about us small indie devs? It’s really hard to say, when reviews are under 50-100, if a game was successful or not.

Of course it’s even harder to say now because every year, average income for each game drops noticeably. So games with same amount of reviews or review scores could have very different results.

Lately getting past 10 reviews for an average priced game ($10-15) it’s super hard, since very few players leave them. Anyway, to make this post, I compared the revenues of the games I released back in 2016-17. I picked those since I didn’t do any crowdfunding back then and it was a time where you could still get decent exposure on Steam.

For comparison, none of the recent games got such high amount of reviews and still some sold way better (see a previous blog post: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2022/04/market-changes/ )

The graph above shows the revenues in red, the review score (in percentage) in green, and the reviews amount in blue. Note that I wrote this blog a few weeks ago so maybe I got some new reviews in the meanwhile, but it shouldn’t change by much.

Generally, higher reviews=better sales, but it largely depends on the genre: both PSCD and Queen Of Thieves have fewer reviews than C14 Dating or Heirs & Graces, but revenues are similar or slightly higher.

I think from my experience (not just those games but considering also all my others) is that games with extra gameplay, especially RPG (not so much card games sadly) bring more revenues with same review amount and similar rating. It’s also true though that games with gameplay take on average 2-3 times the amount to make.

I also believe that if a game has a particularly well done story or that somehow remains impressed in people for various reasons, like Heirs & Graces, it can bring a lot of reviews, but sadly not much revenue (it’s probably the game with the highest disparity between reviews and revenues that I have made!).

For comparison, Queen Of Thieves has 1/3 of Heirs and Grace reviews, much lower rating, and still it sold slightly more. Because is a RPG, and also because it features female protagonists and/or lesbian/yuri romance which seems to be the single highest selling point for VN on Steam market (it’s not random that most of the recent games I’ve made all are yuri!).

Conclusions

This is just my experience but speaking privately with other indies they had same results. That’s why I believe that if a game has less than 100 reviews, trying to determine how successful it was based on review amount is difficult. If a game has over 100, then it did well, and if has over 1000 then it was definitely a small hit! Everything else are just theories.

We’re halfway through 2022 so time for a general update about stuff in progress and what might happen in the next 6 months.

ToA: An Elven Marriage

The demo’s response was good, I had a lot of useful/interesting feedback.

Beside fixing some minor bugs people spotted, I might do an addition: for those who want to remain loyal to their only love from Loren’s game, I might add an option to pick that name. For this game and for the other games too. Of course, there won’t be any romance scenes (especially when the character is not even present in the story!) but this way it will let people roleplay better.

Right now in some scenes if you don’t continue a previous romance with Myrth/Rei, Elenor/Saren will start as single. Now instead I could write generic replies to imply tha they aren’t single, but still not interested in romance, that won’t require too much time to add.

For example Nathir might ask if we have someone. If single (as it is now) will answer no. If continuing a previous romance NOT present in the story (so not Rei or Myrth), the answer could be that “we have a special someone waiting for us back home”.

Just generic sentences like that should work and not require too much effort, so I think it can be implemented easily enough in this story and next ones. Also, in some stories the love interests will be present as NPC but not in the party, like the second game. There will be both Karen and Loren but they won’t actively join the party. But this way I’ll just have a few scenes with them for those who still want to roleplay.

I hope I managed to explain myself, it’s a bit confusing I know! I still haven’t decided if I’ll do this or not yet, but at least as idea doesn’t seem too difficult.

Tales From The Under-Realm: After Midnight

I’m making very good progress on this game, about half of the story is done and I’m scripting it. Still waiting for some more art, and the theme song is also ready (I posted it on the Kickstarter update).

Curiously I got way more withslists for this game than An Elven Marriage during the Steam Fest event, so it seems that at least the beginning of the story captured the interest of many people.

I’m making sure to have a good story with many branching points and having several dark/sad ending, alongside some bittersweet and happy endings: yes because as happened in Hazel (the first title of this series) despite the dark setting I like to provide at least one happy ending for each romance couple.

Since the game should be out in the next 3-4 months I’ve already set up a page on itchio with a pre-order option, for those who missed the Kickstarter or simply prefer to buy the game regularly. The game is not ready of course (you’ll get a simple wallpaper if you try to download it now), but you can already download the wallpapers and OST and listen to it if you want.

Other projects in the work

As usual I’m working on many other projects at the same time, since to meet my goal of at least 2 games out every year you need to plan in advance. I have posted several previews in my Patreon in the past months as usual. I have a project in particular that could be announced in the next months, perhaps even this Fall. Stay tuned!

Sadly only a few months after my other older cat Mirtillo died, even Lilly passed to a better life. She was 16 years old, so at least not as young as some other cats I had, but she had a special place in my heart also for a reason: she was the last stray cat that we rescued in our previous place, and by pure coincidence she’s also the last to leave us.

With her departure a chapter of my life closes. I still have three cats and a dog, but this was the last link we had to our previous home and in a way, previous life (things were way different back in 2006-2007 even professionally). When I think at her, I think at the difficulties I had in my early years as indie developer, the expenses, and still the courage to do the right thing and try to save as many innocent creatures as possible. And it was totally worth it.

Thank you Lily for everything and see you on the other side.

This is going to be the month of demos! Haha, after years since I last made them (I think one of the last demos I made was for Love Bites), I’m going to participate in the Steam next fest with not one but two demos.

The first one will be for Tales From The Under-Realm: After Midnight. I got the last missing background for it so now everything is good to go:

You can play the demo right now on Steam using this link.

By the way, the Kickstarter is still active and has a (rather long) trailer:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/tales-from-the-under-realm-after-midnight

I’ll shorten the trailer for the game official release, but meanwhile take a look since it introduces the story and characters rather well.

Regarding the Kickstarter, we hit the base goal already and we’re about halfway to the first stretch goal. By the way, I didn’t post much of the actual love scenes, but like the previous game, there’ll be a tame version, and a very explicit one. For example the image below:

Is a close up of the censored version, in the uncensored version both will be naked and… “doing things with their hands” lol. I am not posting anything explicit here in my blog/site but if you’re interested in hot stuff, you won’t be disappointed, trust me!

To know more about the game visit the Kickstarter page.

Tales Of Aravorn: An Elven Marriage

If having the demo ready for TFTU – After Midnight was relatively easy, since it’s a regular visual novel, having a demo for ToA – An Elven Marriage was much more difficult. But I did it, follow this link to play it. And don’t forget to wishlist the game!

In the end, it’s only 4-5 chapters, and it contains maybe 4-5 fights total, but it still has a lot of final content (tweaks to skills/items excluded of course). I have been working on this since last year, on and off while waiting for stuff for the other games to get finished.

When I started wasn’t sure I’d make in time but looks like I did! In the demo you’ll be able to meet Lydia, Nathir and Gruff (the first non-binary character of my fantasy games).

Now for those who still don’t know, this is the first of the planned four spin-off games with Saren/Elenor. Each game will have two “old” love interests (in this case Myrth and Rei) and two new ones (Lydia and Nathir). You can continue an old romance, or start as single and pursue one of the new love interests.

I wrote about the reasons (mainly avoiding burn-out but also providing much more screen time to each character) in this blog post long ago: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2020/07/a-clarification-about-loren-2/

I also hinted about the various games. Today I want to announce the full plan. Bear in mind that since are RPGs, they take a lot of time to make, and I’ll take breaks while doing them to release smaller games. So, the last one might be out even in 8 years from now…!

The other three stories revealed

After An Elven Marriage, the next three games will be (titles are temporary and might change):

Reign of War

This is what the original Loren 2 story was about. The third and final war against demons. Old romances: Mesphit and Draco. New romances: Jul and Breza

Reign of Peace

A story about the riot in the amazon citadel/culture due to Loren’s change of laws (no more slavery, more rights to men). Old romances: Loren and Karen. New romances: Odurat and Nook

The Witches Of Unforgiving Swamp

This is my favorite setting and will be about the fight between the witches and the empire/witch hunters. Lots of cameos with other characters like Vin. Old romances: Chambara and Amukiki. New romances: Selith and Samaras

A few rules

There will also be some rules: in general I’ll try to avoid at all costs to put a previous potential love interest in a story in which you can’t romance them. But for new characters that can be romanced I’ll make an exception. So for example, in An Elven Marriage you’ll see Breza. You can’t romance her until the Reign Of Peace story, so she will be like a NPC/secondary character. Same for the other new characters.

Hopefully will help those players who want to roleplay and remain loyal to their only love from Loren and that won’t romance anyone else until the game with them comes out!

Last but not least – I’m not sure if ALL games will be RPGs. Since they take a loong time to make! Take into account at least 4-5 months of extra work for each game just for design/coding the RPG part (not including testing).

So for example for Reign of Peace I could do something different, like a sim or management game and so on. I haven’t made my mind about this yet, we’ll see how burned out I am after the first game is out, hopefully at end of this year or early next!

As already announced earlier this month, the Kickstarter of my next dark/gothic yuri game in the Tales From The Under-Realm series is now live:

I invite you to visit the link below to discover more about the game: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/tales-from-the-under-realm-after-midnight

A bit of behind the scenes

And now for those curious about how I came to this game idea, here’s some “behind the scenes” stuff. A thing I often like to do, is read again my old games, with a particular attention to secondary characters. I like to imagine how they became to be like what they are, their morals, their personality. What is their backstory?

The lead can be anything, from their personality traits, to something they said about their past lives. For example, I’m currently thinking about a game story about a single scene of Season Of The Wolf, in which Vaelis mention a certain Rogan The Red and a revolt happened in some far away islands.

For this game instead the inspiration came directly from Loren, and in particular General Samael. Do you remember the first things he says in Loren? When he meets with Apolimesho?

“If it isn’t the heretic Archwizard himself. You will not bewitch me to your elf agenda. You might as well leave.”

From a simple sentence like this we can evince the following things: that Samael and Apolimesho have a past, and they dislike each other. That Samael has something against the elves.

Then as the scene goes on, when Amukiki (the ex-gladiator) speak, it’s obvious that Samael has in high consideration people like him. So naturally Samael likes gladiators and the arena.

All those things inspired me to write a story when Samael was younger and he was just the Captain of the guards, but was already aiming to be something more. It will show the ruthless man and what he was capable of doing.

But Samael is only a secondary character of this story. This time the protagonist can be fully customized, skin color and name included (it’s a stretch goal but I really hope we’ll reach it). There are two love interests like in Hazel: Tara the childhood friend who is a guard too, and Cynthia, a mysterious girl from Dingirra that arrives at the beginning of the story. But this time, there will be more death and dark turns of the plot. Many characters can die, depending on your choices.

Yes because this time the cast of secondary characters is much bigger. There’s Martha, Samael’s wife and elf. Their daughter Evelyn who is a secondary character but has the biggest impact on the story. There’s Gus, Tara’s brother, who is a guard too. Nadja, Cynthia’s mother and poledancer.

And lastly there are two other character who I cannot mention because of spoilers, but that they will play an important role.

Like Hazel, there’ll be a base version of the game with sexy outfits but nothing more. Then there’ll be an optional version with full adult content for those who like it.

As already said, I’m working on a demo of this game for the Steam Next fest, which will introduce some of the characters. It won’t be very long but hopefully interesting enough. Also, I am planning to have a full voiced trailer for the game next week, so stay tuned!