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!

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!

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.

Roundup

(See, Google, you did very nearly kill my blog with your unwanted changes. It's such a pain to use, I almost never do.)

So, uh, haven't posted in a while. A few things going on.

The "lesbian student council secret police" game Black Closet is now in alpha-testing. Because of all the randomly-generated mysteries, it's a pretty complex game to test. The art is still in progress, but even when the art finishes, this will probably be held in testing for a while to try and stomp out as many bugs as possible. If you want to join in (and get the game for a discount) visit the Hanako Games forums.

The other game I'm working on, codename Fantasy Gamebook Adventure. It is a GxB game, and the first game I'm labeling as a 'Hanabira' product, which means that I personally did not write the plot.... because this is a licensed adaptation of an actual gamebook from the 1980s. We're keeping the title under wraps for the moment, but if you really, really want to find out, there is a clue hidden somewhere on this website.

What is that website, you ask? Why, it's the launchpad for a time-traveling superheroine, of course! (Not written by me, written by a friend of mine.) There are no current plans to make a Paradox Girl dating sim (in which you would, naturally, date yourself) but, um, you never know. Really, there are no plans for anything like that, it's just that I think it would be funny.

You can probably guess I've been too busy to make much progress on the procrastination front. However, I did get a chance to play through fault: milestone one now that the English version is finally out.

And speaking of Steam, the winter sale is on, so you can currently claim discounts on any of our titles:






Of course, that's not the ONLY way to get a discount this season... there will be more details announced soon on our newsletter/twitter, so stay tuned.

... phew! The benefit of not blogging here often anymore is that I have more to say when I finally do?

Leading Ladies

Interested in some different approaches to narrative in video games? Check out this week's Humble Weekly Bundle, which is dedicated to female protagonists (sort of) and features adventure games and stat-sim/VN style games as well.

Humble Bundle Weekly Sale

Why 'sort of'? Well, The Yawhg lets you choose an avatar, so it's not necessarily female or a focused, detailed character, and Valdis Story (may possibly? I've heard conflicting reports) only lets you unlock a playable female character after you've beaten the game once. Details, details... but I try to be clear with you!

This week's bundle is also backing Girls Make Games, so your purchase helps fund scholarships in game development.

Queen of all she surveys

(below - a bit more bonus art of Elodie + Briony)

Long Live the Queen - Commission by ~HeadlessHatter on deviantART

Long Live The Queen on Steam!

It's finally out! Click there to go get the game - it's on discount for launch week.

If you haven't been keeping up with development/beta, there's a bunch of new content that's been added in for the Steam launch, including some new characters and a set of graphics for the epilogues. And yes, as requested, there are trading cards, so you can collect all the deaths.

But don't listen to me talk about it, go explore!

... can I sleep yet?

Long May She Reign

There is now a listing for Long Live The Queen on Steam's greenlight.



If you would like this game to be available there and get some new updates as well, click on through and vote Yes now!

Rune Raiders

Little fantasy turn-based tile-based action thingamabob. I couldn't quite call it an RPG even though I know it gets filed that way sometimes, but it's cute and you have wizards and dragons, isn't that enough?



Game Link

(Also available as an app for iphone or android but I don't have those phones so it means nothing to me.)

extra creepy

I haven't personally played either the original PC version of Majesty or the new phone edition.

Apparently I'm missing a lovely boatload of misogyny.

Visions of the past

On a trip to see relatives I got my hands on a pile of my old computer game stuff. Boxes, in a rare few cases, but mostly MANUALS. And copy protection. And maps. ALl the stuff that used to be jammed into these things. Not my entire collection ever, but a good bunch of stuff. So what have I got here?

The "manual" for FACEMAKER, which includes how-to-load-game for all the various computer systems it was available on (LOAD"SPIN",8) and how to 'play'. It's not exactly much of a game. Why did I even have this? (I was obviously VERY young.)

The rather thick manual for Wonderland most of which is taken up by "how to use windows", and a similarly thick but weirder shaped one for the Magnetic Scrolls Collection.

The insert map and how-to-load for that blasted Hobbit text adventure that I remember frustrating me as a kid and I've always been confused about it because when I tried to look it up I found things that didn't quite match. However, this proves it was indeed the Hobbit Software Adventure - either I just have NO memory of the graphics or I played in text-only mode because I liked words.

The foldout 'Getting Started' for Super BoulderDash.

An almost-complete box for a game called Rings of Medusa that I obviously owned but have zero memory of. It's got the box, a manual, and the loading instructions sheet, but the original disk is gone, replaced by a 3.5" backup disk.

A probably-complete box for Joan Of Arc: Siege & The Sword which I also have zero memory of. Amusing because 85% of the big box is taken up with nothing but a cardboard spacer.

... I probably bought both of those just because they had women on the covers, and then didn't play them because I don't actually like strategy games.

Sierra stuff (there's lots!):
The big map and twisty city streets guide from Quest For Glory 2. And the official hint book. And the technical manual. And the BOX. Or at least, that's the sleeve that I put on the one original Sierra box I still have. They all looked alike! And ONE original disk, probably dead, and no idea where the others are.
The fingerprint sheet AND the red-plastic-spyglass used for reading it from the Colonel's Bequest. WHich I know I lost at least once while I still had the game. Stupid annoying copy protection. :)
Hint book for Space Quest IV.
A manual from Hoyle Solitaire which I don't think i actually played, it's my mom who liked Solitaire.
The 'manual' (background story, slight tech info, and crucial copy-protection spellbook) from King's Quest III.
A fold-out "hint map" from King's Quest 1, decorated with my confused attempt to solve the Rumplestiltskin puzzle, and the official hint book. Which was one of the ones that you had to use yellow markers to make the invisible ink appear (now rather faded). The later books used the red plastic window approach. Also the game backstory-manual.
Box sleeve for King's Quest V.
The original box sleeve for King's Quest VI (5.25" version) and the included fluff/copy-protection guidebook to the isles. Also the hint book, when they gave up all this 'reveal the hidden text' rigamarole and just printed the answers.
Hero's Quest reference card and Famous Adventurer's Correspondence Manual.
A Sierra tenth anniversary product catalog.
New products catalog listing for 1988.
'A Letter From The President' explaining why gamers should buy sound cards to improve their Sierra experience.

coming sometime

Recent announcement of a new Japanese strategy-rpg for the PC to be localised - which means it's not going to be out for quite a while. I wouldn't expect it before the end of 2011 at earliest.





(This is NOT an adult game, but the link above does lead to a site that carries some adult products.)

Some reviews/information of the Japanese version available here.

when is a facebook game just a game

I still don't really mess around with these facebook things, but this description of Dungeon Overlord sounds vaguely playable.

Cookie Domination?

Apparently, it's Risk. But with gangs of schoolgirls. O-kay.

a certain smell of drm

I am surprised - well, slightly so, that the reaction to the news of EA's new game idea is so negative. Because the idea sounds vaguely fun.

The description goes, basically, that you'll have creatures made with varied abilities using leftover technology from Spore. You'll then go to adventure on varying planets, and select which creatures from your stable you want to take down with you to fight on that planet. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable kind of strategy game, if not one that I'm actually good at myself. (Witness my utter failure to complete Revenant Wings)

The slashdot response seems to be a combination of:

1. Fear of restrictive DRM making it unplayable, or at least too difficult to set up for the multiplayer that's supposed to be the draw
2. Spore was a big letdown so even having the word Spore in the title makes them sneer

Of course, for me the biggest problem is that if it's a fullprice topname AAA 3d extravaganza it's just too much of a pain in the ass for me to deal with. I could see trying such a game if it were, y'know, 200MB, 2D, and $20. Also cute and amusing instead of DAAAAAAAAAAARK.

Am I becoming more of a casual gamer in my (*cough*) old age? Or am I just sick of games that are big for the sake of being big when I can't see how it will actually add to the experience?

(I'm not completely sure if you actually get to MAKE your own creatures in this or if you have to let them make them for you. In which case what's the point of sticking 'Spore' on it at all?)

We're Certainly Dwarfs

Spotted a downloadable game review on Gamezebo for something that is NOT yet another hidden-object fest... instead, it's a sort of exploration/combat strategy game. About mining. With dwarves. (A more crunchy strategic review here.)



Includes local multiplayer as well (although I'm not sure how many people play that way anymore personally)

Looks quite cute, although I'll bet it's lacking in female dwarves (but to do otherwise would trigger a geek flamewar!)