Tag Archives: dating sims

Go Adventures!

Beside RPG games, adventures are one of my favourite genre ever. I didn’t make any before, for two reasons: I would have to hire someone to do the art and this was too expensive for me to do in the beginning, and also I wasn’t sure there was a market for them at all.

But in 2005 I decided I wanted to try anyway, so I started to commission lot of characters art for the game Summer Love, that was the original title of Summer Session. The artist was still at art school so took a lot to finish them all, almost 1 year. Then, when I had the characters I realized I needed also the backgrounds! so asked her to draw about 20 different ones, and she was faster this time.

In beginnng of 2007 I had almost everything for the game: the idea/main mechanic, all the characters with their backgrounds and personalities, but when I started to write the game itself I realized it wasn’t easy as I thought: I built up my own adventure engine, but the main reason was the writing itself.

While I can read and write a decent english, creating a compelling story and using the right words is really another world. So in the beginning I thought to just write it in italian and then have it translated, but I wasn’t really sure all the translation money would have been well spent.

So in the end, in spring of 2008 I decided to contact Georgina of Hanako, knowing that she made already lot of adventure games, figuring that she would have been the “right man” (or better woman) to finish my project! and indeed, she did it, and also pointed me to Renpy, a really nice Python-based tool to write visual novel/dating sims.

Recently adventures seems to have gained popularity, and Summer Session sales surely prove that there is a market for adventures (of any kind). So, here I am, ready to finish Heileen, a 17th century visual novel in which you play the role of a girl, trying to discover herself with the help of a voyage to the New World. Sounds cool eh? 😀

I really hope the game will be like I have in my mind. So far, after playing it several times, I am very satisfied. Stay tuned for a beta version coming out soon. Well, as soon as I get my new background pictures delivered! 😉

A fun diversive: Summer Session

I’ve recently published a game made in collaboration with Hanako Games, called “Summer Session”. It is quite different from my “usual” games, but I was always open-minded and willing to experiment, so when I found a very good manga artist (Rebecca Gunter) and a great writer (the girl who runs Hanako website), I decided to give it a try. It is of the genre of “dating sim”, a sort of adventure game in which you have to try to date out other girls, everything presented in a fun way.

When I played the first alpha, I was already excited because the game was exactly has I had in mind: a fun, relaxing game, with multiple endings so that you could replay it several times, and a small “simulation” part in it (when you have to decide your weekly schedule).

You can download the game for Mac and Pc (a Linux version is also available and will put online soon) in the adventure games section of my site Tycoon Games. Below a few screenshots of the game itself:

your secret diary karl in computers room