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:

You can find out more about the game and download the beta version on the game official page: http://www.winterwolves.com/winterinfairbrook.htm

You can also pre-order the game if you want to buy it - the game is already quite stable, and a few minor bugs/typos were already fixed in those two days thanks to the wonderful feedback of some early purchasers. Thanks again for all the help, it will let us make better games! :)

While I didn't set a specific date for the final release I don't think there's much more to wait, probably a week maximum to check that there are no more typos/bugs, but that's it. And don't worry, this time I learned from my previous games and made the game much easier than Always Remember Me (though the last version of that game is a bit easier as well)!

The making of Winter In Fairbrook

It was a pleasure to work with Ayu Sakata and Beatriz García in the first title, who initially was simply called "The Flower Shop", but later we used "Summer In Fairbrook" to differentiate between it and the sequel.

The game was very well received back in January/February 2010 (seems so long ago to me!) and so when in the Summer 2010 I read on twitter that Beatriz García was out of work for the month of July, I immediately asked her if was interested in doing the art for the sequel (it was kind of a rhetorical question since she repeatedly said she would love to work on another game with that setting). This time though, we decided to have a female main character, Natalie. Even if the game can be played as stand-alone, it shares many characters and continues some plots from the first title so... the best is to play both! ;)

So I was saying, during July 2010, the art production of Winter In Fairbrook started. If I remember correctly, I got all the art finished around December/January. Beatriz García had some personal issues, so she didn't work as fast as she is doing recently. And then was the turn of Ayu to have bad luck! While coming back from a convention in June had a car accident, and other various real-life issues.

I'm not saying this to criticize them, not at all (they're both my friends), but to show to everybody who thinks that making a visual novel / dating sim (or any indie game for that matter) is really simple and quick how it is in reality. Unfortunately, bad stuff happens and it can really delay a game release considerably. I can say we wanted to get the game out by the Summer, but for a reason or another it wasn't ready until now!!

We're sorry for the delay, but I hope you'll think it was worth the wait! Personally I love the setting, the art, the writing, and the general mood of the game. The ending romance scenes are really cute and full of good feelings.

I can say that it's really the perfect title to play during Winter and Christmas Holidays, so if you're thinking about an original gift for someone... think about this :)