In the image above, the view from my office window!!!

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:

I really like her "floreal dress" :) but even the other characters are all quite cute. Once I have the finished colored images will post more previews!

Here's my cat Leon sleeping seen from a very fun perspective :D It's one of my favourite pics of my cats. In the image above instead you see the three main characters of my new game "Queen Of Thieves". Before you say "what, another game in production!" - just know that all those games I'm announcing are just in the EARLY STAGES. It means that this game might be not ready before Christmas! Remember Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook? I announced it in July 2010 and is not out yet... and that's just an example :) So, don't get too excited or start thinking "how can he make so many games" and so on. Simply, nowadays if you want to survive as full-time indie you either have to make a BIG game that must also be successful (and it's very difficult) or produce games at faster pace. Since I like to create stories and design gameplay, the latter solution fits me more than the former. By the way don't worry - I will write the main plot of Queen Of Thieves but the actual dialogues will be written by a native English speaker. I'm thinking about the same person who edited Vera Blanc texts since she did a very good job. So what's the game about? Without revealing too much, the story is about three girls who gets their mother killed when they're young (I might change this and have her imprisoned rather than killed!). Her mother was the famous Queen of Thieves, so when the three girls grow up they'll pursue the same "career" as their mother, with the help of Sambo, their father, who runs a shop in town. The three girls are from left to right: Thalia, swift rogue, Joanne, powerful wizard, and Kira, deadly warrior. They're all of three thieves, but each one has a specific training, what would be a Class in a RPG. Indeed this game will have strong RPG influence even if I am not sure yet it will be a real RPG. There will be battles but I'd like it to have more gameplay elements beside battles, so for now I'll classify it as "strategy game". So I was saying ,each girl is a thief, but every one does it her own way. Thalia is the most close to the classic thief, and her skills involves sneaking, hiding in shadows, lockpicking, backstabbing, using light armor and dual wield and so on. Joanne is a wizard so can use magic for most of her task like opening door/locks, levitating, becoming invisible, charming guards, etc. Kira instead is the classic tough warrior: she'll prefer to bash open door and locks, and will be able to defeat guards fighting them. The main idea of the game is that you have to do both "solo" missions, so you can pick any character you want and have a very different gameplay experience, and have missions where you need to use all of the three characters, taking advantage of each class-specific skill. Okay, that's all for now, I've revealed even too much about this game! ;)