{"id":3850,"date":"2020-05-01T17:17:59","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T15:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=3850"},"modified":"2020-05-01T17:18:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T15:18:36","slug":"volleyball-heaven-beta-is-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2020\/05\/volleyball-heaven-beta-is-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Volleyball Heaven beta is out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/VolleyballHeaven-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3855\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/VolleyballHeaven-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/VolleyballHeaven-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/VolleyballHeaven-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/VolleyballHeaven-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/VolleyballHeaven.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption><em>One of the many bonus CG you can unlock in the game<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As the blog title says, Volleyball Heaven beta is finally out! You can find more info here: <a href=\"https:\/\/winter-wolves.itch.io\/volleyball-heaven\">https:\/\/winter-wolves.itch.io\/volleyball-heaven<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The final gameplay and themes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>As said before, the game was turned into a plain visual novel since the gameplay system wasn&#8217;t working, so there was no point in adding it if it wasn&#8217;t fun to play. Also, this game is very different from my past ones, including more mature themes and strong language, so be warned. This not to say that there aren&#8217;t many funny situations or moments, but there is also some kind of content that you&#8217;ve never seen in my games before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So far from the initial comments I got people seems to enjoy it, and of course let me know what you think about it, if it&#8217;s something you&#8217;d like to see more, or not, in future games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The end of an era<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I just wanted to go back for a moment about my previous blog post&#8230;! Planet Stronghold 2&#8217;s reception was very good, and currently it&#8217;s my RPG with highest review score on Steam! This makes me very proud as you can imagine (also because I wrote it all myself).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, what I wrote in past blog still remains true, and it&#8217;s not only about the market and potential sales but the burn-out aspect. I am going to simplify things but I will still add RPG elements or mix between visual novels and other gameplay genres (sim\/strategy\/cards etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Curse Of Mantras will be my last game to have a huge cast, but at least the card gameplay is easier (not by that much, but it is) compared to RPG gameplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example if I had to redo PS2 today, I would:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>make the main plot shorter lol, obviously<\/li><li>not have 12 love interests but 4-5 max<\/li><li>choose a starting romance or start as single and romance new characters only (and not the madness of breaking existing romance to pursue new ones etc)<\/li><li>have RPG gameplay but much simpler, more casual, less fights or quicker fights<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The only thing I&#8217;d probably keep is much of the branching, but as said a shorter story. With all those changes, the game would have probably took me 6 months (because I am fast and work hard!) instead of 12 months, and I probably could have priced it more accordingly to today&#8217;s market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mine are just suppositions anyway, because this market changes so quickly that even us devs don&#8217;t really know what&#8217;s going to happen. It will be interesting to see my upcoming games like a match 3 \/ puzzle quest style game that I hope to announce on next month&#8217;s blog post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the blog title says, Volleyball Heaven beta is finally out! You can find more info here: https:\/\/winter-wolves.itch.io\/volleyball-heaven The final gameplay and themes As said before, the game was turned into a plain visual novel since the gameplay system wasn&#8217;t working, so there was no point in adding it if it wasn&#8217;t fun to play. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850","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=3850"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3857,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850\/revisions\/3857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}