What a charming title for a blog post, uh? haha

Well, sadly, I think this year could be the year. Let me explain what I mean by this. I mean the death of visual novels as a viable indie developer genre, not the death of visual novels as genre!

Rather the opposite, indeed. Last year I asked my old friend Ichiro about some Steam visual novel stats and this was the result:

Yes you read it right, in August and November 2024 there were 199 new VNs released in a month. In December, 156. In January 2025, 186.

That means that players see roughly 7 new VNs a day on Steam. A day! Imagine opening Netflix and every day there are 7 new shows to watch. You wouldn’t even have time to do check the trailers !

So, for players it’s a very good moment, but for developers? It’s super tough, of course.

What is the reason?

That’s the next question of course. Well, VNs are probably the easiest kind of game to make. So that’s the start. But recently, there’s another element which is making the overall development even easier: the advent of AI, and Steam accepting AI in games.

Until early 2024 (I think, I don’t remember exactly) Steam had a strict anti-AI policy, but then they allowed it, providing devs disclosed any use of it. And guess what? A lot of devs started using it. I know many players are against AI, but apparently the majority isn’t (also maybe in the adult games category, people really don’t care much lol).

So while before anyone could make a game, but they still had to pay character artists, background art, music, and even a writer if they didn’t know how to write, now they can do all those things with AI, saving a lot of money.

Because let’s be honest – the first thing that catches interest in a game like a visual novel is the art. You can write the best story ever, but if there isn’t nice art, most people aren’t going to buy and play your game.

Personally, I find AI generated art all soulless and even ugly / unrealistic. But this is my personal opinion. Let’s go on with the reasoning.

But wait, things can get worse!

A consequence of this influx of games is the likely onset of a price war—and to some extent, it’s already begun. This could play out in one of two ways:

1. Lower Prices: Games that would typically sell for $15–$20 may now be priced at $5–$10 to remain competitive.
2. Overloaded Content: Developers might keep the original price tag but pack their games with massive amounts of content—such as 8–12 love interests, 100 CGs, animations, full voice acting, and more—to justify the cost and attract players.

So, once again, for players it’s only good news – more bang for their bucks! But for devs ? Uhh, things aren’t going to be great!

For established devs like me who have a following, things are already tough (I barely broke even with my last 2-3 games) but for starting indies? I honestly I wouldn’t want to be an aspiring visual novel dev right now.

I know this whole post might seem depressing, but I swear I’m only trying to warn people about the current state of the market, nothing more, nothing less. Then of course, there are still chances to make money, but it’s important to keep expectations low, very low.

In a way the VN market is becoming similar to the books market – where the 1% earns 99% of the money, and most of people fail to make a living with it. So, nothing new, really.

What am I planning to do?

I plan to keep working on the current projects of course, and in particular Thieves of Dingirra and games that have more complex gameplay added to the visual novel genre. I think in future might be even more important, to add extra gameplay to differentiate your game from the huge crowd of VNs.

However, I don’t want to hide that at the end of this year I’ll need to review a bit the results and then I might be forced to make a choice – simply stop making simple visual novels (which would be a pity since sometimes I like to just write a story without having to design gameplay or code), or maybe be very careful when planning the budgets.

Another thing is that in the past in several games I overspent, using all crowdfunded+patreon money and adding funds from my own pocket because I wanted the game to turn out the best possible, but sadly it had no noticeable impact on the sales.

As you can imagine, raising funds to use them all to pay artists and then earn less than a minimum salary isn’t a sustainable long term strategy! Also, in the last 3-4 years felt like that my games’ success was all a bit random, and depending ONLY on the game idea/setting, art, kink and so on. Like if all the work behind it meant nothing. Totally based on the Steam “algorithm”. Ugh.

This is what surprised me mostly! It was like “you need to chunk out cheap games as quickly as possible, hoping to hit a jackpot, and nothing else matters”. You add a theme song? no impact. You spend $2k on beautiful hand drawn backgrounds? no impact. You spend lot of time writing interesting dialogues? sure, lots of praise in the reviews, but for sales? no impact. And so on. It’s… a bit depressing, really!

Conclusions

One last thing: this is not something exclusive to visual novels, there’s a sort of global crisis of game development companies all around the world. I think though, for the reasons above, that VN is one of the genres that are suffering mostly from this. On Steam you’d have better chances of making money doing a roguelike, strategy, survival, sim, etc, the less crowded genres.

Anyway, let’s see what happens first, since I have high hopes for the games I plan to finish this year! Also, a friend doing adult games commented on my games saying that the main issue is not having a male protagonist (which apparently is very important considering the Steam target market), so who knows maybe that will change things in the next months! Thieves of Dingirra will have all the romance combos, and the unannounced game will be boy x girl exclusively.

Speaking of Christine’s Care, I am planning the beta later this month, since all the art is basically done, and the final release sometimes in March! So if you haven’t yet please wishlist the game on Steam.

Sorry if the post sounds too negative. I’m honestly not too worried for myself, I’ve been indie since over 20 years and I’m confident I can always find a solution. But I think young devs approaching the VN world needs to know the challenges that they’re going to face! And if you’re one, good luck !

A new year, and here comes new year goals! Let’s now see in detail what I plan (hope?) to achieve this year.

Christine’s Care

First of all, of course I’m going to finish Christine’s Care. No matter how the Kickstarter did, when I start a project I always try to do my best to make a good product. And to be honest I didn’t think the game would turn out to be so big. It’s way bigger than some fantasy games I did before (like Hazel, for example).

Also, even At Your Feet had an average Kickstarter but then it sold very well on Steam – so it’s not like I have lost all hopes for this game, because I think it’s turning out very well!

The estimate release is still Q1, maybe around end of February or March. More info coming soon!

Thieves Of Dingirra

And then, it will be Thieves Of Dingirra‘s turn! The campaign will start in the next months (not sure exactly when yet, but will let you know). As you probably know, I’ve been working on this from time to time the whole past year, because it’s such a big game that requires a lot of time just for the base gameplay.

I am at good point and I think by end of January or mid-February I could have the base “gameplay loop” done, and then I could start the crowdfunding with bonus goals to expand the story, maybe a new elf race, etc. The map took very long to make (also because I’m using Ren’Py, with C++ would be easier, but I want to stick with the tools I know). It’s still work in progress, but it’s turning out very nice (and not too slow which was my main fear):

New male protagonist game

I’ve also started brainstorming a new game, this time featuring a male protagonist. Now, before all the yuri fans scream in despair, hear me out—I haven’t made a boy/girl-focused game in ages! I think the last one was Bionic Heart back in 2009! Of course, I’ve created games with all romance combinations, like the big RPGs or Roommates, but a game solely centered around a male protagonist? It’s been such a long time!

Before you ask—yes, it will also have a comedic setting. I know it might not be a game for everyone, but it’s something I’ve wanted to try for a while, especially since some fans have been asking for it repeatedly. (Plus, I’ve heard it’s the kind of game that tends to sell better on Steam. Ahem, I do need to keep the lights on, so forgive me!)

I’ll always keep doing yuri games and other combos, but I want to try “new things”.

For now, the sneak peek I can offer is some of the love interests of the game (yes it’s a new artist). What do you think?

Conclusions

As you can see, there are many exciting projects I’m planning to tackle this year. My main goals include finishing Christine’s Care, then launching the campaign for Thieves of Dingirra, and hopefully completing it. On top of that, I’d love to reveal the new boy/girl game and even run a campaign for it as well. Bonus goal would be even finish that new game (but that will be hard, maybe towards end of the year) and do a campaign for At Your Feet 2 (yep! I’m planning on doing a sequel with different characters though).

If I can achieve all that, finish 3 games and do 3 crowdfunding campaigns, I’d consider 2025 a fantastic year!

I hope you enjoyed the holidays and wish you an amazing 2025 ahead!

So as usual, in this post I’m going to review my goals for 2024 and see what happened. For reference, this was the blog post with my “new year goals”.

House of Chavez was released, which was a sure thing for me (whenever I do a Kickstarter, I’m confident I can finish the project in a reasonable amount of time). The reception was mixed, with some people not liking the gameplay part (and I’m not even talking about the minigames that can be entirely skipped!). Sales-wise, I was expecting a bit more, considering the quality of the product. However, I’ve come to realize that it’s really hard nowadays. The exposure and sales provided by Steam are always going down, so you can have very different (worse) results even from one year to the next.

Overall, I’m pleased with the result and really like the final game. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this VN/adventure mix had just the right amount of complexity as developer, and I’d love to create another game like this in the future (not necessarily horror). It felt like a nice change from the usual plain VNs. However, I might skip the minigames next time and just do the adventure part!

TFTU: Lilith was also out. In the blog post at beginning of the year I was assuming I’d do Thieves Of Dingirra this year, however in April I made an update, explaining why I swapped the two games, so that I’d do Lilith first. And I still think it was the best move. Lilith has only been out for a short time, so it’s too early to draw any conclusions. However, I’m pretty happy with it so far, and I think many fans (in particular those who wanted Evelyn as romance and a true triad route) are too!

Last but not least I did the campaign for Christine’s Care. This was probably one of the most disappointing Kickstarter I’ve ever done – not only the final amount is the lowest ever (even lower than my first try with Hazel!) but I honestly couldn’t understand why – considering my previous two KS all made over 10k! I even asked for feedback after it ended to understand better what was about that game that made people skip it, and the sad thing is that it seems it’s just that even on Kickstarter the overall exposure is going down. Anyway, I’ve enabled late pledges until end of the year, so if you missed it you can still pledge for it until 1st January 2025.

I have in mind some changes for next year but I’ll discuss that in the usual “New year goals” post at beginning of 2025.

This year I was also celebrating 20 years as indie, and my 50th birthday. I’m amazed that I can still be doing this after so much time! And it’s all thanks to you.

Personal Stuff

If on the professional side things went OK overall, all things considered, but on the personal side… let’s say that things could have been better.

In March I lost my dog Skipper (I dedicated House of Chavez both to him and Tofu who I lost last year). We got a new dog, Daisy, a month later.

Summer was also a nightmare due to the climate, so I could neither work, neither take some time off to relax/recharge batteries. Terrible!

Then in the Fall I had to do the other eye surgery, which was planned but still a pain because I lost several days of work and was stressed about it.

I also had to said goodbye to Micia, a 20 (or more) years old ex-stray cat that we rescued when we moved here.

So, last year I said 2023 was a bad year, but actually 2024 wasn’t that much better…!

Getting older sucks!

Who would have guessed? Haha, jokes aside, I’ve noticed each year I’m a bit slower working than the last. With age, minor health issues pop up—nothing serious, like back ache and so on, but they do slow you down.

Looking back, I’m glad that when I was younger and in good health, I worked hard. It would’ve been such a waste to not take advantage of that time. So, if you’re young and have a dream, make sure you’re putting in the effort to achieve it! Don’t waste your time! Carpe diem, etc.

While it’s true that many famous people found success later in life, it’s definitely easier to achieve when you’re in your prime years! (I’d say between 20 and 40).

That’s all for now. I hope you’re enjoying the holidays, and of course, Happy New Year!

First of all, in case you haven’t been following me on socials and you missed all the spamm- ahem, promotion I’m doing, I have launched my new Kickstarter for the slice of life yuri visual novel Christine’s Care:

After a rough start, at the time of writing we’re very close to the base goal, but I hope we can reach at least the first stretch goal which will add a one-night stand scene with Donna:

Marlon, the muscular MMA fighter girl has already been added to the base game (and that’s probably what boosted the KS after a slow start).

In summary now we have in the base game the following love interests: Hannah, Liz, Marlon, a bonus triad route with Marlon and Liz, and if the first stretch goal is reached, even a one-night stand with Donna. Not bad for a “smaller game”. The story draft is already past 100,000 words as well!

Please visit the Kickstarter page and check the various updates, since I posted a lot of spicy stuff in form of sketches or sneak previews that you don’t want to miss!

Loren spin-offs idea

As you probably know I’m also working on my next big RPG game (which in this case also has town sim elements) Thieves Of Dingirra, and started thinking about the other Loren’s spin-offs left to do.

The current plan was to do 3 more games, with 4 love interests each, 2 “old” romances and 2 “new” romances. But then, I started looking at ToA: An Elven Marriage results, including lurking in forums to see what people thought of it.

In practice, by having only 4 romances, you can’t offer enough variety to players. I mean, if I make one of my “shorter” (still over 100k words lol) games, like the recent Lilith, because are all yuri, you have many love interests. But if someone is into yuri only (just an example, same thing works for yaoi fans or otome etc) even a big game like An Elven Marriage has only Lydia as love interest!

So I think the average sales of that game were mainly due to that – not enough love interests. I thought that by having much longer love stories could compensate it, and indeed many people loved the “romance extension” of Myrth and Rei storylines, but in the end for people who only play a specific route/romance combo, the rest wasn’t enough.

And so while brainstorming with other devs and fans on my Discord I thought: what if instead of doing 3 more games with 4 love interests, I do 2 more but with 6 each?

The idea is to remove the story set in the Amazon Citadel with slaves revolt, which is a good idea for two reasons: first it would be very specific, and I think hard to write or justify the presence of other characters inside the Citadel the whole time. Second, such a setting would have worked better for a simulation than a RPG gameplay.

So that’s an interesting idea, which I could always pursue later in another game with a different cast, or even same characters but using another artist to have more freedom (as you probably know I have the art needed to finish the sequels but Loren’s artist doesn’t work for me anymore so adding more characters/scenes is complicated).

It would leave us with two games, split like this:

Reign Of War

The next planned spin-off, in addition to Jul, Breza, Draco and Mesphit, there would also be two new characters: Selith (the half lizardwoman) and Odurat (half-orc).

Reign Of Peace

The last planned spin-off (I might change the name since the witches have a prominent role in the story), in addition to Loren, Karen, Amukiki and Chambara, there would also be two new characters: Samaras (originally a vampire, now I changed into something else) and Nook (shaman).

This way each game would have 4 bisexual characters (Loren, Amukiki, Mesphit, Chambara, Jul, Selith, Odurat), 1 gay (Draco, Nook) and 1 lesbian (Karen, Breza). Each game would offer same amount of love interests/romance combos.

Going from 4 to 6 love interests would mean more writing of course – but not that much, and I think from the marketing side each game it would benefit more (because it would be easier for potential buyers to find something for their tastes). Plus, it would mean the games could come out sooner – I know some people are eager to romance again their favorite characters from Loren!

Conclusions

For now all of the above is just me thinking loud, but the more I think about it, the more I think it could be a good idea. Of course, first I have to finish Christine’s Care, and next year Thieves Of Dingirra, so there’s time!

I’ll do my usual “end of the year review” blog post later this month, so for now that’s all!

There are periods of life where noting seems to happen, and others where everything seems to happen at once. So let’s start in order.

Last week, the 24th October, I finally released Tales From The Under-Realm: Lilith on Steam. I already talked about this game in previous blog post, so now here I’ll share some stats, comparing it with my previous release, House of Chavez.

They’re two very different games though – so it’s hard to compare them directly. HoC has gameplay, it’s an adventure / visual novel with two different endings/variations. Lilith is a straight visual novel, with more branching and endings. I just share the stats in case could be interesting for someone.

I took a very different approach this time: while for House of Chavez I followed all the general advice, with TFTU: Lilith I focused on the game. For HoC, I posted on socials daily for 6 months (all socials including instagram, sometimes on reddit when the mods wouldn’t instantly delete my posts). For Lilith I posted only weekly. I didn’t even bother posting on reddit. I took part in the Steam Next Fest, that brought a miserable 400 WL more (I won’t do it next time).

HoC launched with about 4000 wishlists, while Lilith with 1280. Yeah I know, ridiculous amount, but I made a specific choice to focus my efforts on the game, rather than marketing, to see what would happen.

With HoC I went with a 10% launch discount for 2 weeks. For Lilith, I did no discount. I think first time since 3-4 years that I launch a game with no discount, I thought 10% less on a $15 game wouldn’t make a big difference, even if it’s true that without a discount there isn’t this “urgency” to buy the game.

I censored HoC trying to make sure it wouldn’t end on adult only, while for Lilith it was pointless – that game had too much adult stuff. Checking stats, I got a LOT of visitors from the adult only hub, so perhaps it was a good move?

Overall in the two weeks before and in the launch week :

House of Chavez: 123146 impressions and 16522 visits
TFTU: Lilith: 165223 impressions and 10086 visits

So yes, with HoC I had more visits even with less impressions (maybe the art / capsule was more attractive?). The sales are currently that HoC sold about 9% more than Lilith, but is such small amount that it could be random.

My conclusion is simple: launching a game on Steam is even tougher now, and getting wishlists as well. Still, I cannot possibly justify spending all that time on socials only to make 9% more sales on a launch week!

Next project: Christine’s Care

I mentioned in previous post that because Thieves Of Dingirra is a big game, I might want to do a smaller game first while I keep working on it. And that’s what’s going to happen! I’m going to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Christine’s Care :

The protagonist is in the center, with Liz on the left, who is in a submissive relationship with another character, and Hannah on the right, a young woman disabled after a car accident.

Check the following link to see more about the game setting and story outline: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/christine-0

I’m introducing a new art style and more inclusive romance options, including a relationship with a disabled character. I know this can be challenging, but I’m committed to representing diverse stories. If you’re someone with a disability and are interested, I would value your feedback on the story before it’s finalized—please feel free to reach out!

Goodbye to Micia

The last news is not a happy one, even if it wasn’t unexpected due to her age and poor health conditions. We had to put to sleep our oldest cat, Micia.

A shy stray cat that my wife used to feed every morning, only recently she took courage and finally lived indoor. She was at least 18 years old (she was already here when we arrived).

Her will to live was really something unique, despite her poor health due to age. Rest in peace.