England Exchange - Now On Steam

If you can't see the above, there's a link to the Steam page here.

Spend a semester in England pursuing eight different romance interests and try not to get your heart broken!

If you've already purchased England Exchange from the hanakogames website, please contact hanakogames support to receive your free Steam key.

England Exchange

Long time no update (look, 2016 was a rough year) but we finally have a new game to announce!

You play an American college student (choice of male or female protagonist, renamable) who has signed up for a semester abroad in England, where you'll be living in a hostel and meeting fellow students from around the world who have, like you, been drawn to London. Along the way, you'll get a part-time job, run afoul of various cultural confusions, get drunk for the first time (lower drinking age!), go on a Beach Episode trip, go on a lot of dates, encounter a mystery, and maybe even find the love of your life. Or at least a new direction. (But not One Direction. Can't afford those licensing fees.)

There are eight possible love interests. Pairings are 4 BxG, 4 GxB, 2 BxB, 2 GxG. And things may occasionally get a little bit saucy...

More information, a list of datable characters, and free demo versions available on the England Exchange game website.

Coming Soon

The 'Coming Soon' page for A Little Lily Princess is now available on Steam, so you can wishlist the title to be notified when it is released.

The game will launch first on the hanakogames website for the discounted beta-testing period. That’s the time to get in if you want the chance to make any suggestions for tweaks to the romances! All customers who buy on the hanakogames site will receive Steam keys when the game launches.

Stat Building, Simplified

or rather, "resource gathering", which might be more accurate in this case.

In A Little Lily Princess, you will encounter the familiar schedule-planner to set your activities for the week and boost those numbers on the side of the screen:

(You may notice that those bars don't go very high. There's a reason for that, which we'll get to in a moment...)

After you've selected all your activities and begin the week, the outcomes for each day's activity are determined:

And at the end of the week, those icons are totted up and added to your side stat total.

When the weekend rolls around, you have the opportunity to pursue extra scenes with various characters (common scenes happen every week regardless). To unlock a scene, you must meet the stat requirement. If you choose to play the scene, you spend the associated stats.

In this screenshot, Jessie has a free event available. Lottie's event requires 5 Belief, which the player doesn't have at the moment, so can't be played. Lavinia's event requires 3 Grace. If the player chooses to play Lavinia's event, the Grace stat will drop from 4 to 1.

That's why they're really more resources than they are character stats. They represent things that the PC has done recently, not changes in her overall skills. Having 10 Grace doesn't mean she's changed to become more graceful, and spending 10 Grace doesn't make her suddenly clumsy.

More importantly, the targets for any single event are always within reach. It can be a problem in some sim-style dating games where you're interacting happily with a character only to discover at the last minute that you needed 200 Wisdom in order to get their happy ending... and you need to back up several months and grind that stat in order to get it that high!

Here, you are constantly spending and regaining. It's worthwhile to build all your stats instead of just one, because you never know what might be needed for the next event. The low cap means that an event can't ask for more than 10 of a stat, so even if you have nothing in that stat and need to build it way up for your next event, it won't take too long to meet the requirement. The intent is to create a feeling of consistent progress - progress which requires a little effort, but not a huge amount of frustration!

stats

Still working on A Little Lily Princess, thought it was worth mentioning since I almost never post on this poor old blog ever since Google broke the interface to make it more of a pain to use.

And now there's rumblings that twitter is intending to break itself so who knows where I'll be posting in the future!

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.

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.)

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.

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?)

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.

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.)

The Reveal

Our upcoming gamebook / visual novel:

All your life, you dream of adventure: knights, dragons, magic rings, chests of gold, and all the danger and glory that awaits a professional swordswoman. But every dream has a cost. You are on your way across the desert wastes to compete in the Warrior Games when your caravan is attacked. Orcs and bandits murder your father, capture your companions, and leave you for dead. 

Now alone in the world, will you choose to seek glory, vengeance, treasure... or love?

This is a short (but gorgeous!) Western-style fantasy in the old choose-your-own-adventure tradition, where choices can drastically branch the story. Maybe you'll become a queen, or fall headlong into a pile of gold, or be eaten by a dragon, or get carried off to live as a bride in a Hidden Elf Valley, who knows? There are 22 different endings to find.

If you are a registered member of the Hanako Games Forums, Sword Daughter is now available for beta-testing. Buy it now to receive a discount on the final price and get a sneak peek at what we've been up to.

This release is something of an experiment to see how well gamebooks can translate into visual novel format - so we'd love to hear from you!

Reception - as - dungeon

Since I don't have time to actually code this idea right now to make it play and see how it works, a slightly longer description of what I had in mind: not so much dancing as mingling, with the intent of trying to gain social influence with all sorts of factions.

So, you're in a big reception room / ballroom. There are many guests. You want to get to the important people to schmooze with them but it's crowded and there are many people in the way, so you'll have to encounter and defeat other folks as you run into them. There are many approaches you can use to try and defeat someone, from flirting to impressing them with your knowledge to 'accidentally' bumping into them and denouncing them for it, and a lot of this would depend on skillchecks.

If you lose the battle you have to withdraw from the ballroom for the week. If you win then your opponent gets out of your way, adjusts your influence with their faction (like XP - important people will give you a lot more influence for beating them) and, if you're lucky, gives you a present. (LOOT!) And then you can move on to the next fight.

This would therefore allow for all the trappings of turn-based RPG combat but in a social situation rather than a cutting-off-heads situation, since a ruling-focused LLTQ-type game can't really have the heir wandering off into dungeons. :)

Time is fleeting...

Lost in time and space - can you find the way out?



After many delays, the new version of our sci-fi adventure Date Warp is finally available on steam, now with new science UI and additional bonus content! (Plus, of course, achievements and collectible Steam trading cards.)

Check it out now - for science!

The Naming of Things

I am terrible at naming projects. I obsess over trying to find the right label, with all the right layers of reference, tone, implication and irony, while still being something that is short enough to fit on my webpage sidebar, unique enough that entering it into a search engine has a chance of bringing people to my game, sufficiently easy to spell that the average person CAN enter it into a search engine...

So at the moment I'm just tumbling over lists and phrases trying to find SOMETHING that fits.

Some of the phrases that have gone past me so far:


The Lily Marker
Buried Lilies
Drifting From Reason
Moonlight Visitation
Interlocking Spirits
A Delicacy of Spirit
These Pale Shadows
Memory's Refuge


All of them have some possibilities but...

(And no, I'm intentionally not saying just WHAT implications I'm trying to send with these titles. I want to see what images they evoke for you on their own!)

Please feel free to share your thoughts - what do these phrases make you think of? (Different ones bringing different thoughts is perfectly sensible) Which if any of them sound enticing and make you want to know what I'm on about?

Motivational Bonus Art

Since I actually am trying to get Black Closet moving again, I had some chibi versions of the characters done up as enthusiasm/inspiration.

This isn't exactly how they appear in-game obviously but important personality notes shine through...


C|| Thais, Mallory and Althea 1/2 by Philaphobia on deviantART
C|| Rowan, Vonne and Elsa by Philaphobia on deviantART

Let's Science!

Science Girls by Pocolla on deviantART (Above - bonus art, not an in-game image. There's more coming!) It's that time again! What time is it? Time to announce a game being available on Steam - Science Girls!
 The Steam release of the game has a bunch of little polish upgrades applied to it. New music, new animations, new map tiles, and so on (and yes, achievements). No new plot if you've played it before but a lot of tweaks to make the overall experience more enjoyable.

(Also, I notice that steam users have tagged the game 'Visual Novel'. Well, okay, if you say so. I generally don't think it counts because the talking part takes a clear backseat to the hitting monsters part, but... There is dialog, and it's in a VN-ish format, and there are some choices you can make and they have a small impact on the game, and it's RenPy, so... Close enough?)