{"id":4521,"date":"2023-10-06T08:18:05","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T06:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=4521"},"modified":"2023-10-06T08:18:05","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T06:18:05","slug":"toa-an-elven-marriage-officially-out-and-thoughts-on-wishlists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2023\/10\/toa-an-elven-marriage-officially-out-and-thoughts-on-wishlists\/","title":{"rendered":"ToA: An Elven Marriage officially out and thoughts on wishlists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"ToA: An Elven Marriage story trailer\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mFGBQ-1q5xM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>ToA: Official story trailer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m pleased to announce that my new VN\/RPG &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2023\/09\/toa-an-elven-marriage-update-and-other-stuff\/\">ToA: An Elven Marriage&#8221;<\/a> is now officially out on my own site\/itchio, and will be also out on Steam the 16th of current month. If you haven&#8217;t, <a href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/1629210\/Tales_Of_Aravorn_An_Elven_Marriage\/\">you can wishlist it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m happy because the game didn&#8217;t end up in adult-only category, which means anyone will be able to buy and play it. There&#8217;ll be a separate free uncensor DLC for those who want to see the more spicy stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is ToA: An Elven Marriage?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you don\u2019t know what I&#8217;m talking about, this is the first of four spin-offs based on my first fantasy RPG \u201cLoren The Amazon Princess\u201d. It features Saren\/Elenor and some new and old characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other three spin-offs will come out gradually, maybe one every two years or so. It depends on how my other projects go, so I can\u2019t give you an exact date. This game has about 200,000 words of text, which is similar to the original Loren without the DLC. I think it\u2019s a good deal for the price, because of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wanted to give a satisfying ending to the existing romances with Myrth and Rei, and I also introduced two new love interests, Lydia and Nathir, who are very different and appealing (Lydia is one of the most powerful female characters I ever created in my games) and I also tried to make the main story engaging and thought-provoking, with many moral and ethical dilemmas that affect Aravorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the gameplay, I brought back the front\/back row system in battles, making them more strategic (but maybe less flashy since there is no first person view anymore) and I also used some ideas from Planet Stronghold 2 like the crafting\/upgrading system. Moreover, many legendary items have unique skills\/spells (this was an idea I already used in Cursed Lands, but here I expanded it a lot) that allow you to create many different builds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In summary, I am very happy of the final result, and I hope if you give it a chance that you&#8217;ll acknowledge all the efforts behind it and that you&#8217;ll enjoy it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wishlists are really so important?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>And now time for some discussion about this recent obsession in getting the highest amount of wishlist for a game before its launch. Of course, I&#8217;m not saying that they&#8217;re not important! They obviously are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But they&#8217;re not everything! I recently started digging some numbers of my past RPGs to see what happened regarding wishlists and sales, and this graph is interesting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/immagine-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"567\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/immagine-1-1024x567.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4527\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/immagine-1-1024x567.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/immagine-1-300x166.png 300w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/immagine-1-768x425.png 768w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/immagine-1-624x346.png 624w, https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/immagine-1.png 1071w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;re the wishlists at launch, and units sold first week (usually the biggest week of sales) of my last 4 RPGs. Bear in mind that Seasons of The Wolf launched back in 2015, and Queen of Thieves in 2017 and Steam was a completely different world vs now, but in positive (it was way easier to make money) so those numbers have even a higher impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Very interesting is the comparison between Cursed Lands and Planet Stronghold 2: there&#8217;s &#8220;only&#8221; 2 years of difference between the two releases, and Cursed Lands sold almost 3 times Planet Stronghold 2, despite having a third of wishlist at launch!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course that&#8217;s not enough data to draw clear conclusions, but I really hope that high wishlists before launch aren&#8217;t the only way to have a moderate success on Steam nowadays!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s Next?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I have two projects in progress: one is a Kickstarter campaign for a psychological horror game set in modern times. It will be a VN with some adventure elements and mini-games (yes you heard it well, will talk about it in details next month).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other is the final game of the Tales From The Under-Realm series, which will have a half-demoness protagonist and Evelyn from After Midnight as one of the two love interests (I will reveal the other one later). I have already written an initial draft of 100,000 words for this game, so it will be much bigger than the first two!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s all for now. Please go buy <a href=\"https:\/\/winter-wolves.itch.io\/toa-an-elven-marriage\">ToA: An Elven Marriage<\/a> so I can keep making more fantasy VN\/RPG!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m pleased to announce that my new VN\/RPG &#8220;ToA: An Elven Marriage&#8221; is now officially out on my own site\/itchio, and will be also out on Steam the 16th of current month. If you haven&#8217;t, you can wishlist it here. I&#8217;m happy because the game didn&#8217;t end up in adult-only category, which means anyone will [&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-4521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521","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=4521"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4529,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521\/revisions\/4529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}