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 ;)

In the image above, my cat "Micia" back in 2002. She was living with my parents now, and she died last week, at 15 years old. It's kind of sad since she was the first cat I rescued and officially adopted. I want to remember Micia with that funny picture of her in the bath tub :)

Now, speaking about my games, some interesting news:

First of all, I updated both Vera Blanc games, added a new "visual novel mode" (that eliminates the need to solve the minigames) and put on sale until Sunday for 4.99 each. So if you haven't already, check the demos here:

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

Four new projects!

I've started 4 new games. Yes, four! I'm crazy, I know. But as you know I'm now using external writers, so I'm "only" writing the scenes and doing the games storyboard. Obviously I won't release all those games this year, also because I expect some of those writers to quit/disappear halfway, like usually happens...
Of those 4, only one has already some art ready and is the Queen Of Thieves game, which will be a fantasy RPG/lifesim (though I have yet to think about the gameplay in detail).
The other 3 are: "The Hospital" a horror game, "Amber's Magic Shop" another fantasy lifesim/potion making game with both good/bad endings, and "Roommates" a more light themed game with college settings.

All the game titles are temporary names which might change.

The Queen Of Thieves game

Is being rewritten by another person, which hopefully won't disappear from one day to another. I am sorry for previous writer since she was doing a good job, but I can't keep chasing everyone, especially if they don't email for 2 months ^_^;

I want to push this game hard since as I said is the one where I have most of the art done (still need to be finished though) and it could be one of my next games to be released, alongside with Loren and Planet Stronghold: Warzone.

Amber's Magic Shop game

As you have noticed, recently I released mostly light-themed games and all of them had happy endings. While I like them of course, I also like games that offers sad/bad endings. Sometimes, a bittersweet ending or even a sad ending can be more rewarding (story-wise) than the more "classic" happy endings.

So in the fantasy life/potion sim game I'm writing right now, I'll have bad endings, since the overall game setting is dark fantasy. I wanted to try with one game to see how the public would react, since honestly I'm a bit tired of writing only happy ending games! Besides, there will be happy ending even in this game, alongside with the sad ones.

The Hospital game

This is a kind of an experiment, I admit it. I have absolutely no clue how a horror VN game can sell. It will be probably shorter (and so cheaper) than my other games, and still have some romance options as well, but obviously quite different from my other light-themed games. The game starts and you wake up in a hospital bed, with no memories of who your are...

(I know, not the most original start, but the rest of the story I think it will be!)

The Roommates game

I got lots of feedback from people who wanted a game with college/light setting. I am designing one right now, which will include both male and female main character. So you'll be able to play it as GxB, GxG or BxG, BxB. In practice, all relationship tastes included!

 

Loren RPG framework status

We made lots of progresses this month so far. Right now, we're waiting for some new icons/UI for the equipment screen and then we'll be able to post a public alpha preview, which will be very useful to find some possible nasty hidden bugs. I tested the battle a lot, but I only recently added many new items, and I also want to start creating some new enemies, so is likely that some bugs could pop-up.

In the image above you can see the equipment screen mockup, which obviously is not final but just a work-in-progress.

Obviously my other games like Heileen 3 and Planet Stronghold: Warzone are progressing as well, with the former getting lots of the 100-scenes done, and the latter almost all the romance CGs finished.