Haha, it’s going to be a long post! My apologies in advance 🙂

I ran out of “characters introduction posts” (at least for the upcoming games), and I wanted to explain what will happen in future regarding both the games and also how I’ll interact publicly. For those who want the short version:

1. I’ll still make RPGs, but maybe one every 2 or 3 years. Not one every year!
2. I’m going to offer optional sexy stuff in most of the future games
3. From now on, I’ll talk about a new game in public only when it’s almost ready

And now for the long version, keep reading!

A RPG a Year… it’s too much

That’s the conclusion I came to recently. After last year, which was very productive, I was really drained out. I’ve rarely felt like that before (only when SOTW was finished! lol). Anyway the thing is, I cannot make a RPG every year. It’s too much, also considering I release other games meanwhile. If I was like Spiderweb, doing RPGs only, then maybe I could do one every 12/18 months. But right now, in my situation, that wouldn’t be possible. It would be hard for me to survive as indie with just one game a year.

Besides, money apart, even if you love something (and I really like to make RPGs) if you push it too hard, it becomes boring. And I want to avoid that, I want to work also on something different. That’s why I did Amber crafting system, the shop builder minigame, etc. As a developer / creative person, I cannot force myself to do only a specific kind of game, as much as I like it.

In summary, since I think to make a decent RPG (not even good, just decent) you need at least 4-5 months for the game design only, as you can imagine it’s hard to make one a year. It’s hard already one every two years to be honest 😛

Right now, I have planned the following RPGs: Loren 2 (which is even split in two parts!), Planet Stronghold 2, Roger Steel, Undead Lily & Cursed Lands. Even if by miracle I did one a year, it would take me 5 years to release them all (and that’s in a super-very-optimist case lol).

So I am thinking maybe to change some of those (maybe UL or RS) to be different, simplified. I haven’t made my mind yet though. The thing is that people can’t expect RPGs which are: long, with male/female protagonists, many romances, multiple branching, a good combat system, inventory, skills system AND expect that I make one a year/every 18 months. I would probably need to clone myself to accomplish this 😀

That said, I will of course still  make RPGs until I can, because I like doing them. It’s only that I realized I cannot afford to do them so often for my own physical/mental health!

Hot stuff!

We can all agree that one of the most common compliment people pay me, is that I listen to people, customers, fans. Of course, not just a small minority. But in general, if a good amount of people ask me a specific thing, and it’s something I can do (not like “hey you should make a full 3D MMORPG”) I try to do it.

I don’t know if it’s because of the hentai games invasion on Steam or something else, but I’ve been getting a lot of request to have more sexy stuff in my games. I want to reassure people who don’t like that kind of content: unless explicitly mentioned both in the game page and description, all the future games will still work like Loren: with completely optional “suggestive content”. And of course, I’ll still make some games like C14 Dating and similar, more on the cute/fluffy side of things. So don’t worry 🙂

The only thing that will change is that the “suggestive content” option which is already present in some games, will be… more suggestive! lol. Imagine for example games like SOTW, Planet Stronghold or PSCD which already had a suggestive option on/off, with an even hotter “suggestive CGs”. That’s it!

Since it’s a simple change for me to do, and it’s optional, I thought was worth doing to make (or at least try to make) everyone happy, as usual.

No pressure!

I recently noticed that announcing a game “too early” it’s not a good thing anymore. Of course on my Patreon I’ll still keep posting preview stuff on the thing I’m working on at the moment, but in public I am not going to announce a new game anymore until it’s basically done. Like if all the story is written and only needs to be scripted (usually 2-3 months of work max) or similar.

Of course for the already announced games this doesn’t matter.

Why? First of all, for the pressure. Really, I know that most people ask “when game XZY will be out?” because they are eager to play it, but it still has some sort of “psychological pressure”, if not on me in particular, on the writers maybe. Also, I think it’s going to damage my reputation, if happens like… <the cursed game> or even other games like PS2, Undead Lily, etc.

If I never talked about those in public too early (like 99% of other indies do, by the way) nobody could know they’re “late” by several years.

This business is really unpredictable. As I said many times in the past, now I have a good group of external collaborators, but sadly anything can happen. Even someone that’s good at his/her job, could have an accident, get hired by some big company, etc in short for any reason that person could need months of break, couldn’t work as fast as before, or not at all.

So of course this doesn’t mean I’ll make less games, I’ll still work like now. Only that instead of announcing a game as soon as it starts (like I did for many games in the past) I’ll talk about it when I’m basically 99% sure that it will be out in the next months. Isn’t it better even for you, the players? 😉

I really think so.