Status update + Summer minisale

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First of all check the video below:
New Planet Stronghold: Warzone gameplay video, still work in progress

is nice isn’t it eh? 🙂 This game will have a lot more gameplay element than the previous RPGs, and judging by people’s reactions they like the idea.

The colony sim, as you can see, will have a lot of variety of building and resources. While we haven’t fully tested the gameplay yet (since it’s integrated into the main game story, it needs to be written first) it evolved quite a lot from a “simple minigame” to a very detailed colony building simulation.

Similarly, Aleema started small with the isometric exploration minimap but then new ideas popped out of our minds and voilà… 😉 Is not Diablo 3, but is quite an evolution from the first game top-down exploration map! There will be several devices on each map that will give you bonus (like the Healing Pylon of the video) and you’ll be able to interact with some objects/doors/items, see the enemy encounters (showing only one type of enemy, but the number of sides of the polygon determine the battle difficulty) and so on.

The isometric view is really nice and I’m thinking if to use it also in future games. Maybe even for the battle itself, allowing more space to move and also giving the possibility to have some “epic battles”, for example the party of 4 vs 15 enemies, like some people are asking.

In any case, this will happen in the next RPGs – Planet Stronghold: Warzone will still use the same first person view in the battle (albeit with a fresh new interface/GUI).

Summer mini sale!

Lastly, I’m doing a mini Summer sale starting today 14th June until Monday 17th: 50% off on my games Summer Session, Flower Shop: Summer In Fairbrook and Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook.

Use the coupon JUNEBUG to get a 50% discount. Note that if you want to buy both Flower Shop games you need to purchase them separately, otherwise you’ll get only the automatic 15% discount (sorry about this but is a limitation of the shopping cart).

Nicole’s progresses

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In the video above, Nicole’s first encounter with Kurt Madry

Nicole made some big progresses. Oh no wait, I mean… I made some big progresses on Nicole (the otome/yuri dating sim I’m working on).

First of all the game has a brand new GUI:

I’m quite happy about it. You can see the main menu, load/save and options screen, and a in-game screenshot. By the way about the last screenshot, I’m sure Natalie from Winter In Faibrook would agree with Nicole, about what she says 😉

Yesterday I just finished coding Kurt’s route, and writer said should send me Ted shortly. There’s only Jeff left to write. However I don’t want to say anything I could regret later… so for now the estimate release date is still mid-July, for several reasons:

  • we decided to add extra images, so that there will be a “normal” ending, and a special ending. In the normal ending will use sprites over transparent backgrounds, while special endings will be full CGs drawings.
  • even if writer manages to finish writing the last otome route with Jeff at end of June, we still have to write the events in which the mystery is solved. Yes because they’re going to be different from the normal romance route, at least the final part.
  • also, we need to add some mystery events that will trigger in the game during certain points. Won’t be long scenes but needs to be thought carefully.
  • while the main gameplay is done, we wanted to add some nice touches like cellular messages, online shopping (since the main character is a bit of a geek) and so on. Small things but they take time to draw the art and code.
  • the chibi/main menu/GUI artist wants to do an OP to the game (a sort of trailer with music for it to show at the beginning, for those not familiar with japanese dating sims). That will be very cool but also require some time as you imagine.
  • last but not least I need to code all the scenes, add them inside the game and do a preliminary testing. And even if this is one of the main games I’m working on at the moment, I have to work a bit on the others as well… 😉

So, still a lots of stuff to do, and probably will delay the game release, but I think in the end will be worth the wait!

News on the new RPGs in development

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A “sneak peek” video of Planet Stronghold: Warzone (the sequel to Planet Stronghold)

Let’s talk about RPGs!

It was a while since I showed something about Planet Stronghold: Warzone. Being a bigger game than previous ones there has been some troubles developing it, but luckily now the development seems to be going at good pace. Making RPGs is very hard, sometimes I forget it 😀

Anyways, in the video above even if there’s still a lot of placeholder art, you can see some good stuff. The main menu, the music screen with some official tracks playing (the final OST will be available in the bonus content version like in my most recent games). But also the codex and the colony sim “minigame”.

I also made a test replacing the placeholder art with some of the finished desert tileset:colonysim

looks still a bit messy because it was just a quick test, but already better, doesn’t it ? 😉

We also had the “crazy idea” to have an exploration part similar to the one from the first game, using the isometric tileset system. It would show only during the missions (in the game there will be several missions to play, some unique to each side), so not the full game. This way the environmental situation the party is in will be better represented, offering some more strategy to decide how to pass specific points guarded by enemies, where to use the skills, and so on.

For now is just an idea and I don’t want to promise anything since is not like there aren’t other things to do, but if possible we’ll try to add it 🙂

The game will also have a much better “World Building”, meaning that the codex will talk about each race, faction, the main characters (in party and outside) and so on. It will also explain better how the Psionics work, the origins of Planet Stronghold and all that stuff. In summary, will rule 8)

The “Mystery RPG”

I have also some more good news about the “Mystery RPG” that I’m working on from time to time when there’s a moment of pause from the main games. I’ve hired again Taleweaver to write the story, and commissioned some of the art already. I don’t want to say any estimate release dates but if everything goes as planned (which probably won’t, by Murphy’s Law) this Fall the game might be at a good stage, maybe even in beta 😉

So as you can see, even if my next games to be released will likely be two dating sims (Nicole & Roommates) the fans of roleplay games can sleep well knowing that there will be some good stuff for them coming later this year!

Undead Lily gameplay

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undeadlilybattle
This is a mockup of the battle screen I made yesterday

How is Undead Lily going to play? I think the best definition is a mix between a strategy game and a RPG. I mentioned CCG (Collectible Card Game) before, but to be fair I don’t plan to have 200+ cards/avatars like those games do 🙂

Current plan is: at start of the game there’s a world map (being the underworld will be particular) with the two opposing factions on the extreme spots. The map will have a terrain, meaning that each cell will be linked to one of the 6 elements of the game: Life, Death, Nature, Fire, Water, Air.

There will be some “Power Nodes” cells, that once captured will give you more power (have yet to decide how it will impact the game). Capturing / conquering all the nodes would give victory to one side.

There are 6 characters on each side, and you can bring 3 to battle at time. I’m thinking that the main character (Undead Lily & Ace) must always be present, while you can decide who will be the other two battle members.

During the fight, there will be 3 roles: Summoning, Offensive and Defensive Aura. The character with Summoning role will be able to summon the avatars on the battlefield. The other two will provide a permanent bonus for the battle. For example in the screenshot above: Undead Lily does the summoning. Aquaria will provide a bonus attack to all targets, Ash will give a fire shield to all your avatars so enemies hitting them will suffer damage.

Still thinking if to allow the player to switch the superheroes role during the fight or not.

Thanks to the writer for this suggestion, it was very interesting ! 🙂

The bonuses will scale up as the superheroes gain more levels.

Of course the fights will be simplified, not like Loren. All the cards/avatars will attack the enemy in front of them (with some exceptions) and once they kill it, the next attack will hit the superheroes behind it. A mechanism common in those card/RPG games. Once all the heroes of one side run out of HPs, that side has lost.

So that’s the plan right now 🙂 there’s a small problem though: the battle screens were done by the artist, following my indications, so that there would be a lower part of it that would fit a one vs one battle. That means that it would be a bit problematic to fit a small army of 5-6 avatars.

I’m currently thinking if to put the avatars in rows facing top to bottom (blue arrows) or left to right (red arrows). The blue arrows would be the more logic solution, but the problem is that I want to have the superheroes on the left/right side of the screen, so I think that might look awkward to have the avatars fighting top/down and the superheroes left to right 🙂 Anyway, that’s not a big problem, the hardest part will be to design all the avatars and the battle rules. But that’s also the most fun part 😉

Where On Earth Is Undead Lily?

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Room_Aquaria
Do you recognize her? it’s Aquaria, one of the superheroes of the Undead Lily game

In the blog title, I paraphrased the famous game “Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego” 🙂 The reply to the question Where On Earth Is Undead Lily could be “she went on hiatus for a year or two but now she’s about to come back!”.

Yes, because finally all the backgrounds for the game are finished (that artist was busy doing Loren GUI and other things, so wasn’t his fault), and even if I asked the original character artist to redo the final romance scenes, work on the game can start already.

I’m still in the planning stage for now, but I really think that I’m going to make it a bit different from the original idea. A tag-team battle, arcade style wouldn’t really be simple to do in Ren’Py, and since those games are all about the animations, it’s definitely not a good idea. So I’m just going to make it more RPG-esque! 😉

In the game there are 12 characters, 6 “evil” and 6 “good”. That would be already enough to do a classic party-based RPG. However, since there won’t be a real exploration but more like a sort of big “map” where you move your units each turn (who remembers the old game “Archon”?), I think I’m going to make it similar to a collectible card game, where each character can learn to summon creatures to help them in battle, starting from low level ones to big powerful ones.

So the idea for now is to allow a party of max 2 superheroes, each one able to summon several “elemental minions”. Or maybe only 1 superhero each battle, as always will have to see while playtesting what is better.

Anyway that’s the initial idea for now 🙂

I’ve been also experimenting more with the “topsecret” RPG set in Aravorn. I had a brilliant idea (modestly MOUHAHA). Take a look at the screenshots below:

thiefattack warriorattack

As you can see, the position on the battlefield will have a big impact on the gameplay, and the Thief will have a special bonus vs the Warriors being able to always attack without penalty any enemy, no matter their position. This small change should lead to interesting decision during the battles, and finally give some use of the thieves in the front line.

I had other ideas like some random special zones on the battlefield that would give bonus/malus (like a rock area that increases defense, a mud area that slows character down). But have yet to see if they’re easy to implement. Anyway as you can guess I’m having some fun experimenting! 😀

But that is just a side-project. On Planet Stronghold 2 side, Anima is going forward coding the new RPG framework that will be awesome, with lots of new features, while Aleema is doing her great job as always writing the story. I can’t wait to reach the demo stage with this game to show it to everyone 😉