Some of my games available for iOS!

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iOS
The popular Tom Shatz showing his face on my iPad mini! 😉

One of the first surprises of this year (and we’re just starting!) is the availability of many of my games for iOS, ported by a very good coder/friend (that’s why you see them under his name on the itunes store). Currently there are the following games:

Heileen
Heileen 2
Always Remember Me
Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook
Spirited Heart (both versions, you can choose which one to buy)

they all use in-app purchase so you can play them for a while to make sure they work fine on your device 🙂

More games will follow in the next weeks, including the RPGs, however in the case of Planet Stronghold I had to redesign the GUI a lot because was almost unplayable on the mini iPad. I am not bothering with iPhone since I honestly don’t think anyone can play games with complex GUI on those devices with such TINY screens! 😀 Besides, I should redesign the games completely for those devices and I really don’t have the time: however the game themselves will work, you can try if you want.

New games progress

Regarding the new releases, Roommates is getting a new scheduler screen, much better than the one I poorly designed myself (strange eh, that an artist is more skilled than me with GUI!):

GUI1-Roommates[prev]

I’m still coding it so is not 100% working but should be soon. I’m making progresses also with Seasons Of The Wolf, currently coded scene 07 out of… 26-27 😮

I know, is taking long time but remember that I started this game only last Summer, and I had still to work on Nicole and other games in the meanwhile! Anyway, I’ve got another writer working on the side-quests to speed things up 🙂

children

The good thing is that the artist who took 2 months break, is working on the romance scenes now, so I can definitely tell you that SOTW will be out this year, very likely the next RPG to be done!

2014: New Year Plan

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mirtillo
My cat Mirtillo sleeping in an unusual way 😀

2014! Happy New Year!

I’m going to change completely my way of working. From now on, I’ll only make games in my native language, Italian.

Heh, good joke uh? 😀

The real plan

OK jokes apart the real plan is:

1) Release Loren on Steam. This is going to happen soon ! Took a bit of time to the coder to implement the achievements on all the OSes, but now everything works. The DLC Castle Of N’Mar will also be released, a few days later.
2) Finish Roommates. The game is long and the writer Michael tested it a lot, but I really think the best solution is start the preorders and the public beta testing, this way thanks to the awesome users in my forums the testing will go much faster. In the next weeks will fix all the issues found and code the scheduler, which will be similar to Flower Shop one.
3) Finish Nicole Yuri version – though this mainly depends on the writer to be honest 🙂 my job in this case will be to motivate her!
4) Release another otome game that for now I’m still keeping “under the hood”, but that I’ll announce in the first months of this year.
5) And of course, finish Seasons Of The Wolf and Planet Stronghold 2. Both games are quite big, but this time I shouldn’t be distracted by other things and will make sure to motivate and help the writer and coder appropriately 😉
6) At this point we will probably be in late 2014. Depending on the situation, either start working on Spirited Heart 2, Undead Lily, Loren 2 or something else. In this case is impossible to make any kind of prediction since there are too many factors and people involved.

Better integration with the story

Looking back at past year, one thing I didn’t do properly was to support the writers more. This doesn’t mean telling them exactly what to write line by line, but (for those who needed/wanted it of course) be more involved in the process as they write.

Some writers are happy to work on their own at their own pace with minimum need of my support/feedback: but in any case I need to check what they do to make sure that the final product reflects my vision and most importantly players’ expectations, and that works with gameplay.

And also I need to integrate the story more with the gameplay, though probably this can be done only by planning better the whole thing from start and writing a good amount of draft/storyboards myself, so will need more time for this.

Always Remember Me on Dailyroyale.com

If you missed my Christmas sale, you can still get a good deal for my game Always Remember Me at http://www.dailyroyale.com/! Expires in the next 2 days (approximately, there’s a counter on the site).

I have many other interesting things going on in the next weeks, stay tuned 😉

2013 the year of ups and downs

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rainbow

Chance is always powerful, let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish. ~Ovid

Looking back to last year post, I’m very sad to notice that this year didn’t manage to release any new RPG 🙁 Even if Seasons Of The Wolf is at good point. But let’s proceed in order.

UP: Early this year I released the yuri version of Heileen 3, called “Sea Maidens“. The game was very well received, and sold only slightly less than the otome version, showing clearly that there’s a market for people who like yuri content.

DOWN: After that, I had several projects going on (as always lol) but the most important were Planet Stronghold 2, Bionic Heart 2 and Spirited Heart 2. As you know, I managed to release only one, Bionic Heart 2.

I had already decided to stop making pure simple visual novel before its release, but when the game finally was out, after the most crazy beta testing I have ever done (at one point I admit I even thought to cancel the game, something that never happened before!) and sold poorly, that was the last drop.

To be honest, I am not sure myself why the game did so badly. Maybe the sci-fi setting? the multiple point of view? the fact that romance played a minor role in the story?

I’ve given up trying to understand the reasons, but as I said, already before that game I made my mind of quitting doing VNs, especially since I also enjoy much more doing RPGs or life/dating sims 🙂

UP: And here comes the other good thing that happened this year: Nicole’s release. The game took much more time than I anticipated, but the final result was really good! Is out only since a few months, but is already looking to be one of my most popular otome games. And the yuri version should be out next year 😉

DOWN: Planet Stronghold 2. I really don’t want to blame anyone in specific for it, since sometimes it seems that some projects are “cursed”. With Loren last year, everything went right. With this title, basically everything went wrong 😀 So yeah, is true that the writer, the coder and even the artist had to slow down for personal/real life issues. But I was too busy managing too many projects too and I feel I didn’t do enough, didn’t motivate people and managed them badly.

Spirited Heart 2 instead was a very different story. Sarah wrote well and fast, but when I was starting to consider adding more variety of romances (yuri/yaoi) I discovered that the artist refused to draw them, after he initially said was fine. I don’t want to make any comments about this, since I’m sure you already know what I think. Anyway, I had to discard all the sprites already done and find another artist! Deji accepted, so while the game will be greatly delayed, at least I have a reliable and skilled artist working on it now 🙂

UP: Loren on Steam 🙂 While the game is not yet out, should show up in mid-January. I am happy because I think that title deserved to be there, even if in recent times seems like they’re much more relaxed and are allowing many titles to get in. Still, is a good achievement (forgive the pun).

So getting back to the quote I put above, luck/chance have a big impact in our lives and sometimes you can’t do much about it. The only thing you can do, is always be ready to catch the opportunities!

That’s it for this year. See you in 2014 and Happy New Year!

Christmas Sale and best of 2013

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IMG_0182
Early wishes of Merry Christmas from my cat Gilda

First of all: I’m doing a Christmas sale with all my games 50% off, including Nicole!

The predefined bundle discounts are disabled, so differently from previous times this works also when buying the various bundles like Flower Shop, Spirited Heart, Heileen series, etc.

Christmas has come early this year 😉 The offer is valid until the end of the year.

Best Of 2013

Like in the past, I want to review a bit the games I released during the course of the year. If I had to make a ranking for the titles I made this year:

Writing

1. Nicole
2. Heileen 3 Sea Maidens
3. Bionic Heart 2

I absolutely loved Nicole writing! Heileen 3 was pretty good too. I liked also Bionic Heart 2 to be honest, and for me would be about same level of Heileen 3, but judging by the sales seems that most people preferred Heileen 3 🙂

Artwork

1. Heileen 3 Sea Maidens
2. Nicole
3. Bionic Heart 2

This is probably heavily influenced by my tastes. I know many people didn’t like much Nicole’s sprites, saying they lack variety and so on. Well, personally I don’t think is so apparent. I put Bionic Heart 2 on last place but that really doesn’t mean I didn’t like the artwork (character artist is same as Loren, my favorite!). Heileen 3 is first because of the setting, landscapes and also because I really love Rebecca’s work (she was the artist of all my Heileen games).

Best Gameplay

1. Nicole
2. Bionic Heart 2
3. Heileen 3 Sea Maidens

Nicole’s gameplay is quite similar to Always Remember Me, but has more variety of items to buy, a more intuitive interface and better GUI. Heileen 3 gameplay was good too, albeit I admit more repetitive than Nicole’s, but I have to consider that the game originally was meant to be a simple visual novel, so the result was still good.Personally, I loved the Bionic Heart 2 “social battles” and I would like to have them again in other games, like the RPGs, though I’m not sure if players liked them or not! 🙂

That’s everything for now, have a good time during the holidays! 🙂

Roommates update

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As wrote in previous post, the next game that will be out is Roommates. My trusted writer Michael is reviewing the whole script scene by scene to make sure everything is OK, but because the game is LONG, that will take some time 🙂

Meanwhile, I’m setting up everything else, like the contents of the bonus version:

rommatespreview
A preview of the wallpaper you’ll get when ordering the bonus content version of the game

Wallpapers, original soundtrack (including the theme song “My Name In Lights”) and more.

Even if is a dating sim, this game is quite different from Nicole.

First of all, the scheduler is more similar to the one I used in my games of the Flower Shop series. You can’t visit each location and choose an activity like in Nicole, more like you plan your week and then press play to see what happens.

The contents are also different: Nicole was more family-friendly, while this game is more like my early titles (Summer Session for example) where there’s a good amount of comedy and sexy references, as you can see from the screenshot below:

pansexual
Isabella trying to explain her views on Anne (work in progress texts)

Some of the CG scenes are quite hot to be honest, not like the Loren uncensored ones, but rather hot. I think that during the beta will ask users feedback to see if is better to make a censored version of those as well 😉

Finally, a good news (for those who don’t know it already): you can play as male or female immediately, no need to wait for an extra version. I am still thinking to allow people to purchase the two versions separately, since I am not sure how many people like to play with both genders.

In any case each version will be cheaper, like $15, with the possibility to get both for $25 instead of $30. So pricing similar to my other games, or cheaper if you want to play only as Anne or Max. Of course, you’ll be able to “upgrade” anytime in case you change your mind 🙂