Merry Christmas from Hanako Games

From now until Dec 31, 2015 you can save up to 50% on directly-purchased Hanako Games titles! No discount code needed, just add the games to your cart to receive the savings.

This discount covers the following games:

35% off Black Closet 

50% off Cute Knight Kingdom

50% off Date Warp

50% off Long Live The Queen

50% off Magical Diary

50% off The Royal Trap: The Confines of the Crown

50% off Science Girls

50% off Sword Daughter

Any game which is also available on Steam is eligible for a free Steam key if purchased directly.
The Steam winter sale is now on - the discounts are better for most games on direct purchases, but because of regional pricing differences, for some people the Steam prices may be better. Check both places to get the best deals!

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As for upcoming development, we recently announced that we are publishing A Little Lily Princess, which is a yuri game based on a beloved work of British children's literature.

It features six character routes, some of which are purely friendly and some of which are more clearly young romance, and a stat-building mechanic where you expend the stats you've built regularly instead of grinding for a far-distant goal.

This game is still in development and expected to release sometime in the first half of 2016.

Use your detective skills to find treasures...

Black Closet is now available on Steam:



If you already bought the game from the hanakogames website, information on redeeming your free Steam key is available here.

Trading cards are live, so claim your key and get idling to collect your loot. :)


And don't forget, you can unlock the custom campaign mode to turn all your friends into schoolgirl minions!

it is a mystery

We're running a contest to give away a free copy of Black Closet - to enter, submit your dream team of schoolgirl detectives on the forums here!

Time Gal

An entry in the full animation / laserdisc INSTANT DEATH genre that I wasn't familiar with.



With an 80's anime girl, of course.

Along with the Dragon's Lair style "push the indicated button at the right time", you also have some points where you have to choose from a menu. Only one choice won't kill you. MORE QUARTERS FOR THE QUARTER GODS.

Back To School Special

Several school and learning-themed games are on sale on Hanako Games until the end of August with the code SCHOOL2015 - visit this page for the list and details.

This is the first time Black Closet has been on sale since launch and is almost certainly the cheapest it will be all year in most countries (Christmas might be a thing, but that's a long way off!) It is not yet available on Steam, but expected to launch there within the next couple of months. People who buy in early will be entitled to Steam keys on launch (and therefore able to idle for trading cards on Day 1)

No! Stop! Wait! Go back!

Tiny update to Sword Daughter on Steam:

Now, if you hit an ending that I've designated as a BAD END, you'll be automatically prompted with the option to go back to the last choice and pick something different. The last menu you visited is stored, so it can hop back to the correct point and carry on.

I haven't yet uploaded this alteration to the non-Steam version. It shouldn't really make any difference if you've already played the game, though - this is mostly to streamline the gameplay experience for people unfamiliar with old "turn left, instant death" style gamebooks.

Instant death? Oops. Turn back, try again.

(Obviously, you already could turn back via the use of saves, quicksaves, or the section map, but these aren't quite as immediately intuitive to the reader as jamming your finger into a previous page of a CYOA book while you peek ahead is.)

FLASH! aaa-aaaa.....

For the next eight hours or so, LLTQ is on flash sale on Steam for a ridiculously low price that I will probably never set it to again.



So if for some reason you don't already have it, grab it now.

White Gloves At The Ready

The 1.1 update for Black Closet is out, bringing with it a whole second set of artwork and new CGs to unlock.

If you liked the old style, that's fine, it's still there, but now you can choose between them:

Another useful new feature that we've added is the "suspend game" option. For balance reasons, you can only make permanent saves at the start of every week, which can be inconvenient if you suddenly need to stop playing in the middle of the week. Now you can quit the game at any point and you'll be given the option to suspend your session. A suspended game will automatically resume the next time you launch the program.

And another thing that some people have been waiting for - details on how to get a discount by playing the demo!

More information, screenshots of the new artwork, and download links for the new demo versions available at the Black Closet webpage.

Please let us know if you run into any problems!

Sextrap Dungeon

So, this came across tumblr recently:

Sextrap Dungeon

It's a gamebook. It was described as "Leisure Suit Larry meets Saw".

I am so torn about whether this is a thing I must experience for myself.

I love gamebooks, even old and terrible ones. I enjoy perverse nonsense. Not so keen on gore, though.

Also, I'm afraid it's only going to be a choose-your-own-adventure style gamebook and not one full of stats. And really, if you're exploring a SEXY DUNGEON, don't you want it to be an RPG?

No? Just me?

Black Closet

.... is finally publicly available on the Hanako Games website!

If you're not familiar with the game, I did a fairly detailed explanation in this lemmasoft topic, but the tl;dr version is:

Yuri mystery-solving game
Five datable girls
Randomly generated mysteries
Upper-class boarding school
Lesbian secret police
Traitors
Cults
Bondage
Doom

It's... questionable to call this a visual novel, although there's plenty of dialogue. It's really more of a very weird RPG.

But draw your own conclusions, and tell me what you think! Get the demo here.

Rewarding Experiences

I've alluded to the problems with trying to set up an award for (niche especially) game narrative in longer, non-IGF-friendly games, but I thought I'd ramble about the topic a little to make the pitfalls more clear, and maybe some good ideas will come to light.

First off, if there were some sort of prestigious story game award, what sort of games would be eligible, and how would they be defined? I wouldn't really be happy about lumping every NaNoReNo entry into the same awards show as the latest Bioware RPG and the latest mainstream shooter, but I wouldn't want to start out with a VN-only show either. Too niche. So for starters:

- Only computer games in English with a primary or co-primary focus on narrative allowed.

-- This means VNs, digital gamebooks, some RPGs but not action ones, some adventure games but not pure puzzlefests, and some nebulous arty games that people argue about how to categorise in the first place

-- This would be trying to exclude AAA games in other genres, even though they obviously include narrative as a strong component. But how you actually judge that? Who would be making the decisions on whether Assassins Creed was 'narrative' enough to count? Do you try to cut them out by making the awards "indie only" instead, hoping that it's slightly easier to adjudicate? Or do you issue strict genre guidelines to include ONLY visual novels, RPGs, and adventures, and then fight over what games do and don't count as those?

-- Should freeware games be excluded, in order to keep the field size manageable, or just restricted to certain award categories?

-- What about games that aren't originally in English? What about freeware games that have been fan-translated, sometimes with or without permission?

-- Should games only be eligible if the original author actively submits them for consideration? That might limit the field, but it might limit it too much. An award's not very meaningful if it's only chosen between the games of the five people who were interested.

That's just some basic questions about the games themselves that would be up for awards. A much bigger problem is - who would judge it?

It is not practical to have a small panel of paid judges who are obligated to complete every game and compare them. Think how many hours some of these games take to complete! Think about paying a reasonable salary for 3-5 judges, at the very least, to play them exhaustively. Think how LONG it would take them, too. And, of course, a small group of judges, even esteemed judges, is obviously going to bring in their own set of biases that would make the award less representative of general opinion.

To get a wider range of opinion, you need a wider range of judges. But if it's pretty difficult to pay 3 people to play 20+ games, it's impossible to pay 200 or 2000 to do it. And, especially if all games released are eligible for awards, you just can't even begin to hope that everything will be played and evaluated. And of course, not only can you not afford to pay 200 judges, you might not even be able to get 200 free copies of every game to give out, especially not for a new contest.

So what does that leave you with? Calling out to the gamer populace to vote on the games they've personally played, and just sort of vaguely hoping you can get enough people to speak up and play fairly that you'll get a good spread of results? Well... it is sort of how the Hugos are supposed to work, after all.

If the judges are 'the gamers' rather than specially recruited judges or hand-vetted volunteers, then you need an organisation to make SOME attempt at verifying the identity of the judges and stopping people from signing up multiple times, as well as a barrier to entry to try and restrict this to people who are actually interested in the subject and not boredly clicking a webpage. This of course requires that you have created this central Gamers Association and someone is maintaining the membership and keeping track of the money (which will probably be used to pay out the awards), but one might find it a little hard to get thousands of people to sign up and pay money to get the chance to vote on their favorite video games. Or maybe it's easy, I don't know!

Now, once you've started making things into a popular vote based on nominations from this wide base, you run into the issue of campaigning. Should game developers and/or interest groups be barred from trying to push the voters to vote one way or another? And if so, how? Or is that totally fine, because that level of dedication should be rewarded? Are there other rules that can balance the possibility of one group trying to steamroll?

Of course, if this sort of awards thing were being organised there'd also be a lot of work that would have to be put into determining the categories, in order to reward different kinds of narrative instead of JUST having the 'best game' which will probably be swept by the popular thing. Categories might include things like
- Worldbuilding: setting, lore, consistency
- Player Agency: how much can the player shape the direction of the narrative?
- Multiple Endings: who does the most with the interactive ability to tell more than one story?
- Humor: obvious, but deserves its own category as its a writing thing often overlooked in awards
- Emotional Rollercoaster: not so much 'best drama' as 'most lasting impact'. what game's story most kicked you in the gut, or made you fall hopelessly in love with a sprite?
- Best Character: this is probably a more meaningful option than Best Dialog
- Best In Genre: to separate RPGs from VNs and so on (although there'd be an overall best as well)

And there'd probably need to be some rules restrictions limiting the number of categories a title could be up for final consideration in.


Again, this is all just the result of me thinking about it for a few minutes, and you can already see what a messy undertaking it could be, trying to manage it.

And even if I founded something like this and recruited 2000 people to judge it, people would probably complain I had an unfair advantage by virtue of being the founder, so I'd never be able to get awards, and what good is that? :)

Choose Your Own Space Marine

There's an LP going on the something awful forums of a recentish gamebook, for those who like their adventures to have grizzled space marines, ridiculous humor, and a lot of blood. SHOOT ALL THE THINGS. TRY NOT TO DIE. That may not sound like the best endorsement but it is actually an entertaining read!

To buy the thing and play it yourself -

Kindle version:

Heavy Metal Thunder

App Store / Google Play version:

Cubus Games

The Royal Trap - HD Release

There's a new version of The Royal Trap out with bigger graphics and better background art!

Sneak, spy, and stab your way through a maze of court intrigue to find the truth, protect your reputation, and find romance!

Also available on Steam:

Black Closet trailer

(If that doesn't embed properly for you, you can also click through here to see it.)

Coming soon!

Also - we're giving away a free copy of Sword Daughter. See here for information!

Roundup

Several little things going on at the moment...

The Valentine's Weekly Bundle is still going on over at Humble, which covers a variety of visual novels as well as the option to upgrade for a love pillow... from Hatoful Boyfriend.

The lovely Deji created some fun art for the upcoming Black Closet:

The game is still in beta, but is very nearly complete. I'm really busy right now but I expect we can officially launch it sometime next month.

And, as mentioned, Sword Daughter is now on Steam (and some people are paying very odd prices for the emoticons, but who knows if that will last?)

Sword Daughter - Now on Steam

(Chibis by Simon Adventure)

Sword Daughter is now available on Steam!



The game includes all your typical steam-powered bells and whistles, like trading cards, collectible backgrounds, and achievements. (If you already own the game, you will need to play through it again to unlock most of the achievements, but this should be easy enough to do with the section map.)

Speaking of which, if you bought the game direct from my website and want a Steam key, please email me with your order information and I'll happily hand one over. Please do ask by email rather than by forums, it makes it so much easier to keep my key list organised.

Sunless Sea - why I find it frustrating

Disclaimer - I have only put a few hours into this game and am not good at it. I may be missing things that would make the experience suck less. Also, this is a PLAYER opinion and NOT a business opinion, this blog is for whining about games after all.

This is a game all about atmosphere. There's a cool, weird, unique setting, and a mildly randomised map to sail around and uncover. There are stories and fragments of stories scattered everywhere, dripping with implication and promise. That's the good part.

The vast bulk of your time in the game is spent staring at the screen as your ship slowly inches along through the murk and gloom, sailing between islands. Again, this is an atmosphere thing, they want the game to be slow. It does mean that you're wasting an awful lot of time doing not very much and can put hours into the game without accomplishing anything, and that has negative consequences elsewhere. Chalk this up as a medium part. It's not good or bad but it's a thing.

Your sailing comes at a high cost. Many people hate hunger timers in games. This game has MULTIPLE constantly-dwindling resources. You have hunger. You have fuel. And you have sanity. Sailing around means you're losing all three of these. You can, of course, buy more... with your extremely limited money supply... which you may or may not be able to earn any more of in your next sailing trip. Sorry, sucks to be you!

Even reviews that LIKE the game grudgingly point out that you can get horribly stuck in the game due to a lack of resources and a lack of any reliable way to earn them.

There is a sort of black belt around to the sea’s loose centre, within which relatively few ports of import can be found. That this means scant opportunity to resupply is one thing (and, really, you should only be buying supplies from places where they are known to be cheap anyway), but that there is nowhere to check in and grab a port report which you can submit back in Fallen London for reasonable rewards is a greater one. I have hit the wall in Sunless Sea a few times because I simply cannot earn money to fund a trip further out, let alone buy upgrades.

Very slow attrition, hitting the same few ports over and over will gradually bring in enough money and chance rewards to buy enough fuel to reach further flung territories, but at times I have found this too onerous. With a starting ship, the speed of travel can be so slow, the waiting maddening. An accurate representation of the life Sunless Sea means to evoke, but it does mean some players may bounce right off it a couple of hours in.

This is why I've pretty much given up on the game. I've had one or two really interesting sailing trips where I was getting to exciting new places and finding hints of stories... and then I've slammed into not being able to fuel up enough to go anywhere I haven't been before.

And then there's the combat.

Combat has been completely revamped from the earliest versions, so I won't talk too much about the old combat. It was kinda turn-based and, while playable, was not too exciting. Many people complained that it was even slower than the sailing, because you had to sit there staring at your timers and waiting for them to tick down, while doing nothing else.

A constant problem with, say, JRPGs, is that once you level up enough that the basic slime is not a threat, you are far more annoyed by the amount of time it takes to step on the random encounter square, sit through the transition, and then be required to set attacks for all your characters, before it will finally let you JUST SQUISH THE SLIME WHICH YOU CAN DO IN A FRACTION OF A SINGLE HIT AAAAAAARGH.

Basically, if your time isn't being spent making interesting decisions, you really resent your time being sucked away. So in that early combat mode, you queued up some actions and mostly sat and stared, waiting to intervene if anything went wrong. There wasn't any cool animation or anything FUN about the fight to watch, so yeah, it could get dull.

In the new version, combat takes place on the same sailing-around map as normal navigation does. This does add more possibility for doing things during the fight other than just waiting for your gun timer to tick down - you MIGHT be able to dodge certain kinds of trouble, or even make things worse by sailing your ship into a rock while you were paying attention to your guns, or sail into the range of more enemies, oops.

In some ways this works. Battling with pirate ships feels cool and nautical, both of you slowly wheeling around... Upgrading your ship has obvious benefits to everything, if you can ever afford it. And I assume that if you get good enough guns and stats you can eventually kill things pretty fast and not have the huge time sink. (Though I wouldn't know, since I've never been able to upgrade.)

What drives me nuts is the monsters. There aren't that many of them, at least, in the areas I've been to, and you can PROBABLY avoid most of them if you're careful. But once you have their attention, they can be tough to shake. You can use full engine power to try and speed up and dodge them (although the help doesn't mention this until several hours in) but that may make your ship randomly explode (so much for people claiming that the luck of the dice aren't critical here!). They can follow you a port and camp practically on your bow waiting for you to press 'launch' and take instant damage, which feels stupid to me and breaks immersion (I feel like getting a monster to follow you to port should trigger some sort of port event. Maybe they blame you for bringing trouble! Maybe they rush out and slaughter the crab that followed you home! Maybe they thank you for luring it in!) but even without story effects, RPGs generaly station guards around citypoints like this to avoid the stupidity of 'i will be immediately hit if I step outside and there's NOTHING I can do about it'

But the worst part is if you do engage with the monsters. There's no animation scripted for fighting them. So unlike pirate vessels, which will wheel around and fire guns at you like you're doing, monsters will just sort of drift nearby, then occasionally move in your direction and bounce off your hull with a little clink noise. It's stupid. It's not cool. It's not fun.

Look, this game put its effort into the writing, not the graphics. Fine! You don't want to animate a battle between a ship and a giant glowing crab, fine! But don't expect me to be having fun with 'clink'.

If closing with a monster shifted into an encounter, with words to read and choices to make, it might be more interesting. You could avoid the encounter by having good enough guns to shoot the monster before it gets that close. And if rabid zee-bats swarmed your vessel you could get descriptions of them swooping through and taking bites out of your rigging with the resulting damage, instead of 'clink'.

Other grumbles - the game really wants you to treat it as a roguelike and pressures you into accepting permadeath and starting over. But with a game that is this slow and this lacking in early-game differentiation, the prospect of starting over is massively annoying in a way that it isn't in something like Spelunky or Necrodancer, where I've sunk countless hours into delightful failure.

Also, from the RPS comments:

I did just make a catastrophic error caused, in part, by the chain-of-captains (though one could claim it’s inherent in any rogue-like game). I was trying to scrounge up enough cash to do something and sold what I thought was my old engine, having bought a new one. Oops. That new one I bought was with my _previous_ captain, just before he got killed. So I sold the only working engine for my boat and did not have the funds to buy a new one. Crap. I don’t think there’s an easy way to commit suicide in London, so I just started a new chain of captains.

Does that sound like fun to you?

Leading Lady

Just for fun, an image of Elsa, the protagonist of Black Closet.


Commission from hanakogames by Iksia on DeviantArt

It's exhausting to look back and see just how long we've been working on this game... well, honestly, even I don't know when it started. Sometime in 2012. Homestretch at last!

Oh, right - the game is now in beta testing. And by 'beta' we mean 'It's mostly done and all the art is in now'. To check out the beta version and buy the game at a discount, visit the Hanako Games forums.

End of the line?

I'm considering whether to shut this thing down. I barely post here anymore anyway, and the bleed between my personal opinion and my business opinion is apparently causing some confusion.

Besides, ever since google killed blogger, my whining almost entirely migrated to twitter and this has almost turned into a dev blog, which it was never supposed to be. A real dev blog somewhere else might make more sense.

Trouble

One of the reasons I'm suddenly having people do Damien doodles is to remind myself that I'm really supposed to be working on the next Magical Diary game next...



Commission: HanakoGames by StarBunniie on DeviantArt

Sword Daughter

... is now available for sale at Hanako Games!

Strap on your sword and go in quest of glory, treasure, friendship, honor, or maybe...

romance?

(Well, my previous posts were all about the adventurey graphics, so it was time to balance that out a little)

There are many dangers to face and 22 different endings to find. Start the new year off with a taste of adventure - buy Sword Daughter today! (And hey, it's cheap.)