Bundles, expansions and new faces

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The Manga Bundle

First of all, I’m doing a Manga Bundle which includes many of my games at a very minimum price (pay extra to get more/newer games) made in collaboration with Groupees.

You can find more info here: http://groupees.com/ww

It started yesterday and will last for one week.

The Castle Of N’Mar

Second, the Loren expansion is officially released: http://www.winterwolves.com/lorencastleofnmar.htm

I still didn’t do any press release because I want to have a small promo video ready before I do it, but you can already buy it since is out of the beta testing stage. Just remember that to play the extra content, is preferred if you load an old savegame in chapter 2, or start a new game. If you resume an old game from chapter3, you won’t see the extra content.

New Faces

I’m working on several project now that Loren’s expansion is finished. The biggest one is Planet Stronghold 2, but I’m also actively working on Heileen 3. For Heileen 3, I’m waiting for new backgrounds, and this will surely delay the game release. I hoped that would be ready by October but for several reasons (Loren that absorbed me completely first, and then two months of african heat that made me KO) I didn’t plan it carefully as I should have.

But is still going to be the next game I release! There will be many characters from the first two games, but also some new faces.

Morganlove Natives Ottocry

Above you can see some images from the scenes I’ve already finished coding.

More new faces will come to Planet Stronghold sequel as well. We’ve decided to add a few more secondary characters to the story, and also to let the player continue any previous romance, so it means that Rumi & Michelle will be romanceable in the sequel as well.

We’re also thinking to add a simple but interesting colony-building sim to Planet Stronghold sequel, a sort of metagame which will influence the main roleplay part. I think should be quite interesting to play and offer more variety of situations. Those who don’t like those simulations don’t worry, playing at easy level will be a piece of cake 😉

Loren Amazon Princess expansion beta ending soon!

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In case you missed it, during the past weeks the beta expansion for Loren Amazon Princess was released and available to play as pre-order.

Of course I want to thank all the people who played it and found many bugs, but I think we’re almost at the end of the testing. My idea was to release the expanion officially this weekend and start promoting it next week. We reached version 1.1q so for sure it has been tested well! 🙂

Please remember that to play the game with expansion you need to visit my forums and download the .zip file containing the beta version. More info on my forums:

http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2622

Once the game is officially out of course the game will come as 3 separate downloads for each platform, with a full .exe installer for Windows as usual (I noticed many people were confused as how to use the .zip). Also don’t forget that the price will go up to $9.99 from $7.99 so the special offer will end very soon, very likely this Sunday.

Loren sequel is now official

I realized that I never announced it officially except in my forums, so here it goes: we’re working on Loren’s sequel which won’t be out before next summer (maybe later…). This is official, unless something really bad happens to me, my writer or my artists. I hope nothing happens! 😀

I said I wouldn’t post any preview because is too early, but one thing I want to post: a sneak peek of the new Saren / Elenor armors.

Realarmors

Now they look like real warriors, right? One of the major complaints I got for the first game was how unrealistic the armor looked, and even if I clearly did it to add some sexyness to the game I agreed it was too much. The armors above are actually the sexy versions of them, so there are even more strong/covering armors!

I won’t say much about the plot, except that will be more original and less clichè than the first game, and that the main theme will be if the Demons can cohexist peacefully with the other races. Jul will be a playable character alongside with many new cool ones. All the first game character will be present too, though some won’t be playable.

But I’ve already said enough, there will be time to talk about it!

Heileen 3

The work on Heileen 3 continues, even if needed to find another background artist to finish some missing backgrounds. Meanwhile, Loren’s interface artist will work on the game GUI too. Here’s a nice work in progress of the sin/virtues and skills system:

Ui_skill_book_001

I know, it seems almost a RPG! 😉 but don’t worry, it won’t be so complex, it will only be a dating sim with some statistics and jobs, a bit like Spirited Heart.

Finally I have a surprise coming next week. I can’t say much about it yet, but I think many people will be pleased to see it. Follow me on Twitter / Facebook to know when it will go live!

Heileen 3 will be coming this Autumn

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Heileen3cast

Or at least that’s the plan! 🙂

I was undecided until the last time if to use the new Monkeycoder engine, or stick with the good old Ren’Py. In the end, I realized that even using the Monkeycoder engine would still require me to learn a new language and right now I really don’t have time to do it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to get my games on iOS too someday, but it has been a very tiring year so far, and I want to relax. I find Ren’Py much more powerful than Monkeycoder to prototype anyway, so I can always port the game later once is done.

So I started working on Heileen 3 a few days ago. As you know, the plot is all finished (at least the otome part) but it still needs all the scripting (placing sprites) and also is missing a good amount of backgrounds, which will commission soon.

So depending how faster the background artist will work, and how faster I’ll script the scenes, the game might be out around this Autumn. It’s not an official date, more what I hope to achieve! It would be great because the first Heileen game was out in October 4 years ago and releasing the third chapter would be a good way to celebrate the anniversary!

Meanwhile, if you are curious about Loren’s expansion official release date, you’ll be pleased to hear that The Castle Of N’Mar (that’s the name of the expansion) will be very likely ready very soon (probably mid-September). The testing so far is doing well and there are only some minor bugs left.

To know more, check this thread in my forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2622

A final note, Steam Greenlight has opened and if you’re one of those people who emailed me asking why my games aren’t on Steam, now you can vote for them to appear. I submitted some games and will try to submit all the one I have made during next week: http://steamcommunity.com/id/winterwolves/myworkshopfiles/?section=greenlight

A tough week

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Zeal

Zeal, one of the many new characters you’ll encounter in the expansion

This week was really a tough week!

First of all because I was literally burning in my office. 29°C for most of the day, even turning the A/C on the whole afternoon. Of course, it happened right when I decided to announce on Twitter/Facebook that the beta testing stage of Loren’s expansion, The Castle Of N’Mar, was starting!

A tough week for those who played the beta and had to fight against lots of bugs. It was entirely my fault, since I decided to use the latest Ren’Py version to do the expansion beta, while I should have waited a bit more.

Now anyone familiar with coding knows well that using the latest version of any development tool is NOT a good idea, since it might still contain bugs… but I ignored that simple rule and the result was people having all sort of weird stuff happening (random crashes, variables not stored, load/save problems, etc).

So today in the latest beta version (1.1k) I decided to revert back to the previous Ren’Py version which hopefully should solve some of the bugs left. You can get the download links and latest info in my forums:

http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2622

Again this has nothing to do with Ren’Py which is still an awesome tool (my favorite) but to my silly idea of trying it so early.

My goal is to try finishing the beta testing by the end of the month. If you preordered the expansion but were waiting to see until was more stable, I think now should be a good moment to play since the amount of bugs left is really not big… you know every time I write such sentences  I’m a bit scared, but oh well 😀

Other short news: Spirited Heart 2 writing is going at very good pace, I got a new writer that’s going to review/fix/edit Nicole’s script, Roommates is going to be the biggest game I’ve ever made (80k words and it’s not even at 1/3 of the plot), Heileen 3 will be done first in Ren’Py and maybe later in Monkeycoder (this will require a new blog post to explain, maybe next week) so it should be out this October.

Soon the gates of N’Mar Castle will open to the public

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Today’s blog post will be shorter, since as you might know I’m busy doing the final touches to Loren’s expansion “The Castle Of N’Mar”. I hoped to have it ready for the 15th August, but I didn’t make in time. In reality it’s not missing much, but we want to polish it and test well to make sure that there aren’t stopping bugs early in the expansion.

I believe it’s the last time will do such a non-linear RPG. For visual novels is much easier, but for a RPG is really a painful experience! Or do like Walking Dead game from Telltale (my favorite game this year) that is achieve non linearity through linearity. How is that possible?

Make a linear game that looks non-linear

In practice, doing a true non-linear plot in a RPG, with multiple solution quests is insane. The best example of this is Fallout. Typical scenario is: character A gives quest to kill character B. You stumble intoto character C and he says that he wants B dead too. Then (and here comes the fun) when you meet characte B, he makes a counter-offer: kill characters A,B and he’ll give you a <insert precious rewards here>.

And the example above is just one of the simplest scenarios possible, when you don’t have quests with multiple steps! Now, Fallout is one of the best RPGs series ever made, but honestly I don’t think will do such a thing again in future.

For two simple reasons:

  1. I’m not a multi-millionaire company with a team of 50 people 😀 and only testing all those multiple solution quests takes LOOOOOONG time!
  2. I am not sure, in my specific case, that it can be better for players, since if I have the mutliple solution quests, the plot length will be necessarily shorter. And I think there’s a solution to make a linear plot look less linear.

Point 1 is obvious, but what about point 2? I want to reconnect to Walking Dead game mechanics: you can have a story that while in practice in its structure IS linear, it appears not (or at least, appears that player’s choices have a big impact on the game world).

For example in Walking Dead, during several key points you have to take “tough decisions”. In one you have to decide if to attempt to save a person attacked by a zombie, or a kid nearby. No matter what you choose, the person dies – so you might think “bah not only the plot is linear, but the choice is even pointless”. I know it might seem so, but in reality not! Because even if the outcome is the same, the characters related to that person and the kid will remember who you tried to save, and all the future dialogues will change to reflect that, resulting in a more immersive experience, so that the story won’t feel linear at all.

I think that’s the road I’ll try to follow to make longer RPGs but still with several possible outcomes. And now, I’m going back working on Loren 🙂