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 ;)

As you probably know if you follow me on Twitter / Facebook, or are subscribed to my newsletter, the final version of Winter In Fairbrook is out, just in time for Christmas!

If you haven't played the first title yet, you can now get both for 15% off. For more info check the Flower Shop series page.

I also need to update the first title to online activation and new Ren'Py, and probably make it easier too since is much harder compared to Winter In Fairbrook.

Meanwhile, the other games in production are making good progress:

Loren Amazon Princess RPG

The plot is still being written, but I'm happy to say that counting the expansion, it will be the longest game I've ever made, even longer than Planet Stronghold. Also there are a lot of romance options, for all tastes. The only thing that concerns me right now is the battle system. I have asked the coder to make a 8 vs 8 battle. However, I'm thinking that might be too hard/confusing or simply the battles could last too long, so following the coder's suggestion I might drop the number to 6 vs 6 maximum, which should already offer a good variety in the battles.

In practice I'm wondering if the battle isn't too much "for the hardcore RPG fans" than the occasional RPG players. I have to say though that even Planet Stronghold was supposed to be a light-RPG, a visual novel with RPG elements but then quickly evolved into a full JRPG and people seemed to like it.

I guess the moment of truth will be when I'll publicly release the Alpha Version, with some battle examples, so I'll be able to get feedback on it and see people's reactions.

The Queen Of Thieves

I got more art finished, below you see Arianna, also know as The Queen Of Thieves! Yes she is the mother of the three sisters Joanne, Kira and Thalia, the main characters of the game.

Artist is working on the various kiss scenes for the romance subplots, and then will do the introduction which will be in the form of short comic. I have yet to code all the gameplay but I think I have some good ideas for it, and I'm eager to start prototyping something to see if they're good or not! :)

Draw fan art and win a free game! Facebook contest

I've setup a new contest in my Facebook page. I'm giving away three coupons to get a free game to the top 3 entries. What you need to do? Draw fan art of any characters from my games (including Winter Wolves and Tycoon Games) and submit it to the contest application on Facebook.

There's a voting system, so the three most popular fan art images will win a free game coupon! The contest will end the 25th December 2011, unless the amount of entries is too low (for example below 10) in that case I'll extend the deadline by some more weeks.