{"id":4902,"date":"2025-12-19T15:55:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=4902"},"modified":"2025-12-19T15:55:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:55:42","slug":"2025-year-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2025\/12\/2025-year-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 Year Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As usual, in the latest blog post of the year I review what happened and do some considerations. But first of all, my games are on sale on Steam: https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/pub\/winterwolves<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

and also on itchio: https:\/\/winter-wolves.itch.io\/<\/a>
(Steam keys comes with each itchio purchase)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going back to my “New Year Goals” post earlier this year: https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2025\/01\/new-year-goals-8\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was enthusiastically saying “If I can achieve all that, finish 3 games and do 3 crowdfunding campaigns, I\u2019d consider 2025 a fantastic year!<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haha obviously that didn’t happen, indeed I finished 2 games and did only 1 kickstarter, however it still was a very productive year! But let’s start in order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christine’s Care release<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Throughout my indie career, there have been some games that, even if they didn\u2019t make much money, stayed very close to my heart. Christine\u2019s Care<\/a><\/em> is one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About half of the story was written by an external writer, and I finished the rest with the help of my editor. I added more scenes, the Marlon\/Liz triad, and other details. I really enjoyed writing a story that included a disabled character, and Hannah became one of my favorite characters from all my modern-day stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Steam release went “okay”, not great, but not terrible either (especially considering how crowded the visual novel market is on Steam!). Honestly, I didn\u2019t care: I knew from the start that with its setting and genre, it wouldn\u2019t be a big seller (are you planning to sell a plain VN on Steam? Good luck! You’ll need it.). But it was a game I truly wanted to make… a story I needed to tell. And while Hannah is my favorite, I also really like Marlon, Liz, and Donna. To be honest, I even liked the \u201calone\u201d ending!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game\u2019s art style is also one of my favorites. I loved it so much that for my other release this year, Thieves of Dingirra<\/em>, I decided to work with the same artist again for the CG scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thieves Of Dingirra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The game has been out for too short a time to draw any real conclusions, but so far it\u2019s performed better than I expected. While very different from Christine’s Care, in a way it still shares something with it yes because this is a game I wanted to make too, as a personal challenge. I remember when I told some other indie friend about my intention of making a town management in Ren’Py, they laughed, almost saying “are you crazy? that’s impossible”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And to be honest, it wasn’t easy! At all. But, somehow, earlier this year I started working on it, and everything clicked together. It was HARD. Very hard. It’s the most difficult game I’ve coded in my indie career. And most importantly, I did it all alone! Yes, because for Loren I had the help of an external coder, and for Amber’s Magic Shop or PSCD: Colonial Defense as well. With this game? I did it all on my own!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still remember early this year, I think was February and I was having a very hard time figuring out some complex coding stuff and for a moment I thought “why I decided to complicate my life with this game?”. But the satisfaction I had once it was complete is hard to express by words. Probably the closest thing I experienced before was when I finished Planet Stronghold 2<\/a>, another very big game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, I spent about 10-12 months on this game, and honestly it was a bit too much, in the end I was exhausted. And this leads to the final consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From lone wolf to pack member<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I’ve always made games mostly on my own in the last 20 years (crazy, I know). I did only a few collaborations, but in general while obviously I outsourced stuff (art, music, writing, etc) I was the one doing the games, putting everything together. And in recent times, things went even more extreme, to the point that I was doing all the coding, writing, and even some GUI stuff or videos myself! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year after finishing Thieves Of Dingirra<\/a> I realized that I was so tired that I couldn’t even think about trying to do some marketing. Now, while I think marketing as most indie intend it is overrated (I plan to write a blog post about this in future) it’s still something that you HAVE to do. In general, I realized that what I want to do is… make games. And this is why I decided to try partnering with Andrealphus for my next game. After talking with them, and knowing that I could still develop the game on my own, and they would take care of the parts I don’t like or don’t know how to make (marketing, adding animations, etc) I thought, let’s try!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking with other indies, they had some positive experiences doing partnerships. I think the important is to pick the right person\/team to do that. Doesn’t mean “the best or most famous you can get”. For me the best is someone who shares the same vision about the games I make, that has good work ethics, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that while before I was absolutely sure I’d never work with someone, now I’m more open about the idea, since I think joining forces can bring more benefits to both parties involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Anna is a public danger!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I will still make many games “solo” of course, but if this experiment with Glamour Photographer works, it won’t be the last time! And remember to bookmark the KS campaign page since it should be launching earlier next year: https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/winterwolves\/glamour-photographer\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s all for now, I hope you’re enjoying the holidays and I wish you all a happy new year! In the next blog post I’ll talk about my ambitious goals for 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As usual, in the latest blog post of the year I review what happened and do some considerations. But first of all, my games are on sale on Steam: https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/pub\/winterwolves and also on itchio: https:\/\/winter-wolves.itch.io\/(Steam keys comes with each itchio purchase) Going back to my “New Year Goals” post earlier this year: https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2025\/01\/new-year-goals-8\/ I was […]<\/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-4902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902","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=4902"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4934,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902\/revisions\/4934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}