{"id":2042,"date":"2014-12-26T11:21:04","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T10:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=2042"},"modified":"2014-12-26T11:21:04","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T10:21:04","slug":"2014-the-year-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2014\/12\/2014-the-year-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 the year… of change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"happynewyear\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reading back the previous end of year post<\/a>, I can’t stop thinking how things have changed so rapidly for me. This is probably the biggest “problem” of being indie: things change at lightning speed, for good but also for bad!<\/p>\n

Last year I was happy because Loren Amazon Princess was accepted on Steam. Nowadays, I have 13 games there, with the 14th (Seasons Of The Wolf) to be released next month!<\/p>\n

Last year I had zero games for iOS. This year I ported almost all of them on Apple’s platform, and I plan to do more next year, especially since Ren’Py will get its own porting system!<\/p>\n

Last year beside my loyal long-time fans, I was mostly unknown to the general public. Now, while I’m still not *that known*, people talk about me. Some adore my games, others hate them, others are neutral, but at least people talk about me. The worst thing is being ignored\/unknown \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

This year I made “only” two games, but two big ones: Roommates and Seasons Of The Wolf.<\/p>\n

Roommates<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roommates is a title that totally exceeded my expectations. I’ve made “a few” dating sims before, but this one basically is of another league! I think probably is due to the fact that, like my RPGs, it is not focused on only a romance genre\/combo, but all of them. Playing as male or female, straight or homosexual romances. It’s a game for everybody.<\/p>\n

But also, great comedy writing. There’s nothing wrong with more serious\/mature themes, but sometimes people just want to escape the mundane problems with funny stories \ud83d\ude42 So, thumbs up to Michael (Roommates’ writer) for his great job on the game!<\/p>\n

The game soundtrack by Leetstreet Boys was also a very good move. I really can’t find an issue in that game, something that “if I could go back, I would have done differently” and it’s a good thing!<\/p>\n

ToA: Seasons Of The Wolf<\/strong><\/p>\n

SOTW is officially out since just little more than a month. It was a challenge, a bet. I wanted to see if I could make “a real RPG” myself. With romance, with a story, with my usual artwork style, but… much more detailed, with a Nightmare difficult level that would actually make people go crazy with it, with a map system, secrets, randomized items, etc.<\/p>\n

I won that bet. The game is doing VERY WELL, beating Loren’s first month sales. Of course, is not an entirely fair comparison since 2 years have passed from Loren’s release and now I have a much bigger following. But to be honest, I was fearing that it would be a flop \ud83d\ude00 So seeing that is doing well reassures me and was already worth it.<\/p>\n

Still, I’m not going to do another insanely big game like this one anytime soon! It really “burned me”, because I worked on it 10 months straight, every day, fixing\/tweaking stuff. I know it’s my job, but now I need a break from such big games. I’m going to make some smaller games (this time, FOR REAL!! LOL) like Queen Of Thieves. They’ll still be RPGs, but have limited party members\/skills\/items\/and so on. They will also be easier to balance \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

However, there could be something new related to SOTW, maybe next year. I just received this letter via a pigeon from a certain Jariel the bard from the green lands of Grandtree:<\/p>\n

\"letter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

End of year’s thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if this year was good for me, the future is still very uncertain.<\/p>\n

I personally know several indies who this year took a huge hit on their finances, some have abandoned the business to move elsewhere, others went back to contract work or looking for funding. And only a few years before, they were earning six figures! So, you never know what the future holds! Doesn’t matter how much you plan things ahead… because this business moves so fast, is easy to be caught by surprise.<\/p>\n

I think the most important thing is to stay humble, never think to have “made it”, and keep working on what you love. At least, this is what I’m planning to do in 2015 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading back the previous end of year post, I can’t stop thinking how things have changed so rapidly for me. This is probably the biggest “problem” of being indie: things change at lightning speed, for good but also for bad! Last year I was happy because Loren Amazon Princess was accepted on Steam. Nowadays, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,7,9,140,10,13,149,14,171,173,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-design","category-general-topics","category-indie-life","category-iphone-ipad","category-marketing-tips","category-postmortem","category-queen-of-thieves","category-roleplay-games","category-seasons-of-the-wolf","category-steam","category-strategy-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2042"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2062,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042\/revisions\/2062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}