Now, before we get into more details, I want to answer an obvious question: what about Glamour Photographer? Well, things are going well! I’ve finished the game (of course will need some testing) and the reason why we’re launching this Kickstarter is simple: to optimize time.

Because right now the team of animators is working on adding all animations to the game. In particular, extra characters added later during development, the spiritual guides, etc. And also, the… ahem, “intimate scenes” (you know what I mean). Of course not all of them otherwise finishing the game would take 3 years (there are over 150 comic CGs!!!) but we’re aiming at around 3-4 animated events for each model which is definitely great, but still takes a good amount of time.

So in summary: I’m doing this Kickstarter so I can already start producing content for At Your Feet 2 while the animations are being added to Glamour Photographer. You know I don’t like to remain idle!

At Your Feet 2 game

I’ve already hinted a bit about this game in the past, but now I’ll go into more detail. First of all, the game will be a comedy, but a different kind from Glamour Photographer, which had some really absurd moments (the spiritual guides appearing, Filippo constantly triggering hilarious situations, etc.). The comedy here will be more subtle and refined, and it will revolve mainly around Linda, the main character.

While Emma from the first game was a sort of disaster — shy about her kink, a bit clumsy — Linda is an interesting contradiction. She looks confident on the outside, but inside her mind there’s pure chaos: she’s constantly overanalyzing everything. After all, she’s a psychology student, and she’s convinced every glance, every gesture, every micro-expression has some deeper meaning. The best comedy comes from her inner monologue: the gap between the composed adult she’s trying to be and the feral, dirty-minded brain that keeps betraying her.

Adding Tommy, her best friend since childhood, makes the whole thing even funnier. Tommy is the only person in Linda’s life who knows about her kink, and he happens to be into feet as well. So throughout the story, whenever a “foot situation” arises, the two exchange knowing glances, tease each other, and play off the secret only they share.

The fact that Tommy is still hopelessly convinced he has a shot with Linda adds another layer to the dynamic. Don’t worry, though! Tommy will have his own moments with Paige, Linda’s ex, who is also coming to Trigue… specifically to chase after him.

And what about the three love interests?

Jennifer — The ultimate extrovert. If there’s a party, she IS the party. A bisexual, polyamorous free spirit and unapologetic exhibitionist who treats every outfit like a performance. Chaotic on the surface, but more thoughtful underneath than people give her credit for, and the one most likely to push Linda outside her comfort zone.

Rose — A wealthy, prim-and-proper “good girl” from a strict family, on her first solo holiday and ready to slip the leash. Soft-spoken, easily flustered, with a clear submissive streak that only emerges once she feels safe. A locked garden quietly hoping someone will find the key, and her arc from blushing newcomer to confident woman is one of the most rewarding parts of the story.

Alex — The sultry singer from Summer in Trigue, returning in a timeline where she never got together with Sybil. Magnetic, commanding, in full control of every room she walks into, but the femme fatale persona is partly a mask. Underneath the dominance is someone who cares, ferociously, about the people she lets close.

The current draft of the story that I’ve been working on and off since the beginning of the year is already around 60,000 words and I suspect the final game will surpass the 100,000 words (so will be much bigger than the first title).

If you’re interested in knowing more, check the Kickstarter page, I’ll be constantly updating it as the campaign goes on!

This sets this game as the game I made with the most art content ever. I hope you’ll appreciate all our efforts!

I’m also confirming that we’ll have a demo of the game for the Steam Next Fest, but we could also have a demo for our other project, At Your Feet 2. But first of all, a bit of an announcement/news

Back to Mac

Those who follow me knows that I had a love-hate relationship with Apple over the course of the years. I absolutely think their hardware is amazing and they’ve done some of the most innovative products. Their software, the OS, was great too, until they started to force devs to use their tools and notarization system.

I had a macbook that I used until 2012, then a macmini, but after 2016-17 I gave up keeping my devices up to date (another thing I didn’t like was the forced obsolescence).

Anyway, long story short, I’ve recently decided to give it another go, also because the new Macminis are really good, so I got myself a M4 with 24Gb of RAM, and over the course of past week I’ve started updating all the iOS apps in my free time.

I plan to keep updating all old games and also maybe publish the new ones, of course they’ll be heavily censored since those platforms don’t allow adult content (but even just sexy is too much).

I have a list of games available on iOS on my site here: https://winterwolves.com/ios_games.php

I will of course update it as I port newer games. I ran into problems with Save The World but I must admit that the review team was surprisingly cool, I mean I could talk to them and explain stuff and they changed their mind, unlikely a certain store that once decides something, there’s no way to make them change their mind… (yes I’m talking about Steam lol).

I will also look into porting the regular Mac builds of my games later.

At Your Feet 2

As you probably know, I’m a hard worker and even if I had finished already 90% of my work on Glamour Photographer, I wanted to start working on this game too. And so in the last few weeks I began to plan the general plot outline, refine the characters’ backgrounds, and all that.

Meanwhile I already started to put the Steam page up, and also set up a Kickstarter campaign for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/at-your-feet-2

normally this wasn’t allowed, but I can do it even if Glamour Photographer isn’t officially out since now I have a good reputation on Kickstarter… probably releasing 15 games all before the deadline has some impact!

At the same time, maybe I’m getting old, or more likely I don’t have a big amount of following in the adult games world, but I decided to ask Glamour Photographer’s publisher Andrealphus help again (but no extra animations this time, just marketing).

This way, I’ll be able to focus on the development of the game only, and this means I’ll be able to release it sooner and/or add more content (though this will also depend on the amount of funds raised from Kickstarter).

For more information about the game premise, and the characters in general you can already check (and wishlist!) the Steam page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3996520/At_Your_Feet_2/

But if you want to know a bit more about what I’m planning, here are some info about the game:

• it will be comedy setting too, not like Glamour Photographer since it will be mixed with some more serious moments, but still definitely leaning on the comedy side, especially Linda’s inner thoughts
• it will be a plain visual novel, using a system similar to the first At Your Feet game: no relationship meter, but each character will have two “alignments” and your choice will influence that
• the endings will change based on the alignments, plus there will be some variations of the main story depending on them, in particular the alignment of Tommy (your friendzoned best friend)
• it will be yuri, with some potential scene including Tommy (100% optional!) and maybe even polyamorous endings depending how the crowdfunding goes!

As you see there’s a lot of stuff going on, but next month or July I might also start talking about that other fantasy game I mentioned with female MC and two male + two female love interests.

And don’t worry I haven’t forgot about ToA: Reign Of War but that’s a very big game so I need much more time to finish it!

Of course I also need to do a bit more of testing and bugfixing, but since this game is simpler compared to my previous one (lol full townsim+RPG+roguelike vs light management sim + match3!) I am confident it won’t take much work.

What’s really left is, beside some images, also the animations. The characters animations are almost all done, but I recently spoke to the publisher and … they want to add sex-scenes animations as well! That’s the first time it happens in any of my games. So this is the good news, the bad news is that of course that will take time. And obviously NOT all the scenes will be animated, there are too many!

This confirms the planned demo release for the Steam Next Fest next month, and a potential release somewhere in Summer, depending how long adding animations takes.

But the good news don’t stop here. I am thinking to enter the Steam Next Fest also with my other game, At Your Feet 2. There’s two months of time, and for a demo I don’t need to have a lot of content, also because this game is a plain VN, doesn’t have any extra mechanic like other titles. I believe that I could manage to write enough content for a demo in this timeframe. We’ll see!

I’m going to provide more details on both games now.

Glamour Photographer

As I posted the 1st April (but it wasn’t an April’s Fool!), after some pressure by some backers/fans, we’ve added a short one-night stand scene with Lila Stern, one of your guides.

It’s only a simple scene but it turned out very nice. I’m getting a habit of adding those one-night stand scenes for secondary characters. In this case she isn’t even a real person in the story! Indeed the scene takes the form of a lucid dream by the protagonist.

Because of this, I had to add a way to change your spiritual guide while in game:

See at the top-right of the screen. This way, you can play most of the story for example with Master Li Bido (objectively the most fun of all guides!) and switch to Lila just before the final choice scene and unlock the scene, without forcing people to replay the whole game.

Speaking of content: the game current script is already past 200k words! And as said I’ll have to finish writing/tweaking some scenes. The amount of art content is also very high, with over 160 unique images done in comic style, plus over 50-60 photoshoot images (though I have to be honest and we’ve reused many body poses in this case and changed only the faces, hair style, skin color, etc).

We’ve also started adding some bonus scenes and outfits from backers, but I’ll speak about this more in detail next month!

At Your Feet

As I posted already before, the character images of this game were initially for another game. It was still a yuri game, but more toward the romantic side, set in the 1980s. It was a story about a black woman who falls in love with a rich white girl who is supposed to marry a man. They would meet each year toward the end of summer (that was also the working title of the game) to talk. Since it was set in the 1980s, the world was much harder back then for lesbian women, and you can imagine many of the topics and situations (also the social class difference).

Then there would be a final plot twist, which I won’t reveal just in case one day I’ll somehow make it.

The reason I decided to cancel it wasn’t about the overall story (I had already written a full plot outline and some scene drafts that turned out well). The reason, or better the reasons, were two: 1) that there wasn’t enough adult content, and 2) after Christine’s Care release I understood that just a simple, serious yuri story doesn’t sell well anymore on Steam, no matter if it’s well written and the art is great.

This is the sad reality. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I believe a title like At Your Feet 2, yuri with a clear, recognizable kink and also a comedy setting with very fun characters, inner monologues and situations, would have more chances. Nothing big, of course; the visual novel market on Steam is basically a wasteland, only porn stuff survives.

The setting is now modern times. The location is the island of Trigue, which made a perfect way to have Alex show up again as a love interest (it rarely happened in my games that a character was a love interest in two different stories with different protagonists!).

And as already mentioned, this time beside the feet stuff, each character has a kink, this way even if you’re not into that, maybe you’ll find something interesting anyway! I am going to use comic-style CG for this game too, since I can have a good variety with same amount of money I’d spend for a high quality CG.

I have only started the game pre-production but I’ve already over 36 unique images done this way for the story, and the final amount once funded will likely go above 100.

For example below is the scene where the protagonist Linda first meets with Alex, who’s singing as usual:

Being distracted by Alex, Linda will pull a “Grace-move” and pour the drinks over the unaware guest nearby!

This is instead when you’ll first met with Rose, who comes accompanied by Paige, Linda’s ex.

Paige was a character originally made for C14 Dating but was never put in the game, so I decided to have her show up in this story (not as love interest though, just as secondary character).

And last but definitely NOT least, Jennifer. This image/pose might be familiar if you’re a true WinterWolves fan:

Yep, I sent the artist same reference as Dolores from my 2024 game House Of Chavez, since I particularly liked that pose and was perfect for a foot fetish game.

Conclusions

That’s all for now: as you can see I’m working hard to bring some fun and happiness your way, even while everything else seems to be falling apart… see you next month for a new update.

It’s a… very interesting goal, don’t you think?

Some people asked several questions about the game so I thought to try answering them directly here:

Estimate release date

Hold your horses, the Kickstarter campaign just ended! haha while I’m renown for always finishing my campaign much sooner than the deadline, in this case bear in mind that I’m working with another company, and in particular since they’re going to add animated characters and other features to the game, in this specific case it also depends on that.

In any case, we have as goal to release a demo for the Steam Fest in June, and I think that by that date a beta version should be ready as well. A potential release during the Summer is definitely realistic. That’s only 3-4 months away after all!

Optional Adult Content and Steam

We want to have a game playable by anyone, so while there’ll obviously be some optional spicy content (and probably some of the hottest stuff ever seen in my games!) we also aim to have a clean, streamable version of the game.

In the base game there won’t be any nudity obviously, but not even any vague reference to some of the models kink. Some of you might be a bit disappointed, but I’d like to remind you that my previous game Thieves Of Dingirra got forced in adult only section just because of an image of a character in a leather suit with a whip. Stop, that was it. So as you can imagine, we’ll be very very cautious this time!

I just hope that sexual jokes are fine since it’s a comedy game (but you never know, the inquisition is back at full force!).

This will also mean that pretty scenes like this one below won’t appear in the base game:

As you know, lingerie = extreme pornographic content! (though I admit the image is … hot!)

As I already mentioned before, if you go in any random beach in Europe you’ll see women with micro-bikini much more revealing than that image. But that’s how the rules are, and since you can’t have a PG-14 on Steam (unless you pay some insanely high fee to get an european rating!) we’ll just play safe and not have anything even vaguely remotely sexy in the base game.

Then we’ll have a separate, free adult DLC which will let players enable the optional adult stuff (or even just lingerie outfits).

Game Length, Romances and Gameplay

Another question I got asked is how big is the game and how the romances work. The game is currently already 160,000 words and I think the final script will be close to 200,000 words, more or less. Regarding how it will work plot-wise and in particular related to the love interests, I decided to go with a system suggested by several fans.

Premise: normally my games (but any classic dating sim, really) start with a story, then introduce the various love interests, and then you unlock each character’s route scene by scene, until at a certain point you have to choose a romance (of course there are cases in which you can unlock polyamorous routes, but that’s another matter).

The problem with forcing a choice too early was that people had to save at a specific point and then redo the story from it. If there’s a main story that occur, or a lot of gameplay elements, that might take a long time.

So in this case, you’ll be able to see about 80% of the scenes for each love interest before committing to a specific character. This way if you want to see all the other characters (something that’s rather normal I’d say) you can simply go back to that point and not need to replay a huge part of the game.

Last but not least, a few of you commented negatively about the match3 gameplay. Each match takes about a minute, so they’re very short, and I already added an Easy mode. Normally you can schedule two photoshoots each month of the game. So assuming 24 photoshoots that means one year is only going to take you 24-25 minutes of match3 gameplay. That’s honestly not much!

After the first few years, you become rather famous in game and so you don’t need to do two photoshoots every month, but just 1 is enough to not go bankrupt.

I’d hope players try and play the match3 since I put a lot of effort in it, however I am also thinking about adding a Visual Novel Mode, for those who really don’t like it. You’ll still need to schedule the photoshoots but they’ll be done instantly.

If I go this route I’ll still have a few achievements related to playing the match3 though!

Conclusions and At Your Feet 2

That’s all for Glamour Photographer for now, remember that if you backed the game on Kickstarter I’ll do monthly updates on it. I’ll do almost daily updates on socials instead.

In other news, I also put up the Steam page for the other game I’m planning to work on this year, At Your Feet 2. Of course, the game was instantly forced into adult only, apparently for this screenshot:

Which I thought was completely harmless and funny even, typical comedy style. But, just writing the word “foot fetish” triggered the inquisition at full force apparently!!

So, the game ended in adult only, and because of that I have added some X-rated screenshots now. There’s nothing worse to end up in adult category and then not have anything really adult displayed…no one will wishlist the game!

You understand now why we want to be very careful with Glamour Photographer content?

That’s all for now, see you next month!

For a full list of the stretch goals please visit the Kickstarter page.

Since the base goal was reached very quickly, I have already started working on the game at full speed. I’m particularly happy how the comedy setting is turning out, and the addition of the “Spiritual Guides” adds even more crazyness to the story! Check for example the short video I made below:

It’s a scene happening early in Miyoki’s route, and the combination of comic-style + spiritual guides seems to work well in this crazy comedy setting. In case you missed the characters introduction on my Kickstarter, Miyoki is the model “obsessed by food” and it’s one of the most fun character routes I’ve written in ages!

For a full list of the models, their personalities and… their kinks, check the Kickstarter page updates (I posted an update for each different model).

Steam Next Fest

I spoke with my partner Andrealphus and we are thinking to have a demo of the game for the Steam fest of June, with a potential release in Summer. It’s not 100% sure yet, but that’s what we’re currently aiming at. Personally I’m at good point myself regarding writing, coding, etc but this is a big game and there’s a lot of art and animations left to do. So even when my work is done, then there’ll be animators animating the characters and so on, and that might take a couple months more, depending on various things.

But for a demo I’m confident enough we could have it ready in June.

For the final release not sure, depends on several factors. Still it should be out this Summer!

Next Project

As mentioned in my previous post, this year I’m also planning to do At Your Feet 2, which will still be a game focused on foot fetish but also other kinks, but this time using very different artists. I am planning to reuse the comic-style scenes even in this game since I am very happy about the results I am getting in Glamour Photographer.

Below, a few scenes from the game (still early work of course):

Using comic-style (which means more scenes at slightly lower quality vs a single CG) I believe works better to show what’s happening in the story visually. It’s a bit more “cinematic” vs just a lot of texts and fewer images.

The plan is, when I have done all my work (or most of it) with Glamour Photographer, while they add animations and all that, I’ll start working on this game (so around this Summer), and if all goes well At Your Feet 2 will be out this Autumn, since I plan to have it be a simple VN, so much less work than VN with mechanics like Glamour Photographer.

You can already wishlist and see the trailer on the Steam’s official page here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3996520/At_Your_Feet_2

I didn’t even hope to get this game outside the Steam adult category, so… if you’re from Germany, no worries, the game will also be on itchio or you can back it on KS later this year to get a Steam key reward!

Last but not least, towards the end of the year I might also start working on that fantasy game (still set in Aravorn) I mentioned last month, which is actually my first attempt at making a single player RPG, much more focused on actual roleplay and not just combat.

I already know it will be a nightmare to code (many skills!) and design (a lot of branching) but it’s a project that intrigues me so I want to try it. However I don’t want to push it too much, need to always be careful to not get burned out, so it’s really unlikely that this last fantasy game will be out this year.

That’s all for now, see you next month for another update!

Glamour Photographer

This obviously will be my primary focus during the first part of the year. I don’t have an estimate release date yet of course, since development is still in early stages, but I think it should be definitely out this Summer!

The gameplay so far is turning out as I wanted: not too simple, not too hard. The match3 is a classic match3 with some bonus/malus depending on location, model’s unique preferences, improvements you can buy and so on. The simulation part, albeit simple, adds some strategy to the whole thing. The trends that change each month means you’ll need to adapt your location to them, you could wait to sell some photos until next month to see if they match the new trend, and so on.

Overall pretty satisfied and it seems also well balanced on difficulty (though of course I’ll also need to wait for beta testers’ feedback later).

Story-wise I’m also happy about the progresses, also writing a story set in the 1980-1990 decade is really cool, because it’s when I grew up so writing this feels almost like a trip down memory lane. Trying my best to capture those years vibes. While most of the younger players will miss many references, if you’re my age, I think you’ll really like this setting as much as I do!

ToA: Reign Of War

This will be my next BIG roleplaying game featuring 6 love interests, however I think I will work on it part-time, alongside other projects. Why? Well, it’s a big game so takes a lot of time, and as I noticed recently, it’s not a good thing for me to wait many months between each release, like happened several times in the past (Planet Stronghold 2, Thieves Of Dingirra).

I did the same thing for example with An Elven Marriage, the previous Loren spin-off. I started planning/developing it back in 2022 but I released it only in 2023, and I took breaks while writing it to do some smaller games.

You might think that this is a bad idea because it could be distracting and if I stop writing then resuming it might be difficult since I need to remember the details of the story, and so on. Well, for me personally it isn’t. Often, I write a draft of a story, and then I take my mind off completely from it, by working on another game. Then, months later, I come back to it with a different mind and I think it helped me write better stories, since I reduce the inevitable burn-out and tiredness.

So, for me this system works! And this leads to me hinting about the next game…

At Your Feet 2

Haha! Believe me, this is the latest game I’d ever expected to make a sequel, since I did the first game almost for fun / as meme game, but it did so well especially on Steam that I decided to make another. Also because feet puns are never enough!

This time though, I decided that alongside the foot fetish kink, I’ll also have each girl with a specific different kink as well, so this game could please both people into feet and people not into that.

Also, I’m going to use characters that were originally drawn for another game, that I decided to cancel. Why? Well this is the story for another blog post in future! or maybe on Patreon.

But the good thing is that they’re going to be used now in this game. And I think I’ll use comic-style scenes for the CG scenes and…the hot stuff, to have much more variety of poses/situation in them.

I plan to create a Kickstater page and show some previews in the coming months.

Mysterious Fantasy game

Life wouldn’t be interesting without a bit of mystery, right? There’s this game that I’ve been planning since several years and I got some really nice character art for it. Sadly artist seems can’t continue working on it, so I should use someone else for the CGs, or perhaps still use comic-style CG even in this case since it’s a system that was well received in Lilith.

Current working titles is simply “The Escape” and it will still be a fantasy story and I’m thinking about adding a light RPG element as well, using a single character this time, but with more detailed skills (even non-combat). I won’t reveal too much but basically you’re going to travel to a remote island as an Envoy (but this time only female, sorry) right before the beginning of a civil war and you’ll need to safely escape back to Grimoire, carrying with you two guards and two heirs to the throne. There’ll be two male and two female love interests so a otome+yuri game in practice (can’t add or change anything now since it’s all the character art I got!).

So I’d say not a small but a medium project (depending how deeply I want to go in the RPG part).

There’ll be cameos of some characters, for example above it’s this artist rendition of Breza from Loren… not bad eh? (I think I like it maybe even more than the original art!!).

Goals Summary

Before doing a goals summary, a small announcement: I’ve decided to shut down my forums. Over the years they ended up seeing very little activity (sometimes close to zero posts per year) and they had become increasingly hard to maintain, especially with ongoing security updates and upkeep. That said, I didn’t want all that history to disappear, so I put together an archive to preserve the content.

The forums had been online since 2005, which means 20 years of my indie career. It’s honestly a bit sad to close that chapter, but it also feels like a reflection of how times have changed. In the videogame world especially, things move incredibly fast. Still, I’m proud that the forums lasted as long as they did. Of course, you can still use socials or my Discord to interact with me now.

And now, back to this year’s goals!

So in the end, what are my goals? First, release Glamour Photographer during Q2 this year (like June maybe). Second, do a crowdfunding for At Your Feet 2, and release it probably around August/September (being a simple VN will have a shorter development time) and then… maybe do the crowdfunding for Reign Of War, with a goal to release it in 2027!

However I’m not sure about this last part, depends how much I’ll be able to work on it during this year. I might release another game like the mysterious fantasy game before it. In practice I would do the KS and work on that game, while I keep working on Reign Of War so then it can be out in late 2027, but mostly depends on things beyond my control like burn-out, real-life stuff happening, getting older, etc.

One thing it’s sure, I’ll do my best as always! Again, Happy New Year! May this year be happy, relaxing and healthy for all of you reading this post.

and also on itchio: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/
(Steam keys comes with each itchio purchase)

Going back to my “New Year Goals” post earlier this year: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2025/01/new-year-goals-8/

I was enthusiastically saying “If I can achieve all that, finish 3 games and do 3 crowdfunding campaigns, I’d consider 2025 a fantastic year!“

Haha obviously that didn’t happen, indeed I finished 2 games and did only 1 kickstarter, however it still was a very productive year! But let’s start in order.

Christine’s Care release

Throughout my indie career, there have been some games that, even if they didn’t make much money, stayed very close to my heart. Christine’s Care is one of them.

About half of the story was written by an external writer, and I finished the rest with the help of my editor. I added more scenes, the Marlon/Liz triad, and other details. I really enjoyed writing a story that included a disabled character, and Hannah became one of my favorite characters from all my modern-day stories.

The Steam release went “okay”, not great, but not terrible either (especially considering how crowded the visual novel market is on Steam!). Honestly, I didn’t care: I knew from the start that with its setting and genre, it wouldn’t be a big seller (are you planning to sell a plain VN on Steam? Good luck! You’ll need it.). But it was a game I truly wanted to make… a story I needed to tell. And while Hannah is my favorite, I also really like Marlon, Liz, and Donna. To be honest, I even liked the “alone” ending!

The game’s art style is also one of my favorites. I loved it so much that for my other release this year, Thieves of Dingirra, I decided to work with the same artist again for the CG scenes.

Thieves Of Dingirra

The game has been out for too short a time to draw any real conclusions, but so far it’s performed better than I expected. While very different from Christine’s Care, in a way it still shares something with it yes because this is a game I wanted to make too, as a personal challenge. I remember when I told some other indie friend about my intention of making a town management in Ren’Py, they laughed, almost saying “are you crazy? that’s impossible”.

And to be honest, it wasn’t easy! At all. But, somehow, earlier this year I started working on it, and everything clicked together. It was HARD. Very hard. It’s the most difficult game I’ve coded in my indie career. And most importantly, I did it all alone! Yes, because for Loren I had the help of an external coder, and for Amber’s Magic Shop or PSCD: Colonial Defense as well. With this game? I did it all on my own!

I still remember early this year, I think was February and I was having a very hard time figuring out some complex coding stuff and for a moment I thought “why I decided to complicate my life with this game?”. But the satisfaction I had once it was complete is hard to express by words. Probably the closest thing I experienced before was when I finished Planet Stronghold 2, another very big game.

In the end, I spent about 10-12 months on this game, and honestly it was a bit too much, in the end I was exhausted. And this leads to the final consideration.

From lone wolf to pack member

I’ve always made games mostly on my own in the last 20 years (crazy, I know). I did only a few collaborations, but in general while obviously I outsourced stuff (art, music, writing, etc) I was the one doing the games, putting everything together. And in recent times, things went even more extreme, to the point that I was doing all the coding, writing, and even some GUI stuff or videos myself!

This year after finishing Thieves Of Dingirra I realized that I was so tired that I couldn’t even think about trying to do some marketing. Now, while I think marketing as most indie intend it is overrated (I plan to write a blog post about this in future) it’s still something that you HAVE to do. In general, I realized that what I want to do is… make games. And this is why I decided to try partnering with Andrealphus for my next game. After talking with them, and knowing that I could still develop the game on my own, and they would take care of the parts I don’t like or don’t know how to make (marketing, adding animations, etc) I thought, let’s try!

Talking with other indies, they had some positive experiences doing partnerships. I think the important is to pick the right person/team to do that. Doesn’t mean “the best or most famous you can get”. For me the best is someone who shares the same vision about the games I make, that has good work ethics, and so on.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that while before I was absolutely sure I’d never work with someone, now I’m more open about the idea, since I think joining forces can bring more benefits to both parties involved.

I will still make many games “solo” of course, but if this experiment with Glamour Photographer works, it won’t be the last time! And remember to bookmark the KS campaign page since it should be launching earlier next year: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer/

That’s all for now, I hope you’re enjoying the holidays and I wish you all a happy new year! In the next blog post I’ll talk about my ambitious goals for 2026.

The managerial / simulation part is bigger in this game, while not being particularly complex. I’d say is a “casual style simulation”. Yes you’ll have finances to manage, a roster of models, different locations and all that, but I’ve finished doing the tutorial now and I believe I’ve presented the information in a very simple way so that even players not used to this kind of games will have an easy time.

In the past, when coding my games, I used to skip tutorials or do them quickly. But it’s wrong, because not everyone is a fan of a certain genre or in general what it’s obvious to you as coder/designer of the game, could be counter-intuitive to a player who is not used or new to the genre.

And so I made a step by step tutorial showing the main screens of the game and what they do. For example below you see the trends screen (accessed by clicking on the magazines in the main desk hub):

In this case it’s a “unique trend”. Unique trends require a specific combo of location and model, indeed each model has a flavor/trait that matches each unique trend, like in the example Anna, the first model you encounter (your former schoolmate) has the Rustic flair, and you’ll do your first photoshoot in her family barn.

During the tutorial the trends are fixed to let players understand better the mechanics, but of course later in the game they’ll be randomized (they update once a month).

Beside the unique trends there’ll be “generic” ones that require only a specific location/set, but work with any model. For example we could have a location like the beach that will work with Outdoor, Vibrant, Public trends, or a location like the Kitchen that will have Indoor, Intimate, Cozy, Soft, etc.

The trends will be useful because when you sell the photos to magazines, if you match the current trend you’ll get bonus money, adding a bit of strategy. There’ll be other things that boost the photos value, like the model’s fame (a famous model’s photos will be worth more), the outfit (ahem, naked pictures will get a big bonus!) and so on.

There’ll be several other aspects that will influence the gameplay. During the photoshoot, which takes the form of a match 3, you’ll get bonuses depending on the model:

For example Miyoki likes Mystery (black) and Romance (light-blue) and dislikes Passion (red). Matching those gems will give you a multiple bonus (or malus, in case of Challenge).

On the right instead you see that each location has an impact on the chances of certain gems to appear: in this case the kitchen increases the ligh-blue by 15%, green by 10% and decreases purple by -10%. So certain locations works better with certain models.

The camera and lighting are two kind of upgrades you can buy, the first one reduces the timer of the move suggestion (gems will blink suggesting the move) and the other adds seconds to the photoshoot timer.

Last but not least, at the bottom of the screen there’s a bar that fills as you match gems and indicates the photo’s quality: the better the quality, the more valuable will be.

As you see, even if I just released Thieves of Dingirra last month, I’ve been very busy on this game. In the following months I hope to introduce each model (I’m still writing the story though) and share more screenshots and also announce the Kickstarter date!

See you towards the end of the month when I’ll do my usual “end of year post” in which I’ll discuss how this year went for me. And if you’re interested in Glamour Photographer be sure to bookmark this page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer/

As you can see, I tried to create a showcase that highlights the game’s main features while avoiding any storytelling elements, since I already have a separate “story trailer” (as Steam calls it) ready. I think that’s actually a good approach, unless your game is a pure visual novel (where there isn’t much gameplay to show), some players are often more interested in seeing the gameplay than the story.

So, what are you waiting for? Grab the game on Steam, do a review and spread the word!!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/617990/Thieves_Of_Dingirra

Wait… you can’t see it? It means you’re in one of the banned countries (like Germany) or you simply need ot enable adult content in your Steam account. But don’t worry, if you aren’t into adult stuff, this game has a “suggestive option off” (which is the default) which lets you play the game with only some minor sexy outfits or sexual innuendo but definitely NOTHING porn.

In this case you can still buy the game from itchio here: https://winter-wolves.itch.io/thieves-of-dingirra

The inquisition again!

You might be wondering, wait if you can play the game in censored mode, why is it in adult content section? Well, to be honest, I’ve given up understanding this mentality, and also in all fairness, with the recent credit card processors madness, it’s likely not even Steam’s fault (they’re probably forced to be even more strict).

Don’t get me wrong: I’m extremely pissed but at same time, I know it’s pointless to argue, so I just accepted to lose sales from my 2nd best selling country (Germany). If I ever do another complex game like this, I’ll make sure there’s ZERO, really ZERO adult content in it.

And then maybe it won’t sell because of that! lol such is the life of modern indie developer.

Anyway, this brings me to my next announcement…

Doing a partnership!

Yes, I’ve got in touch with another indie, Andrealphus Games, who is a well known adult games creator, about my next game, Glamour Photographer, and we decided to do a collaboration! It has been a while since I did one, last time was over 10 years ago if I remember well.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering, I’ll still be developing the game mainly on my own, writing its story, so you can expect my usual humor (even more, since this will be a crazy comedy game!) and simulation gameplay (it’s not Thieves of Dingirra, but will have some light simulation elements). They’re providing a lot of support, both in marketing and also adding features never seen before in my games like animated character sprites! And who knows, maybe we’ll even get to animate… “those scenes” (ahem) which could be a Kickstarter stretch goal!

Because of this, we’re taking our time to launch the Kickstarter since we want to have a trailer showcasing all the new features, and also this way I’ll be able to add gameplay footage (as you know, I begin working on prototypes before the Kickstarter launch).

I am not sure yet if we’ll manage to launch the Kickstarter next month or January, but in any case stay tuned since I’ll announce it here and also in socials.

I’m excited about this collaboration since I’ll have more time to work on the game itself to make it the best I can! Speaking of which, I’ve finished coding several screens, like this one:

Anna is the first model you get in the game, since she’s your high school crush that you randomly encounter again at a local fair, and you dare to ask her to pose for you. As you see, on the right of this screen there’ll be all the phone numbers of the various models as you “unlock” them in the main story.

Remember the game is set in 1980-90s so yeah, no socials, cell phones or other modern stuff. That explains also the “paper” look of the frames, buttons and so on. The photoshoot will be done with a match 3 gameplay (so finally I can use that match 3 framework I commissioned over 3 years ago!) and there’ll be various meta-gameplay elements that will influence the outcomes like photo quality, current trends, each model has favorite and disliked colors, etc.

That’s all for now, see you next month where I’ll talk more about this game and hopefully the upcoming crowdfunding campaign! And remember to bookmark it if you want to be notified when it launches: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer

The beta is already in a very good shape, I believe most of the bugs have been fixed and I know that many people reached the end of the game without problems. Regarding Steam, as usual things are a bit more complicated, but while I haven’t heard back from them yet, I’m hoping that the game can be released in early November! You can wishlist the game from this page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/617990/Thieves_Of_Dingirra/

The biggest game I’ve ever done

Yes, I said this many times in the past, and I can surely say that this game is the biggest game I’ve ever done, by a wide margin. Not for the amount of narrative content: for that, Cursed Lands and Planet Stronghold 2 are still the biggest ones with over 300,000 words each (though even this game has 200,000 words on top of everything else!).

But for gameplay there’s no match: beside having the usual RPG combat, I’ve added a roguelike missions (with branching choices), each missions concludes with a custom boss fight, and of course there’s the whole town conquest/management with all the related stuff (NPC management, upgrade buildings, etc).

You can’t imagine how much time this game took to make. Even though the Kickstarter only launched earlier this year, I’ve actually been working on the project for 5–6 years. As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes you have a game idea but lack the technical skills, or you hit burnout, or your favorite tool (in my case, Ren’Py) just isn’t advanced enough yet to bring your vision to life. When that happens, you end up waiting, hoping the right opportunity will come along.

And this happened this year. I must be honest that I’m surprised myself I was able to code such a complex game without burning out completely (well, I am a bit now, but I am taking breaks !). I had also to do several tricks to make sure the game would run fine on Ren’Py and also on moderately older hardware (and on Steam deck, for example). I think I made a fairly good work, using tricks like hiding the building buttons/icons when they’re off-screen and so on.

It made me go back in time when I used to code on much older/slower computers, and had to resort to those tricks to keep speed reasonable. Honestly, I had a lot of fun doing this part. I also had fun in writing/adapting the story (original draft was made long time ago and without considering to run a party or a complex gameplay) and I hope I did a good job with that too.

I’d like to make more strategy/simulation games mixed with VN/dating sim mechanics. Indeed, my next project will be exactly like that (albeit this time much simpler!).

The Glamour Photographer gameplay

I’m sure most people looking at the Kickstarter page will be mostly drawn into this game by the beautiful manga art. But there’s much more. I plan to have a full simulation gameplay, but very simple/user friendly, of the whole glamour photography business.

Of course, being a comedy game I’m not aiming at it to be super historical accurate or anything but I want to offer a nice gameplay beside… you know, the main attraction of the game!

So it will have a full simulation in which you can schedule photo shootings, go around to find new potential models, choose a location, check local magazines to see the latest trends (if you make photos following the current trend you’ll earn bonuses) and so on. All from this screen:

Each item above has a in-game function, but don’t worry it won’t be particularly complex. The photo shoot will be done in a match3 style minigame, which should offer some break from the management part. This game has a lot of artwork and I hope the Kickstarter will do well.

If you want to be informed when it launches, you can bookmark the game by visiting this page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/glamour-photographer

I’m also talking with another indie doing adult games for a possible collaboration on this game to make it even better/bigger. Stay tuned for more news next month!