Winter / Christmas Sale

Anything not related to one of my specific games, like general polls or promo/sale announcements. For general talk about games, go to the Golden Lion subforum
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jack1974
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Winter / Christmas Sale

Post by jack1974 »

It's already live on itchio:
https://itch.io/s/15003/winter-wolves-c ... ewer-games
https://itch.io/s/15001/winter-wolves-c ... lder-games
and it should begin on Steam shortly too (in the next few days).
Troyen
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Re: Winter / Christmas Sale

Post by Troyen »

I caved and was playing some of those $5 VNs on Steam the past few weeks, and while the art and premise are nice, they're often missing the entire middle section of the story. Two characters meet, there's the start of some buildup and plot threads, and suddenly you're in the epilogue.

As a writer, I find the middle parts can be among the hardest to write, especially since a lot of it is careful setup for the payoff points you're most excited about. And I know the more you put into a game, the more expensive the cost is. But if you've gone through the effort to commission/make a whole bunch of detailed character art and backgrounds, and possibly music (though I think a lot of them are using the free license public music), why skimp on the writing? Especially if you've already done the worldbuilding and character design work and have a plot complex enough to support a full story. Or is this an audience thing where so many people are willing to pay for a romance novel where the main characters go from "hmm, this mysterious newcomer might be intriguing" to "we're soulmates forever now" in the span of two mouse clicks?

Anyway, I appreciate that all of your games I've played so far have been complete stories. Even if they are sometimes on the longer side, at least I can count on you to not skimp on the writing.
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jack1974
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Re: Winter / Christmas Sale

Post by jack1974 »

Well the writing part is often the hardest. Of course, not saying making music or art is easy. But in this specific case, I think this "middle-part" writing is really tough. You need to write a character's personality, backstory, etc. It's something that requires a lot more imagination and effort than the beginning/end in my opinion.

And it's not necessarily something that only amateur / bad writers do. Even Cursed Lands (which was well written) was a bit like that. Then I stepped in and added a bunch of scenes "in the middle" to build up the romance. It's a mistake that a lot of people do when writing romance plot arcs: meet new person, several "neutral" scenes then bam, romance. Obviously in real life doesn't work like that :lol:
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