First of all I wanted to inform you that I'm participating to the BecauseWeMay initiative. What is it? Quoting from the website:

We believe that developers should have the freedom to price their games how they like, without interference from the online stores that sell the games. Why? Because it allows us to promote our games more freely, as we are doing here! We rely on the ability to promote our games for our livelihood and control over pricing is an important tool for this purpose.

For the last week of May (May 24 through June 1) our games will be deeply discounted to celebrate online stores that give us control over pricing: The App Store, Google Play, Steam, Desura, IndieVania, and a few others.

I offered my game Spirited Heart + Girl's Love at half price, sold directly and in the Google Play store.

About game pricing

Game pricing is more complex than what people imagine. I often got comments about how my game prices are too high, and I should price them $9.99, because that's what an indie game should cost :)

You can talk about what indie is, what is really worth (3d cutscenes or GAMEPLAY?) and if my games sucks or not. But one thing you simply cannot argue are the statistics. Us developer aren't setting the games prices randomly! At least, I don't. If you're an indie dev you should only listen to your statistics and not what people tell you. Doing occasional sales like this one is fine of course :)

Also, this is my personal experience. I am sure different game types have different audience and prices. I cannot imagine a tower defense or a platform game to cost more than $9.99 for example!

Now, let's see some graphs just to explain better. Below is Spirited Heart Girl's Love revenues graph from the launch day to the BecauseWeMay sale:

...not an impressive bump eh? The fact is that during the release day, all sales came from my own site only and a few affiliates. Instead I got lots of traffic from because we may initiative, but despite having many sales, the half-price really hurts revenues. Still, was a somewhat good result compared to the regular sales. Maybe I should lower game prices then? Let's check Spirited Heart graph instead:

...for this one I didn't even had to go back to the release day to find more profitable days. In two previous occasions, when I sent the newsletter to announce updates about Loren or promote some other game, I got more revenues than for the BecauseWeMay sale. And I got much more traffic from the becausewemay initiative than during those newsletters!

And portals?

But what about portals ? Sadly as you know my experience is very limited, but luckily there are some very indie-friendly portals like Desura. I don't have Spirited Heart there (couldn't make it in time since uses DLC and I don't know yet how to implement it) but I recently put Planet Stronghold, and many people complained about price. So, after a while I did a sale last weekend for $9.99 instead of $24.99, and I promoted it on twitter, and showed up on the "on sale" section of Desura (which I think is the most visited! lol). Result:

I will continue to experiment with prices of course, but so far everything seems to confirm that lower prices = lower revenues. I'd be very happy if I could make same amount of money (or maybe more) and at same time make more customers happy, but so far it really doesn't seem the case.

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Those who're waiting impatiently for Loren expansion don't worry! We are working on it, but after my blog was monopolized by Loren for about 4 months, I decided to talk about one of my other games in progress: the dating sim set in college life called Roommates.

The setting

You play as Anne or Max and the game takes place in a house on-campus, the Latin House. Max is a singer and a rebel, his plan is to stay in school long enough to save up enough money through part-time jobs to get by without his parent's financial support, then drop out and start a ska band. Anne a small-town girl, studious but very shy and easily embarrassed, Anne thinks that college could be the fresh start she needs to break out of her shell. Her goal is to make at least three new friends while keeping her grades up.

The cast

They share the house with several other characters:

Isabella - A flirtatious Latina with a hardcore edge, she likes to party and have a good time, no strings attached. She wants to try everything at least once. Works at the coffee shop on campus. Openly bi.

Max will be able to get an ending with Anne, Sally, Isabella or Rakesh (BxB)

Current progress

The art is at very good point, missing only the backgrounds and the secondary characters. The writing is still at the early stages (first weeks) but since it's a big game will take a while before is finished. The setting is light-comedy with LOTS of fun moments. Think something like the tv show: How I Met Your Mother, to be clear :)

The big change of my future visual novels and dating sims

I am in process of switching to a custom engine made in Monkeycoder language that will allow me to simultaneously release the games for Pc,Mac,Flash/HTML5,iOS and Android (and in theory PSVita, if I really wanted to, but I doubt it). However, it still needs to be finished and tested and will need some more time. But at this point I am thinking to create all the future visual novels / dating sims with the new engine, instead of doing them in Renpy to have to recode them again.

I decided to take this route because at this point seems obvious that none of my games will ever appear on Steam, the only way to make good money with visual novel / dating sims (or any other indie game to be honest). So to survive I am trying this new route that at least gives me more exposure through web and the various appstores, and still grants my usual direct sales as before :)

That means that the imminent new releases this year will mostly be the RPGs, including Loren expansion and Planet Stronghold sequel, since for those I can't use monkeycoder yet, building a RPG engine takes a lot of time! Speaking of Loren expansion, you can see a promo image below:

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As you know if you follow me on twitter, after Loren RPG release I decided to take a break for a week. Break from coding, but not really a total break from work :) During this week both good and bad things happened:

Good things

In the first week of release, Loren is the best selling game I've ever made. However I must not forget that it is also the most expensive and the one that took most time, so I haven't even recovered costs yet, and sales are starting to decrease already (that's normal).

Of course, just a week means nothing, will have to wait at least one month or perhaps 2-3 to judge better, but so far the early results are somewhat reassuring and I don't exclude the possibility of making more deep RPGs like this one in future.

We've started working already on the expansion that should be out sometimes in the next 2-3 months, depending how much content we decide to put in it :)

Also, the press release outcome wasn't bad as I thought: I said last week that my PR was mostly ignored. Luckily, I spoke with a veteran indie, Chris of Arcengames, who enlightened me about how PR actually works. It's uncommon, if not very rare, to get press coverage for a game after just one PR. You need to chase journalists, send follows up, and so on. He stated it's a marathon, not a sprint.

So I followed his advice and sent some review codes to some journalists, and while I cannot be sure when they'll do it, they said will review the game. This include two of the biggest review sites online, so if a review appears in those sites that would be pretty good :)

I made good progresses also in the other games. I got new texts for Queen Of Thieves, Roommates, Nicole. I got new art for Nicole and Planet Stronghold: Warzone. Below you can admire the Marada Knight, one of the new enemies:

And this is Kurt from Nicole game, one of the 3 dateable boys:

One last thing, curiously Bionic Heart is my best selling game on Android. I would have never thought about that, and while Android sales in general are very poor due to the rampant piracy, it's interesting, since on desktops that game definitely doesn't outsell Heileen or Spirited Heart.

Combined with the many ports of Flash games I've seen, I'm thinking that Android is a mostly male-dominated market, while iOS is more neutral or even more female oriented.

Bad things

Of course, also some bad things happened. First of all, I realized how wrong I was to commission a J-pop song for a RPG. Basically, lots of people don't like Loren theme song, and even those who like it say that is out of place. I've now removed it from the main game menu (you can listen it in the credits screen) and I'm thinking to replace the trailer in the game page as well, since I'm quite sure it was hurting sales.

Even if I have already commissioned Heileen 3 song, I'm thinking won't make theme songs anymore in future, since that money could be better spent in making the game bigger with more art or texts.

Another bad thing was the reaction of some people to the game art. I realized that as a straight male, I simply cannot understand if a female outfit is too skimpy/sexy, so from now on for the games that need to appeal both genders, or only female players, will ask the feedback of female friends.

Right now, the artist is redoing most sprites of Amber, the main character of Amber's Magic Shop, because as my writer Aleema suggested, her outfit was completely wrong for an otome game! And beside Amber is supposed to be an alchemist and I haven't seen one with such outfit in any game yet :D

Of course I plan also to have games with more adult themes, like Bionic Heart 2 will be. Lots of fanservice and sexy outfits, horror/mystery, betrayal and blood. Well, like most tv series airing on TV lately, no? ;)

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In case you missed my newsletter or twitter announcement, the fantasy RPG game that kept me busy for the last six months is finally out!

You can download the demo from the game official page:

http://www.winterwolves.com/lorenamazonprincess.htm

The postmortem

Making such a big game like Loren was really a tough journey. Now that I have finished it, I can confess that several points during the development of the game, I thought to quit, to cancel it. Yes, I started thinking that perhaps I could reuse the art in a simple fantasy VN, or that I tried to make something beyond my capabilities and was the biggest mistake of my indie career.

If you tried the demo, or purchased the game (thank you!) you'll quickly realize how complex the game is. It's a full RPG, with classes, statistics, skill trees, several characters, a detailed turn-based battle with many tactical choices, quests, different endings, map,  and more.

Now that is finished I'm really really proud of it. I'm happy to have finished it, despite several problems I had to face developing it.

The bad

As I already wrote, the bad is that is a game that is quite hard for a small team to make. I want to thank again Aleema (the writer) and Anima (the coder) for their effort, but even with their help, "assembling" the game was still a real pain.

It was also my fault, because from the initial design, I added lots more skills and more complexity to the game. The result, as you'll notice, is very good since there are lots of different strategies to win the game, lots of different character skills customizations. That's a clear sign that I made a good job with the design, however implementing it was a real NIGHTMARE.

The problem with RPGs is that there are so many gameplay elements linked together, that is easy to break everything: when you fix a bug in a point of the game, there are good changes that you're adding a new one in another point! Add to this that I didn't have an autoupdater in place, and every time I had to reupload the whole game (100mb) I cried.

As you can see, "the bad side" is not really bad because I screwed up something, but because it's just how hard those kind of games are to make. I'd say is the hardest kind of game you can make nowadays.

So, now I know that if I ever start a new one beside the already planned expansion, will need to restrain myself from adding too many features, because each new feature is extra pain to debug and extra weeks to test.

The good

I had a fantastic support from several people who pre-ordered the game as soon as it was out, and helped a lot during the beta testing phase. The beta testing lasted two months, during those I had lots of feedback: both bugs/typos report but also very good suggestions to improve the gameplay.

Of course I wasn't able to implement all of them, but the ones I implemented really helped making the game even better than it was.

I think the final result is awesome - I usually am pretty modest with my games, but this time I'm breaking the rule, because I think Loren is the best game I've ever made and I'm not even sure if I'll ever make a better one.

Yesterday I sent the game PR and a BIG site showed interest in reviewing it, even if I know from past experience that I must not get too much excited until I see the actual review.

Conclusion

Even if I sent it just yesterday, I can say that the press release was the usual disappointment, the game was mostly ignored (except that big site above that I won't mention now) and people quickly labeled it as "just another bishoujo game" just looking at screenshots. But that's something I am used to :)

I was however pleasantly surprised to see how much traffic I got from social network like Twitter, Facebook, etc. Seems really like that lots of people started talking about the game. Not journalists, not websites, but people who discovered the game through other friends, the infamous word of mouth!

In the end, is still too early to draw any conclusion. Anything can happen from now until the end of the month, and will most likely decide if I'm going to make more games like Loren in future or not. So if you're reading this and enjoyed Loren, and want to see more games like this, you know what to do - spread the word about it. Contact the big websites and tell them to review it - maybe they'll listen to you more than they listen to me ;)

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What is it? As Wikipedia says:

A release candidate (RC) is a beta version with potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. In this stage of product stabilization, all product features have been designed, coded and tested through one or more beta cycles with no known showstopper-class bug.

So, I'm proud to present you Loren Amazon Princess version 0.97a which is a release candidate! Download it here:

http://www.winterwolves.com/download.php?game=LorenRPG-0.97.zip

The game should be playable from beginning to end and not contain any blocking bugs. Does it means it doesn't contain ANY bugs? not even a wrong text, or a slightly different value in gold, or some skills report a slightly different damage prediction, or...?

Again Wikipedia is useful:

A release is called code complete when the development team agrees that no entirely new source code will be added to this release. There may still be source code changes to fix defects, and changes to documentation and data files, and to the code for test cases or utilities.

Once the game is released as version 1.0, we'll keep releasing updates to fix any new bug that might be found, while we work on the expansion for the game.

Murphy's Law at work

In the last 3 days I've seen all possible things to happen to prevent the release candidate to be tested. First, a few days ago I uploaded a wrong build myself (0.95) that had a crashing bug early in the game. But that was my mistake because I didn't retry the game from beginning, as I should have done.

Then yesterday (I live in GMT timezone) was the last drop: the new version was uploaded, but SOMEHOW the file was corrupted! It's the first time that this happens in over 5 years that I'm indie. How can a file be corrupted, if shows the right size on FTP ? A mystery, really, especially considering that I uploaded it in one single try, and connection didn't drop.

Anyway I uploaded it again, and several people tested it confirming that it works.

A few final words

I'll do a proper "post-mortem" about Loren next month, but all I can say is: making RPG game like this one is really very very hard. It was stressing. I was foolish for not having an autoupdater system in place. It was a real pain, even with the help of Aleema (writer) and Anima (RPG coder) that really did an awesome job, and I want to thank them again publicly for what they've done.

But as simple fact: it had the logest development time and it's the most expensive game I've ever attempted to make. Will it be ignored by the main press as always happens for my games ? Won't end on any big portal (Steam...) like usual? So in the end, after all this time and money spent to make the game, it was worth it?

I think it was worth it, no matter what will happen, since I'm very proud of the result. However, if I must say the whole truth, I am not looking forward to make another one before next year minimum (this doesn't include the expansion of course). I need to RELAX! :)

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First of all, let me say farewell to my cat Orfeo, 7 years old. Found him dead on the road nearby our house 2 days ago :( Man, how I wish I could get a house far away from all the roads and crazy drivers...

Word of mouth ?

Getting back to the post topic: word of mouth is really one of the most powerful marketing tools available for indies. Very few indies can afford to spend lot of money on advertising, and many don't get covered by the biggest review sites. Of  course, some do, but mostly indies doing games in popular genres, not "niches".

As a visual novel/dating sim author, is quite hard to get covered. Even Planet Stronghold which is mainly a RPG, probably didn't get much coverage because of the "excessive texts" problem. I remember a reviewer politely emailing me, saying that they would rather not cover PS because they would have to give it a bad rating because it has "too much texts".

I believe it wasn't just the text amount though, but also the quality, since Loren The Amazon Princess RPG has over 175,000 words of texts but so far nobody said "it has too much texts"... ;) Did I mention I'm not going to write directly any of my games anymore? ok good!

Anyway, what happened this month? In some very popular RPG forums, people discovered my game Planet Stronghold. Here are the forums threads:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/mass-effect-gaiden-planet-stronghold.70928/page-8
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16777

Let's say that in the beginning the tone was definitely NOT positive towards my game :D But on the other hands I could understand since they were comparing it to Mass Effect 3! But then... something incredible happened! Some people realized that behind the manga artwork (which somehow is associated with younger audience, like if is a negative thing!) and the slow beginning, there was a full featured RPG with armor, resistances, different attack types, skills, moral/ethic decisions and so on, and some of them started to be literally enthusiast about it!

Of course, despite what they say, I know that my game is NOT better than Mass Effect 3 :) But I think that it offers something that most games nowadays don't include: gameplay. The few AAA games that have been successful in recent years, beside top production values, also include lot of gameplay/innovations.

Anyway, this month's sales for Planet Stronghold have been much higher than normal, thanks to the "word of mouth" started by those threads but also by other people talking about it as a consequence. I got many new members in my own forums, and got suggestions for the sequel. I even got a journalist from RockPaperShotgun online magazine to play it, and while I don't know if it will be actually reviewed (so many good indie games out recently), before it was always ignored!

Sometimes, to have some "success" (modest in my case, of course) you just have to be patient and wait. Make the best game you can, and then be patient, because remember, not all the indies have quick success stories like Mojang.

One last thing before I forget: Loren version 0.94 is now ready! Get the update here, and the full changelog in my forums.

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I'm not talking about getting coverage as indie, but getting the characters of Loren RPG covered! As you can see below, was enough a spell by Apolimesho the Archwizard to give a proper cover to those excessively undressed fantasy heroes:

...no exceptions...

Jokes apart, I decided to put more cover to some characters based on customer's feedback. Initially I admit I wasn't much convinced, I kept thinking "well, I'm an indie, so I should do what I feel right". However some friends and my writer Aleema convinced me that having an OPTION (because you can still play the game without any cover of course!) was not a bad idea. For example some users in my forums mentioned being quite embarassed to play the game on netbooks while traveling in public places, or when some family members were asking what they were doing...I pictured the scene in my head:

- "What are you doing, son?"
- "Hi dad! I'm playing an awesome indie RPG game!"
- "Oh! RPGs? You mean those games with mages, swords, dragons and... wait. What is that? Boobs!?"
- "..." (covers face in shame)

So, since there was already an option to skip the ending romance scenes, we have tied it to showing covered characters, but you can conveniently toggle it on/off with 2 mouse clicks ;)

I also got the battle voices, and made a very short video showing some of them:

I know I know that now the question is... when the next version will be out? the one with the voices? the one with many bugfixes? the one with the full plot/romance implemented?

Well, while I cannot say for sure, it should be out this weekend! As usual follow me on twitter or Facebook to be updated in real-time :)

Bionic Heart 2 prototype

During some pauses in Loren development I started prototyping the dialog system for Bionic Heart 2. My goal is to make a sort of RPG-style dialog system, similar to those seen in classics like Fallout: some choices will be tied to specific skills and on the left will be displayed a sort of scheme of the dialog, showing the various possible paths (icons represent a choice that needs a specific skill).

I'm still in the early design stages though, and since Loren has full priority I'm working on this only during the pauses. I know, working on another game when you have a free moment is a bit weird but... :D

By the way, speaking of Bionic Heart, I made the port to Android even of that game. You can play the demo here.

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Don't worry, the cryptic title of my blog post can be easily explained.

Androids: because I finally had time to take a break from working non-stop on Loren The Amazon Princess RPG, I made the Android port of Heileen! I chose that game since is one of the simplest as gameplay (is a basic Visual Novel). I kept the original resolution of the game, so if you play it on a tablet the resolution will be good, while on phones with smaller resolution the game will scale down.

It's available for only 4.99 in the Android marketplace: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winterwolves.heileen

It has been tested by several people on various devices and nobody had any issues, though on devices with small screen size like phone can be a bit problematic to play, so be warned!

But androids also because I've started writing Bionic Heart 2! I've only made the storyboard for the 3 first scenes, but the new writer is doing a good job with it so far. It's cool to be able to finally resume working with Bionic Heart's universe / characters again after almost 3 years since the first game release.

Drakes: because the chapter4 of Loren is basically finished, and contains a big battle against a Giant Drake which will be one of the toughest enemies of the game. The plot is only missing some romance scenes, but I'm also waiting for 4 new backgrounds and the battle voices to do the next update which will have the full game available (including the romance scenes!). I hope it to be ready sometimes next week or no later than next weekend!

College: because finally I found a replacement writer for the Roommates game, and seems I'll be able to resume working on it at normal speed again! We're redefining the game structure/gameplay and the various breaks, changing the game from being Quarter based, rather than Semester based (so there are more breaks which will lead to some cool scenes like Winter / Spring Break).

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How it's going? Well, not really good since I've got wrist pain since 3 days, because of carpal tunnel syndrome :(

However I still managed to code good part of Loren RPG chapter4, and also add the new map. The latest available beta version is the 0.91 which can be downloaded here:

http://www.winterwolves.com/download.php?game=LorenRPG-0.91.zip

Chapter 4 is coming along very nicely, and we hope to have the final 1.0 release by mid-April! I'm really looking forward to finish this project, the biggest I've ever attempted :)

What about the other games?

As you know, before devoting myself completely to Loren, I had started many projects. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the amount of work I had to put to make a BIG game like Loren, so when the time of the beta came, I realized that I couldn't work in multi-tasking as before (working on several projects at once). This means that I temporarily paused many projects, except those which had already the full storyboard written (like Heileen 3 or Nicole).

Now that Loren is about to be finished, I'm going to get back into managing the other games. Here's a detailed status for each one:

Heileen 3

Art: (100%) is completely done now. I might decide to do two versions, a otome and a yuri one, adding two final CG scenes with two new female romances. Have yet to decide if to do that or not, but I have time since the artist won't be able to make those last 2 scenes before next July!

Writing: (90%) Marie's path is being written right now, and she's the last romanceable character (unless I decide to do what I said above). Game is pretty long, over 150k words, so much bigger than previous titles!

Coding: (25%): Well, it's not that bad actually, since is a dating sim but not very complex. I still need to add a lot of choice changes (based on the 7 cardinal sin/virtues), testing, the scheduler, and so on. Probably 1 month of work.

Amber's Magic Shop

Art: (60%) I need some more backgrounds, and the potion-making interface, but apart this, the sprites are done and only needs to be colored.

Writing: (15%) It's still in the beginning, but several scenes are finished, and Lorelei (the writer) assured she'll resume working on it quickly next month :)

Coding: (10%): I still need to design and implement the potion making interface, that will be the part that needs more coding and testing of the whole game. Also need a "shop" interface, and a lifesim but will probably modify Always Remember Me one. I think about 2 months of coding needed.

Nicole

Art: (50%) I have some character sprites done, but still missing some, and also missing all the CGs, UI and backgrounds. So there's still quite some work to do art-wise!

Writing: (60%) The last character storyboard is being written now. I might review the whole writing later, to check for plotholes, or add some more scenes (I'm used to make big games now!).

Coding: (50%):I plan to reuse Always Remember Me framework for this game, with some small changes, since will also be a mystery game I want to put some kind of diary in the game. Also want to simulate a sort of computer with college intranet :) So because of those new features, probably need at least 1 month to code everything.

Roommates

Art: (70%) all characters are done (might add a few more though). The backgrounds are missing, but the ending CGs scenes (8 in total plus some variations/close ups !) are almost finished (saw the sketches already and artist is finishing them right now).

Writing: (5%) Sadly, previous writer disappeared, so I need to look for a replacement. I also need to plan the gameplay better and do the storyboard, but for this kind of game (set in US college) I definitely need to find someone who knows well that kind of reality so can help me with storyboard beside writing scenes!

Coding: (5%): I haven't done much. I am planning to use a mix between Flower Shop scheduler and Always Remember Me various places to visit. Still need to do lot of design though, including the player stats. I'd say around 2 months of work.

Queen Of Thieves

Art: (80%) is missing the final kissing scenes, but artist disappeared since 1st February, and I'm not sure if he can continue working on the game. In any case, there's not much hurry since I need to design the gameplay, interface, and so on. And worse case I can hire someone since are only the kissing scenes missing.

Writing: (50%) This game is a bit different, meaning that there's more gameplay than other life/dating sim, and less texts. About half of the romances are finished though.

Coding: (5%): As I said, this game will have more gameplay than all the others, but I need to think how to implement it. It might include: 2d turn-based tilemap, short RPG battles, shop simulation... so there's still a long way to go. I think minimum 3 months of work!

Planet Stronghold: Warzone

Art: (50%) all the romance CGs are done, but misses all backgrounds, the wargame tilemap, many enemy sprites, so still long way to go.

Writing: (5%) I only wrote the beginning, and while I have the general plot in my mind have yet to write a storyboard for it. Since is a RPG, will take LOONG time to write it, but Aleema already said wants to work on this one :) Still, probably won't be able to work on it before next summer!

Coding: (90%): Even if it's a RPG, since I'm going to reuse most of the first game RPG framework, coding is quite advanced. I need to code the "wargame" map, but that's it (since I already did some coding for it last year).

Undead Lily

Art: (80%) it's missing some backgrounds, but depending how the battles will take place might add some more sprites, and perhaps some more backgrounds.

Writing: (25%) Several characters scenes are finished, but I paused it because need to rethink how to program the main gameplay, so might have to rework what has been already written to simplify it, or change it somehow.

Coding: (10%): Not much done, and while it will be a simpler RPG than Loren or Planet Stronghold, I decided to pause the development for now. Will resume working on it next year!

I tried to put them in order of a possible release: however, there's no guarantee about the release order, with the exception of Heileen 3 that will almost surely be out this summer! :)

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Why Crunch Mode ?

Today's blog post will be short, because I'm in a sort of "crunch mode". Those who worked in companies know well what does it means - it's a period (usually lasts some days or weeks) during which you work non-stop like crazy to finish an important project.

Obviously in my case, the project is Loren The Amazon Princess :) But also, I need to get back on managing the various other projects going on, since I've been "away" (busy working on Loren) for too long!

For a small indie like me, releasing games regularly is very important, since it's one of the most effective way to get attention. The last game I've released is in December (Winter In Fairbrook), so not too long ago, however if I look back at the past year, during this period (end of March) I had already released Love & Order and was about to finish Planet Stronghold!

Now I know I'm not a machine, so I need to take breaks sometimes, but I usually reserve the summer for that (when it's too hot to work much anyway).

So my goal would be to release 0.9 this weekend, or no later than end of the month. Today I managed to finish scripting the 3rd chapter of Loren, and will take tomorrow to test it again. Meanwhile Aleema is finishing the last touches to the romance scenes, since we're trying to include many of them for the next beta update, the 0.9.

The Bionic Heart sequel

Bionic Heart was one of my early visual novels, but also one that was most popular (was featured in some big japanese websites and that was the first time for a VN made in the west). However, commercially speaking, it wasn't a big success.

Almost 3 years later, I think I know the reasons. It was a pure visual novel, aimed at males, and with my writing (lol). Definitely I don't want to repeat the same mistakes in the sequel, even if I want to make this game mainly for my personal satisfaction than money.

See the full gallery on Posterous

In the image above you see sketches of the main characters, plus there will be new ones which I don't want to show yet. I have written already a generic basic plot, but need to go in the details. For now all I can say is:

• won't be a pure visual novel, but will have statistics, even if won't be a RPG
• you'll be able to play as different characters (differently from the first game)
• it will contain nudity, both male / female
• will have all possible romances (straight & gay / male & female)
• will have lots of endings :)

Now remember, I am NOT working on this game right now, but I am producing / supervising the art production. I don't know yet when I'll have time to start working on this, maybe for Christmas, or maybe later next year!

"Nicole" game

Nicole's plot continues to make progress, and I got also a new characters images. Below you can admire Nicole in her various outfits (yes, cheerleader is also an option!):

That's all for now! Stay tuned, since next month I plan to definitely release something :)

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"World at War" is the subtitle of Loren The Amazon Princess second chapter. The war is between the human and the elves: can Loren and her party stop the madness?

In the picture above, while Myrth and Apolimesho shake hands, Rei asks a vital question: "Can the elves really work together with the humans?" that's what you'll have to find for yourself playing the new game update, which can be downloaded from here:

http://www.winterwolves.com/download.php?game=LorenRPG-0.85.zip

As always, if you find any bugs, please report them in the game official forums.

Of course, there's much more beside the new chapter. The game has been improved under various aspects, many bugs fixed and things tweaked. For example, during the final scenes of second chapter, there's a sequence of battles that you have to fight without the automatic healing option. And I found that the party setup was missing a clear indication of each party member HP and SP.

So in the picture above you can see the new improved party setup screen, that shows the HP/SP for the members you have currently selected to fight.

Another complaint/suggestion I got from the player/testers was about the level up screen. It wasn't really clear which skills you could learn since all the skills were displayed in full color.

So as you can see in the screen above, the greyed-out skills are the ones that you cannot learn yet. I think it's much clear now. Also you might have noticed that I put a reset button, so if the attributes picked by the auto-assign doesn't satisfy you, you can retry as much as you want or allocate them manually.

Another big change is that I found a bug in the vendor screen, so that the vendors inventories weren't updating. Now, if you visit the same shop from time to time (you need to advance the plot a bit every time) you'll see new interesting items available.

There are LOTS more changes in the new version of course, but I cannot list them all! :)

I am not satisfied yet by the skills power level setup in the battle, since is easy to forget that you have 3 levels, and using the numbered buttons is not very intuitive, so I still need to tweak it, but except that I believe the battles, the skills and the classes now are really well balanced.

The mages now deal lots of damage, and since the vendors are fixed, you can buy some SP regenerating items and they can become really powerful. Warriors still have the highest HP and can absorb lot of damage, while Thieves are very versatile and now can use their skills more often.

As for the plot, it's already 140,000 words, so already more than double Planet Stronghold's plot! There's still the end of chapter4 and some romances left, so I think will reach 150,000 words for sure, becoming my biggest game ever! And it's not even a pure VN, but a RPG... definitely people won't be able to complain about the game length ;)

Other games update!

And now for the visual novel / dating sim fans, here's an unusual outfit for Ebele that you'll be able to admire in the upcoming Heileen3:

The game is already over 120,000 words, and almost all the 100 scenes have been written. Lora's path is complete, and only Marie's one is left. If everything goes well, expect it sometimes this summer :)

Also, the artist working on mystery/otome game Nicole had some computer problems, so the art production was delayed by a few weeks, but now she resumed working regularly. Even for this other game, expect a release sometimes this summer!

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The Past

Don't worry, the picture above is NOT of any upcoming games! ;) It's from one of my early fantasy/RPG games called Magic Stones, which has still a special place in my heart because was the first game I made to become relatively successful. That though represent the past, what I was doing several years ago. I used royalty free poser 3d models because I couldn't afford decent artists.

The Present

The present is of course represented well by my recent manga games, and Loren in particular. I never invested so much time and resources in a game before, but now that the game is currently in beta stage, I can say it was definitely worth it!

In case you missed my Twitter/Facebook announcement, I released version 0.8 which lets you play through the whole chapter 1. The game has also a very long demo, so you can try it before preordering it!

We have added a lot of new features to version 0.8 based on early tester/players' feedback, and I must say that the game now is much better. I liked a lot in particular the feature to double-click to repeat last action (very useful in battles, making them much more smooth to play!) and the new "Tasks" feature, in which you can play battles to raise your Fame in a specific town, to obtain discounts in the town's vendor.

The. plot is also going on very well, with Aleema (the writer) finishing the last chapter. I can assure you that the final battle will be something epic, and also have a surprising end! But for now, I'm concentrating on finishing the chapter2, since adding all the new enemies and battles is quite time consuming, since I have to test them all.

I also reduced the difficulty on the Easy level so much, that I can say that playing Loren at easy level is almost like playing a normal visual novel. So I think that even if you don't like RPGs, you should try playing it in easy mode just to read the story, which I think is very good!

The Future

As I said, after Loren I plan to take a break from very detailed RPGs. But of course, Planet Stronghold sequel will be still done this year, since in this case the RPG framework is already tested and finished (and also, is more simplified vs Loren).

Below you can admire a new sketch from the artist for a Marada Shaman enemy:

Planet Stronghold: Warzone should be out this summer, though is more likely will be this fall. As for my other projects, beside Heileen 3 and Nicole, I didn't make much progresses, since my last two months were completely absorbed by Loren!

But hopefully once Loren is out, will have more time to devote to those games, which compared to the complexity of making a RPG could even be considered "relaxing"! ;)

I also have more surprises coming out next months: might do my first online/webgame, and if I can find the right partner also a webcomic. Stay tuned!

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If you follow Loren RPG development on twitter and in my forums, you already know that I failed to met the deadilne of the new version for the 1st March. It was a self-imposed deadline, but I wanted to met it because I am used to keep my word, so I am a bit disappointed at myself...

However, I have a pretty good excuse for not meeting it! The version 0.8 which will be online maximum next weekend (10-11 March) will have LOTS of new features!

Just to name a few major changes (but there are many others):

- new resistance icons, say goodbye to my poorly drawn ones!
- new quick equip item from the character inventory (drag&drop would be too much, better to just use 1 single click!)
- you can now access inventory from the battle. Maybe less realistic, but many people asked for it and I admit is bad to restart a game/load a saved game only because you forgot to equip your character!
- new minigame by the writer Aleema, when you select your character: PC will tell the backstory of his/her slavery, and you choice will determine the starting statistics (a bit like my other game Spirited Heart)
- new redesigned battle UI. You can choose between big or small icons, and the left panel now shows target statistics or resistances. Added tooltips all around the battle to help players understand what's going on.
- added new playing style "Tactics". Player starts with 5 skills but get a new one every 3 levels rather than 2. Also eliminated all the level restrictions for the skills, since they higher ones are balanced by the higher SP requirement
- new "smart slot" system, so that you have a slot for weapon, a slot for offhand/shield, and a slot for ranged weapon. During battle you'll be able to attack (with appropriate penalties) using melee or missile as you prefer
- added city tasks and Fame system. Perform city tasks (predefined battles with specific rules) to get Fame. Fame helps in getting a discount on buying/selling items in the respective town's vendor
- added double-click to repeat the last action. This works both with offensive but also defensive skills, making the battle flow much faster!

I also made a video showing the new "Character Creation":

So that's all for now - stay tuned because next friday (if not sooner!) very likely version 0.8 will be out.

Heileen 3

I also want to talk about my other games, otherwise you might think that in 2012 I will release only Loren. But don't worry, have other more "casual" and "girly" games in the work! One of them, probably the most awaited, is Heileen 3, which is coming out very nicely. The dialogues are totally hilarious, and I can already say that is going to be one of my most funny games ever.

The artist Rebecca sent me also the last two romance endings, with Marie and Lora, and they're beautiful. Unfortunately, to see them you must wait until this summer when the game will be out! But I can already show you a sneak peek:

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In the picture above, Othello looking at the new arrival, our dog Skipper.

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the Loren Amazon Princess tunnel :) If you follow me you know that last week I made public a sort of sneak peek, to see what people think. So far the response was very positive. People like the art, the story/writing, and beside a few bugs (all my fault though!) even the gameplay.

After the public preview, I made a big spreadsheet document with all the bugs and suggestions. I spent the following 2 days fixing them and evaluating the suggestions, and today finally I started to get back into the "content creation" phase.

Yes, because even if the plot is done until chapter4, as I play the game I'm adding the fights, creating new enemies, and also adding some extra movement steps on the map to make the game seem less linear (even if in reality it is, but nobody complained so far!).

The goal is to have the plot fully scripted by mid-March, and Aleema (my writer) said it would be possible, and I self-imposed myself the deadline of end of March for the almost-final release. It won't be easy, but I'll try to make it!

The next appointment with Loren is 1st March when I'll start pre-orders and release a new improved demo.

And the other games...?

I know that not everyone who follows me is a RPG fan, and they might be wondering what happened to the various games I have announced!

Well, to be honest I underestimated the amount of work that was needed to make a huge game like Loren. So while I am still waiting for the artwork and the writing for most other games, I was so busy that wasn't able to use my traditional "motivational techniques" to encourage my collaborators. In other words, the famous "spanking lazy collaborators"! :D

So the progress speed for my other games has been slower than usual, but until I finish Loren I don't think will have time to follow/encourage them.

Also, this week I decided to move the main Winterwolves site into a cloud server, so this added some extra delays (those kind of things are always problematic!). But better do that before Loren is released, just in case somehow it becomes a popular game!

Anyway, just to reassure that the other projects are still going forward, here's a sneak peek of Heileen 3 male romances:

Heileen 3 is still missing some art, and the whole Marie subplot, but I'd say that is 80% complete (of course, I still need to put everything together and test it).

And below is Jeff, one of the four pursuable characters of the mystery/otome game "Nicole":

That's it for this week, see you next Friday!

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No, I'm not talking about the Mayan prophecy :) Sadly, I'm not even talking about the Loren RPG, since I think will still take a few months before is finished.

I'm talking about two scary news I've read this week. They regard the upcoming MacOS Mountain Lion and Windows 8. As you might know, they both will come with a built-in appstore. But the scary news is that both will DISABLE BY DEFAULT "non signed" apps.

What does it means? It means that if you install the new MacOS and download one of my current games, you won't be able to play it. Of course, at least in those first new OS versions, there will be a work around. For Windows, you'll have to switch back to the "desktop mode", while for MacOS you'll have to enable the app by right clicking on it.

So, it's not as scary as it seems right? No, it is. First, because it's a first step towards a "walled garden", which will probably lead to the impossibility to run non-certified apps at all in future versions. Second, not all users are tech-savy, so for them running the app might become too much of a trouble, which means that my niche will become even smaller. Others might even not trust installing non-certified apps anymore, despite they are completely safe.

But it's not over yet, now comes the good part: from what I gathered reading those articles, even if I pay the annual fees to get my games certified (so they can run without any trick), Apple can still disable/ban any app remotely. Let's say I make another RPG game like Loren, which has some VERY HOT romance scenes at the end. Some users don't like that and complain. Apple might disable the game permanently! (not saying that they will for sure, but the possibility is there)

Of course, all of this is just a conjecture for now, and the danger is not imminent. I believe will take at least 4-5 more years before all of this will be very common. But still, the future is NOT promising at all.

Considering I sell mostly directly, I have really few options, and the most rational seems to abandon the downloads to move into webgames using HTML5 or Unity web plugin. I have to say that personally I DON'T like this, but is a kind of a forced choice. I don't want to make more games, knowing that in a not distant future they might become obsolete, forgotten. I'd like people to be able to play my games for years and years to come in an easy way, and right now using downloads it seems a very risky path.

Loren The Amazon Princess beta demo this weekend!

Anyway, for now I'll concentrate on finishing Loren RPG, since I definitely cannot port the game to another language now! Expect a demo tomorrow or Sunday. Will post the news on my twitter, on Facebook and will also send the newsletter.

How long will be the demo? Well, I am not sure if today will manage to finish chapter1 or not, but will try. In any case, considering you can take two paths early in the game (side with humans or elves) I believe that should be at least a few hours of entertainment.

As for the pre-orders I am not sure if I'll start them with the demo or wait a bit more. Is something that I will decide in the next days based on how much work I can put on the game before the demo is live.

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The title is a joke but explains well my current situation. I'm working on several games, mainly Loren RPG, and every 2-3 hours I go outside with temperatures ranging from -4°C to 10°C (even during the day) to shovel an incredible amount of snow!

It has been snowing since the first days of February, and this situation HAS slowed down considerably my development, since beside the time spent shoveling, when I get back to work I'm exhausted :D

Anyway, I got almost all the items artwork for Loren, and hopefully by next weekend I'll have it all. Code-wise we added some more features, like the possibility to randomize a bit each vendor. So the items on sale will change through the course of the story, based on your progresses and the current equipment you have.

Also, each vendor has a specific "lore": the human town of Grimoire is specialized in heavy blade and armors, while in the capitol of the Elves, Grandtree, you can find many excellent bows and magic items.

Not only RPGs!

But progresses are being made also in other games, in particular Heileen 3 and Amber's Magic Shop. For Heileen 3, I got a bunch of sketches for all the ending images, and I can assure you that some are VERY interesting...! The writing is also at a good stage, the writer reached the 60th scene, so more than half is finished!

Now admire an image of Morgan in a more casual outfit. What do you think, girls? ;)

I must also say that even if the writer isn't a native English speaker (so had to ask a friend to proofread the script) her writing is really very funny, and perfect for Heileen 3 mood. I laughed lots of times reading some of the scenes she wrote, in particular those with Juliet and John :)

For Amber instead I got already the lineart of many of the characters. As I said, I was lucky to be able to hire Loren's artist again, and the results are great. They're still uncolored, so for now will just post an image of Vin, the witch and adoptive mother of Amber:

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It has been a long week. I spent it testing, adding lots of small details, and so on. This process is was is commonly known as "polishing". I am trying really to make the game the best I can, but of course I also want to release it soon!

As the post title says, the three main things missing were vendors, quests and random encounters. So far I have implemented only the quests (more below) but the vendor is at good point too, while for the random encounters very likely will need to implement the map first.

Another thing I recently added are the quest. The code was already done, but I added a simple but efficient screen to inform the players when they got a new quest, like in the image above.

Quests are useful especially in the beginning to "boost" the experience of players, since the battles without many skills lose a lot of their charm. So I wanted the player to level up quickly at least in the beginning, so they can learn new skills. The level-up speed is something I need to tweak and will take some time as well.

What about the other games?

Fear not! Heileen 3 is going forward very well, the total plot is already 81,000 words and there are still Marie and Lora's romance arc missing, so will definitely be a long game.

I also should get new art and texts for the various other projects (including some that I'm keeping secret), but as you know until Loren's Beta is finished, I'll be working almost exclusively on that!

One thing I can announce though, and is that I had the chance to hire again Loren's artist by pure luck for a limited amount of time, and I had him work on Amber's Magic Shop art. So finally I'll be able to get the art for that game! :)

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In the photo above, Gilda and Leon sleeping "head to head" :)

I was hoping to announce the start of the beta pre-order for my fantasy RPG "Loren The Amazon Princess" but alas, I am going to delay it by a few weeks. I'm hoping by mid of February to have the full chapter 1 finished.

Below some screens of the vendor (WIP) and the battle with a 99% final layout:

See the full gallery on Posterous

You might ask what exactly is missing? The biggest part of the game is done, but there are a lots of small things missing. To be clear I could release the beta at the end of this month, but it would miss a several interesting features like:

• working vendor - the vendor code is still half-done, and even if the coder probably could finish it in 3 days, it would be greatly untested. Also I would need to define the vendors inventory, check what kind of items they might have available, and so on!
• side quests - I'm thinking what to have as side quests. In the game, there are already side-quests but they appear later in the game, in particular in the expansion when you can choose if to recruit Sauzer, Mesphit and Chambara. I want to add a few more, nothing complex since the game is already VERY long, but still...
• map system - it will be a simple map system like Planet Stronghold (nothing complex) but still I am missing the art and good part of implementation (like random encounters, and so on)
• battle effects - there are SOME battle effects done (nothing fancy!) but when you have 80+ skills to do, it starts to be a LOONG task. I don't want to spend much time on this, because it doesn't make sense to make lots of efforts for a 1-2 second animation, but still I don't want it to look like a total crap :D

So as you can see, nothing really ESSENTIAL to the game, but I don't want to rush out the beta, and have people test an already outdated version, since I will add most of the things above.

What about the grinding?

The term grinding, as defined by Wikipedia:

"Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or boring tasks not pertaining to the story line of the game. The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over again to advance their character level to be able to access newer content."

As you might know, I make heavy story-based games. However, Loren is the first game that has a very solid RPG gameplay. It's much deeper, detailed and also complex than Planet Stronghold. And you can reach up to level 30 (I decided to lower the level cap from level 60 !).

I know that some people hate grinding, while other consider it an essential part of RPGs. Of course, not an excessive grinding, but if the battle is well done, it's cool to kill monsters to gain more experience and unlock new skills.

In my case though, it also helps the game. As much as I can test it, and even if I offer different difficulty levels, I cannot know every single player skills. So even if I give out more experience points at Easy difficulty level, I cannot know if it will be enough for everyone to win the battle with Jul in chapter 4 of the game (it will be a hard battle!).

A solution is to leave some zones of the map with "wandering monsters", so that if the player is stuck in a battle and cannot seem to win it, he can visit those places and fight some grinding battles to gain more experience and level up. As consequence, he can retry the previous battle but with a strongest party, increasing the chances of winning.

I think done this way, grinding is not a bad thing anymore, but is a sort of "approved cheat mode". You can win most battles at your selected difficulty level? Good. You can't? Try playing in a easier mode. You still cannot win that specific battle? Try grinding a bit, and then come back with a strongest party and kick the enemy's ass!

The other games

I know recently I'm completely absorbed into Loren and haven't updated much the other games progresses. This is because Loren is a very long and complex game to make, and I want to finish it soon. However don't worry, since after it's finished I'll release some new dating/life sim, including Heileen 3 (probably this summer).

Here's a picture of Marie with the "new look". I find her very cute:

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Today I want to talk about some differences between "old school" and "modern" RPGs, since I'm working right now on Loren Amazon Princess that is what I would define a "old school" RPG for some aspect, while "modern" for others.

Below a gallery with some preview images, showing several aspects of the game:

See the full gallery on Posterous

One of the main differences between oldschool and modern RPGs is the turn-based / real-time mechanics. Most modern RPG use real-time. Unfortunately, I was kind of forced to use turn-based because making a real-time game needs lots more animation/art, and in general is harder to make.

I still have a battle movement order though, which is dynamic. If you see the column on the right, shows the movement order, and as you hover the mouse on the possible actions, it gives you a "preview" of how your decision will change the order. So beside the power/effects of a skill, you'll also have to ponder the delay that the same skill gives. Sometimes for example, is better to use a skill that does less damage but lets you kill two goblin thieves already injured, than "waste" a skill that does more damage but pushes you back on the movement order list.

Another difference is auto-mapping. In my game I don't have dungeons with map, so there will be just a main map of the world, with easily accessible places. But I remember some oldschool RPGs that didn't have an automap, and you had to write down on paper the map of the dungeon. Seems crazy thinking about this now !

The user interface is also something that was greatly improved over old RPGs. Last year I bought Temple Of Elemental Evil, and was shocked by the clumsy interface: no mouse over, so simple button to change view/move object between players, and so on. Most modern RPGs use a "shared inventory", that means all player have immediate access to all item owned by the party. If someone has an item equipped you usually need to unequip it to put in the pool, but before every item (even unequipped ones) was carried by a specific player, so the user had to do a much bigger amount of clicking.

The vendor / items comparison wasn't automatic like now. In most new games, you have a way to immediately see if an item you just looted is more or less powerful than the one you're carrying. Before instead you had to look at all the statistics and decide for yourself! It was crazy, right? :)

Also, with a RPG featuring only one character is quite easy, but if you have a party things starts to get complex: what if there are two warriors in the party? you need to tell the player if the new longsword you just found is better or worse than the weapons equipped by both warriors. This is the problem we're facing right now with the loot and the vendor in Loren Amazon Princess game!

The difficulty level is also something that changed radically over time. Most old RPGs were very hard, while modern ones offers at least several different difficulty levels, so people that just want to have easy combat and progress in the story, will be able too. In Loren there are three different difficulty levels, and they have a big impact on gameplay rules. At easy level, enemies are easy and the elemental resistances have a marginal impact on battle. At hard level, enemies are tougher and the elemental resistances have a key role: hitting an enemy vulnerable to fire with a fire-based skill will have a much bigger impact.

Lastly, the level progression was completely different. Even if I have to say that JRPG were always different from western RPGs, but in general leveling up after the first early levels was a big achievement. In AD&D games, already getting from level 5 to level 6 could take a LOONG time! Recently, beside the already mentioned JRPG, even in modern MMORPG like Everquest or WoW, you're going to see the levelup screen much more often.

In Loren, I have decided to use this system: each character has a main class (Warrior, Thief or Mage) and a specialization (unique) class. Each class has 5 different skills, and each one has 3 levels of power. So as you see, each character has 30 different skills that can learn. So I have decided (though this might change during testing of course!) to have a level cap of 60, and give a skill point every 2 levels. This way, at level 20 you could have learned all the skills for every character, but at the basic level of power: so will add some more strategy since the player will need to think which skill to raise up to the maximum power level?

Every level up instead you get 3 attribute points, to spend on Strength, Skill or Will attributes. Will write about those three attributes next friday since the explanation is long and beside... by that time I might be about to announce the open beta preorders! (crossing fingers)

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Ren'Py was created by Tom Rothamel, as a tool to help everyone to create visual novel games, with very little or no coding knowledge required. I first learned and started using it around Summer 2008, and since that year it has evolved quite a lot. So it's been 3 years and half since I started using it, and right now I can prototype many games rather quickly, even if works better for certain kind of games: heavily story based, with no real-time animations and of course 2d, since Ren'Py is a 2d game tool.

Currently Ren'Py is available for PC, Mac, Linux and is still experimental on Android, though it should be available sometimes in the future. There's no iOS version planned at the moment of writing, even if the author seems to be thinking about it.

The language

Ren'Py, as the name suggest is based on Pygame and Python, which I consider the most advanced language available today. Simple, concise, but at same time powerful and easy to use.

It was love at first sight for me: I was used to type the Divine Comedy in C/C++ to load a .csv or do string operations, and when I realized how quick was to develop with python I immediately started to learn it, and it was very simple process (thanks also to the online documentation).

Ren'Py is NOT a visual tool. You don't use the mouse to place UI. You use an IDE, currently available are SciTe or Jedit. This might discourage many people who first approach it, especially if they're not coders but are used to play with Flash, Gamemaker, Stencyl or other visual creating tools. However, you soon realize that for certain kind of games there's nothing better than Ren'Py and you don't actually need a visual editor at all.

As I said the language was designed with visual novels in mind: though you can use it also for any story-based game like dating sim, RPG games, or adventures with some extra coding.

Recently a new Screen Language and ATL (Advanced Transform Language) were introduced, making the creation of interactive screens and special effects (zoom, rotation, movement, etc) even easier.

The Good

Very simple cross-platform capability. Since python is an interpreted language, this means that you can build the game for the three platforms (PC, Mac, Linux) with ONE CLICK. This is simply amazing! And you don't have to worry for different behaviors: if the game works in one platform, it will behave the same in another. This was a big plus for me since I was used to have mysterious bugs on Mac when coding in C and Xcode, that weren't present on PC.

With Ren'Py, I went as far as copying new .rpyc (Ren'Py compiled source scripts) directly into the zip (Mac version) or the tar.gz (Linux versions) from my Windows computer, without rebuilding the games and it worked, I didn't encounter any problem. So for example you can develop for Pc, Mac and Linux without the need to buy a Mac or have a machine with Linux installed.

Powerful language and syntax. The language is really simple and intuitive. Remember that it's a tool specialized for Visual Novels, but you can effectively write most 2d games with it. Probably the only ones that I wouldn't reccommend coding are those who rely on real-time movement, like a RTS, shooter, or similar. Note that is still possible to make that kind of games, but I would pick another tool honestly.

Still for any other 2d game it's really a great solution. Very strong GUI system, combined with the ease of use of python makes this a great tool.

Easy to debug. In most other languages, debugging is a pain. Not just finding the bug, but finding out which line of code cause it. With Ren'Py thanks to Python you get very detailed crash reports, telling you exactly where the problem is.

Magic reloading and rollback system. Those are without any doubts the BEST features I've seen in ANY 2d development engine. Not even Unity has something so powerful. What is that, you might ask? First, the reload: since python is a scripted language, you can ANYTIME (and I mean literally anytime) hit shift+R and see immediately the changes you've made to the current screen.

The rollback system instead is something inherited by the visual novel mechanics, but that works surprisingly well even to debug. In practice, the program stores the path you have choosen, and memorizes XX amount of "steps". This was doen so that the player could "rollback" with the mousewheel or keys, to a previous situation in the game story. But it works even for coding!

Trying to explain better: if you start the game, then visit in order: screen 99, do action 32, screen 32, click button 2, screen 12, type your name, screen 42, click button 5. Can you remember that? the game can, and provides you with a way to go back, a sort of "Undo" but you can use it when directly playing the game in debug mode!

I know that even in Unity you can modify the game world with the 3d world editor and see the changes, but here I mean something different: you can see the changes without having to EXIT the game, and restart.

A few simple examples:

case A: you've been testing for 6h a complex RPG. You see a visual bug. You look in the code, find that a button was aligned badly, change the code and reload. You see the change immediately, and go on testing. "Flawless Victory".

case B: you've been testing for 6h a complex RPG. You click "done" and the next screen crashes. Thanks to Python built-in descriptive crash you see where the problem was, in previous screen you assigned a impossible value. You do a rollback, in practice executing an Undo of all executed code, then fix the bug in the source with the game still running, reload, and go on with the testing. "Epic Win".

And the documentation? it's good, at least for the basic features.

The Bad

As I said, there's no editor apart an IDE. There is no intellisense/code completion, and you cannot browse classes or labels (some people managed to use Eclipse or other tools for python to code with it, but it's definitely a hack). This is definitely something that could be improved, since in particular in the first weeks of use you can't remember all the commands by memory and you'll be looking at the documentation extensively.

Bad documentation for the most advanced features. How does Sprites work? What is im.ConditionSwitch? and so on. The documentation explains everything, but sometimes seems written like if the author assumes the reader is a good coder/clever as him, but often that's not the case :) I consider myself an average coder but surely not a beginner, and sometimes I have hard time to understand how some of this stuff works. But it's not bad as it was in the early days when documentation was really scarce!

It's an hobbyst project. Don't get me wrong: the author is doing an awesome job trying to reply to all the support requests, mainly done through the specific Lemmasoft forum dedicated to Ren'Py. However it still is, at least for now, an hobbyst project. The author doesn't make any money from it, and so obviously there's no guarantee that you'll get an answer to your question. I repeat, he is doing the best he can, and sometimes other people help answering the most common questions, but still you must not expect to get immediate responses to your problems.

Personally, I'd love to see Ren'Py become a professional tool, with full support of deployment for Android/iOS, and maybe future porting to HTML5 and more. I am sure many other gamedevelopers even outside of the "visual novel / dating sim circle" would pick it up because of its features.

In conclusion

Ren'Py is a tool with double face. If you want simply to use it for what was made for, it will do the job without problems and is simply the best visual novel/dating sim system around, at least for desktop computers.

If you're a more advanced coder and want to build simulation games, strategy games, rpg games, or any 2d game that doesn't need a lot of things moving on the screen (but even in that case, you could make it) you'll be surprised by the ease of use and powerful features that Ren'Py has to offer, combining the power of Python with one of the best GUI / scripting systems I've seen in modern 2d libraries.

Yes, to use it in advanced mode it has a steep learning curve, but once you get the grasp of it, is really hard to get back to... anything else. I had to do some C coding last week, and wondered why the "rollback" wasn't working, or why I couldn't just hit Shift+R to see instantly the changes I've made!

At least this was my experience. If I was able to release 12 games in three years and half (almost one every 4 months) it's only because I discovered this powerful tool. Thanks again to Tom Rothamel for the incredible piece of software he managed to create!

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