Merry Christmas

Leave a reply

First of all, Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to you all! 🙂 Like every year I’m doing a promo sale for the holidays, on itch.io and on Steam.

Planet Stronghold 2

In the past weeks I also made very good progress on this game. As you know, I am currently focusing  on the rules first, and I decided to use a random items generation system (plus probably some fixed “Legendary  Items”) like I did in SOTW. The results so far are good:

As you can see, the item stats on bottom-right should be familiar to anyone who played SOTW. I decided though, thanks to my time spent playing-ahem, doing research with Destiny 2, to display in the inventory a big number for the item “power”, and the damage type/rarity and finally level. This way players can find the desired weapon more quickly and with less clicks than my other RPGs!

With the armors I do something similar, I display the overall item power, the higher resistance (like in the first game there will be energy, explosive, armor piercing, acid and psionic damage), the quality and level.

For the armors and determining the damage, I have decided to use a system derived from the Cursed Lands’ one, which at least judging from beta-tester feedback seems good. I already posted in details in forums, so if you want to know more you can visit them, but in summary the defense value will deteriorate through the course of the fight, while the resistances are percentage based and determine the amount of damage absorbed (depending on the weapon attack type obviously).

In the next weeks I’ll go on with my tests, though of course as soon as I get new content for Cursed Lands or Love Bites, I’m going to work on them since they have the priority.

Speaking of Cursed Lands and Love Bites

To speed things up, in agreement with the writer, I am working on the nagas storyline for Cursed Lands myself with the help of Heirs & Graces writer, and Love Bites writer just finished the last “solo player” scenes: like in other dating sims, you can choose to not romance anyone if you want. But since in this game the goal is to survive/find the cure for your curse, we needed to give the players the possibility to find it even if they don’t romance anyone 🙂

Expect an update for both games in the next weeks (in particular for Love Bites I should be able to have half of the whole game content in beta next month for sure).

See you next week for the end of year/summary post (I’m going to break my a post every 2 weeks rule to do that). And again, Happy Holidays!

Some good news + future plans

4 Replies

Last time I said I was hoping to bring some good news, and here they are! Let’s proceed in order.

Cursed Lands

If you missed my announcement in the social media, a beta version featuring the full first chapter except the Nagas rescue mission (until the end of first full moon) is now available on itch.io here: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/cursed-lands

All the usual disclaimers apply when talking about a beta: savegames “should” be compatible, there WILL be bugs (but if you tell me about them I’ll fix them), I might tweak things (not story-related though). As of now I haven’t added a “visual novel mode” yet, though you can always try playing in Easy mode.

Meanwhile I finished coding some more stuff for the second chapter, including an epic boss fight against the Kraken! It’s optional, so you don’t need to do it, but it’s very hard and has probably the best loot reward of the whole game:

So might be worth trying, don’t you think? Especially if you like to use the two nagas characters (two items are exclusively for them).

Currently I’m waiting for the writer to send me the new texts necessary for the second chapter, however as you see from the images above, I have already coded a LOT of things: all the rescue missions, the kraken fight, a tomb exploration sidequest, etc etc. It has the biggest amount of content of all the three chapters probably. Of course being an “open world” rpg, you don’t necessarily NEED to do all those quests in the second chapter, some can be completed also in the third.

As soon as writer sends me the missing scenes I’ll update the beta again, unlocking the whole second chapter. For now, have fun with the first 🙂

Love Bites

Things are progressing well for this game too. The “half-game” beta shouldn’t be much away from now! Not sure about the exact release date yet, but should be out before Christmas, with the final/full game out first quarter of 2018.

…and Planet Stronghold 2

Haha yes you read it well! Since I am now waiting for Cursed Lands’ remaining writing, what there is better to do than start working on another RPG!? Jokes apart, yes, I think it’s a good idea for two reasons: first, I’m in “RPG design mode”, I am working with the RPG framework code, so I’m fresh / familiar with it, and second because it’s about time to finish that game (I announced it back in 2011-2012!).

As I posted in forums, I’m going to plan the ruleset, gameplay etc, still using the good old framework but once again, it will play differently from the previous RPGs. I’m planning to try having randomized items again (like in Seasons Of The Wolf, since it seems players liked it) but still have only 2-3 equipment slots each character to reduce micro-management. Anyways it’s still early days but managed to update the old character creation code with the new GUI and I think the result it’s very good:

The soldier class info screen

Choose your side at start of the story

As announced at beginning of the story you’ll be able to choose who you sided with (Empire/Rebellion) and who you romanced (if any) in the previous game.

This will inevitably require a lot of branching in writing the story so I’m doing this part myself, but of course will ask the help of Miakoda (who wrote PSCD) for editing/proofread and writing the new romance scenes. I’m only writing this first part myself since it’s going to be a pain with all the gameplay and multiple beginning/branching!

Obviously there’s no estimate release date, I’ll just work on it whenever I’m waiting for the other two games currently in active development above. But at least I’m not wasting time 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving + Promo Sale

Leave a reply

First of all, to all my Americans followers, Happy Thanksgiving! 🙂

I am doing a sale on itch.io: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/
And of course on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Winter%20Wolves

Every purchase on itch.io comes with a free Steam key. You might have also noticed that I started pre-orders there for both Cursed Lands and Love Bites. Usually I don’t like to do pre-orders much, but in this case both games are in a very advanced state (as you know if you read the previous blog post) and since some people asked, I thought to do it.

Some news

In the image above, one of the animated intros of the various vampire boss fights

And now some updates:

  • We’ve decided to use the same artist who did the PSCD manga version to do the romance CG of Volleyball Heaven. So you know what to expect… HOT STUFF!
  • I’ve finished coding the four “vampire lieutenant boss fights” for Cursed Lands. Each boss fight can be won peacefully using social talents. Or if you want, you can just exterminate them all and get the achievement of “vampire killer”! Expect a beta demo featuring a good amount of the game story next month.
  • I’ll make a beta build of Love Bites as soon as both Viktor and Sabrina routes are fully finished (only the romance CG and a few minor scenes left). Maybe I’ll announce it even in next blog post.

That’s everything for now, but hopefully next time I’ll have some more good news 🙂

Love Bites and Cursed Lands update

12 Replies

First of all, I made an updated version of Roommates with completely optional “nude romances CG” currently in beta testing. More info/details in my forums here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=4078

Now let’s talk about today’s post: 7 months ago, in April, I made a post with the same title. You can find it here if you’re curious: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2017/04/love-bites-cursed-lands-update/

So, after all those months, how are things now? I already posted an update in previous blog, but today I’m going to go deeper.

Love Bites scheduler and romances

As I wrote back then, this game has a scheduler but no stat raising. The relationship bar is increased simply by spending time with each character, it’s not influenced by the choices. The things I said in that blog post are still valid, but using the image above I want to explain how the different endings work.

Originally I wanted to keep those values secret, but after thinking more about it, was pointless – since a game must not be hard by making people guess which choice will increase what variable 🙂

So in summary each character has two possible… let’s call them “variants”. Viktor for example has Social and Nerd. Sabrina has Artist and Huntress. Nadia has … wait, I don’t want to spoil the fun!

Anyway, with your choices in the dialogues, you’ll influence the character (for example by making Viktor more sociable, or on the opposite by pushing him to take advantage of his nerd side). Those values will determine, at end of the game, which ending you get (beside the romance ending and CG which are fixed). Probably better call it epilogues, more than endings.

Here’s the mystery of those hidden variables explained!

Cursed Lands romances and bonus scenes

I already posted a few on twitter, but here I’ll post a male and a female one to be fair!

Leena in a very… suggestive scene beside the campfire 😉

Vaeril trying to get through a forest and, ops, his precious dress is scratched open! Well, considering he’s a druid he’s in good shape, don’t you think?

What are those bonus CG? Simply said, after the big success of Amber pin-ups, I decided to add some more for this game. As you probably should know, the original artist is the same who did Loren art and sadly he doesn’t work for me anymore. So I had to use someone else, but that has a style similar enough I think. In any case, the result is good in my opinion.

Those CG are used in two ways: to illustrate a scene already in the main romance story, or to illustrate two bonus scenes when the player is a couple with the love interest.

Indeed, a big difference vs all my previous games, it’s that in this one if you want you can sleep with more than one character in the same playthrough – yes, unlock the “final romance CG” with more than just one  character. Of course, this is not without consequences ! In this case the usual “jealousy scene” will trigger and you’ll need to pick one love interest.

After you choose the love interest, all other romance routes are blocked, but as “reward”, you get two more bonus scenes with him/her, as couple (another thing that was missing in my previous games).

Plus of course there’ll be the ending epilogues which will change based on this (and also on other choices in the game but that I can’t reveal because are big spoilers!).

The game script as predicted it’s already 200,000 words now, with many boss fights missing and all the endings/epilogues yet to write. I wouldn’t be surprised if the final script will be around 230-250,000 words. Yes, another SMALL GAME ™!

In conclusion, I really hope that you’ll enjoy both games when are out, because as usual they’re big, with lot of content, very replayable, and we’re putting a lot of efforts in making them !

Release plan and older games

5 Replies

First of all, PSA: I released a collection of my older games (really old, some of them date back to 2004!!!) on itch.io and Steam for the low price of $4.99! The collection includes some of my early sports sims and the two Vera Blanc games. I only put the games I was 100% sure would work under Windows 10 (no Mac or Linux, sorry).

I decided to to it since some people asked for it, and besides at such low price I think could be a good value for money (especially Universal Boxing Manager or TV Station Manager).

Also as you probably saw already, there’s the usual Halloween Steam sale with my various games discounted 🙂

Release plan

We’re almost at the end of October, so time to look back at what happened this year so far and what to expect. As usual in this business, was a year of quick changes. As I wrote in previous blog post, for this year I won’t probably be able to finish any other game, even if I currently have 3 games at very good point: Cursed Lands, Volleyball Heaven and Love Bites.

If things go as planned, I will probably release Love Bites first. Half game is basically ready, so I could even try to do a pre-order/beta version with that relatively soon. I’m only waiting for the main trailer and some endings scenes: if I put the beta out with Sabrina and Viktor routes I’d like to have the ending CGs and the epilogues, so people experience the “full path” for each character at least.

For Volleyball Heaven, once the artist finishes the remaining CGs, everything else is pretty much ready, but scripting it will take a couple of months I think, also because (as usual lol) what originally started as 75k words max game became almost double that… 😀

Cursed Lands should be the last one to be released simply because, being a RPG with several innovations like the talent system and boss battles with dialogues/choices, it requires much more testing and coding than a simple dating sim. So even if I had all finished texts by end of year, I would probably need 3-4 months more to do the coding/testing/balancing.

A new way of working

Once I finish the 3 games above, with some exceptions for a few games already written/started but that I haven’t publicly announced yet, I am going to change how I work in future. In practice I’ll still be using a few selected external writers who have proven to be reliable and also skilled, but mostly I’ll be back writing the games myself and use editors only. I am already experimenting with this for Cursed Lands, adding some more camp talk scenes, and I think honestly the end result is good and progress are fast.

Fast, because I write them myself, and I always wrote things fast. And this doesn’t mean that what I write is set in stone, but I noticed that the writer while editing/reviewing the scene, often get ideas for more dialogues or even future scenes. It’s weird to explain but it’s a sort of brainstorming and exchange of ideas. I think this system works much better than an isolated writer writing on his/her own, no matter how good is.

Also after all those years, I know well what my players want, how much important is for them romance, relationships, sexy elements, jokes, etc.  And since I’d write the game as I’m coding it, the game story will feel much more integrated with the gameplay (a problem that some of my recent games like Amber or Queen Of Thieves had).

I believe that with a good editor/writer reviewing all the scenes, tweaking what I wrote, or even reworking/rewriting completely whole sentences, the ending result should also be of a decent level regarding grammar and writing quality! And most importantly with this system I shouldn’t have anymore delays of YEARS since I announced a game and its release. Yes, I know that’s a very common thing in the game development business, but honestly I don’t like it (and for sure my players don’t like it either).