Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Adventure, Indie, Visual NovelAngels with Scaly Wings
Happy 2 Year Anniversary, Angels with Scaly Wings!
Reflecting back on the last year (and also last year's anniversary post), I feel I got distracted by a number of things not related to our next game that took much longer than anticipated, and as a result, I did not make as much progress on that front as I would have liked.
You can see the results of some of these efforts in the form of the wiki we launched, and more importantly, launching Angels with Broken Hearts - which instantly got much more support than I expected.
I have been amazed by the continued support of fans and new people who keep discovering AwSW every month.
My sincere thanks go out to everyone who has bought or played AwSW, and also the readers and patrons of AwBH, as it is because of you I can keep doing what I am doing. In turn, I hope not to disappoint with everything we've got planned.
Of course, there is now the steady release of new pages for AwBH, but that's far from the only thing we've been working on.
As I don't want to keep people in the dark too much and some of these things were already mentioned in last year's anniversary post, I again present a list of things we've spent time on last year:
- Angels with Broken Hearts: Getting AwBH started took much longer than expected. The script I envisioned ended up being almost the size of a novel, and it seems there will be a corresponding amount of total pages.
- Mobile ports: I picked up our older efforts to make mobile ports of AwSW again. A lot of progress has been made on that front and it would likely be very playable in its current form, but it is not bug free or finished yet. Ultimately this turned out to require a lot more work than expected, and so far the list of changes and adjustments that were necessary to bring it this far is three pages long - ranging from improving performance, removing bugs and changes to the UI, controls and game to make it more suited and playable on a mobile device. There are concerns that make me wonder if we'll even be able to offer it on Google Play or the App Store, but we will try to get it into the hands of interested people one way or another.
- Merchandise: After the recent polls we ran, it's probably not hard to guess what we've been trying to do. The process to get there was very hard, though. I am hopeful that our current efforts will pay off and that it won't take another year to do so.
- Board game: I spent a few months of last year designing a board game. It is based on an old idea I had, but it wasn't until I connected that idea with a story of mine that I got the inspiration to pursue this. I ended up pitching the result to a number of different publishers, and 5 of them were interested enough based on the idea and the rules I had written that they wanted to test it for themselves to see if it was something they might publish. I hope one of them will decide to publish it, although they may still end up going with a different theme than the one connected to my story.
- Visual Novel: The notes for our next visual novel kept expanding, as often even when working on something else I get ideas that will be written down. My plan for this year is to focus on our next visual novel and start official production with a team. It is my goal to finally show something of this game I've been cooking up for so long now.
As I wrote earlier, a lot of these things took a lot more time and work than anticipated, but maybe this just means that this year might become one that will be filled with a lot of different announcements!
sincerely,
M. B. Saunders
AwSW 1.08 patch notes.
This update brings some small, but important improvements:
- Improved language support on save/load screen
- Sebastian's conditions should now work as intended
- Fixed odd behavior regarding Adine's conditions
- Having seen any good ending unlocks a new button on the main menu screen
Angels with Broken Hearts is now live!
Angels with Broken Hearts is a webcomic that explores the lives of many characters from Angels with Scaly Wings, and takes place in three different settings - each drawn by a different artist.
For more information, please see:
http://angelswithscalywings.com/comics/about/
AwSW 1.07 Update! Steam Workshop integration, Soundtrack and more!
What has changed?
Courtesy of some fan developers who have previously created modding tools for AwSW, we have now also added full Steam Workshop integration for Windows, which means Steam users can now easily download and add mods to the game from the Steam Workshop (and even from inside the game itself)!
For details about mods (and how to create one yourself), just head over to the Steam Workshop.
If you have a prior version of the mod tools installed, you may encounter an error on launching the game. To prevent and/or fix this, please check out this topic: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/18446744073709551615/1696043263505274976/?appid=571880
Next, for people who own the Digital Deluxe Edition, we have cleaned up the tags for the soundtrack, which should fix any strange behaviors people experienced when using the soundtrack with various other pieces of software.
Additionally, we have also added a higher quality version of the soundtrack in a separate folder.
Of course, we also made some changes to the game itself:
- An error with the task bar icon not showing up correctly on certain devices has been fixed.
- A certain function during a certain scene that was notorious for crashing and severe lag has been changed to be more stable and responsive.
- An instance of the wrong character receiving abandoned status after certain decisions has been fixed.
- A big number of text errors have been fixed.
To celebrate, we've also put the game on its biggest sale yet at 40% off during this week! With the added mod support, newcomers will have more to discover than ever before.
For us, this update is our way of thanking you, the fans, for your continued support. We hope you enjoy it!
Announcing Angels with Scaly Wings - The Board Game
Taking place in a post-apocalyptic world many years after the events of ""Angels with Scaly Wings"", players assume the role of one of the AwSW-verse's many popular characters such as [red scientist raptor] and [reckless big brown dragon] to join their struggle for survival.
One player will play [morally ambiguous character], whose role is to fight against the rest of the players as they try to win in an all-new and super-thrilling scenario penned by the visual novel's author, M. B. Saunders.
Divided by conflict, this world will rely on brave survivors to be saved. Will it be you? Find out when [game name] releases on [insert date here]!
Saunders, an avid fan of tabletop games, could not resist the temptation to spread dragon romance to a new audience by transforming the visual novel into a board game. "It was inevitable, really.", Saunders says in a statement.
[sexy product images here]*
*hand-painted miniatures available separately
Stay tuned for more announcements and take a look at our ever expanding catalog of exciting AwSW merchandise:
[catalog link here]**
**"Kiss me Remy - Authentic Silicone Bust" is currently sold out in all territories.
Happy Anniversary, Angels with Scaly Wings!
I still enjoy finding and reading new reviews of players who just discovered our game, and sometimes I even read older comments and reviews again.
So often people talk about how the game or its characters have touched them, and I can only be grateful that I could accomplish this with my work - to create something so new and different, and finding out that there are other people who could genuinely enjoy it so much.
I took a very big risk pursuing this idea so unrelentingly - especially when the possibility of being damned into obscurity is very real for indie games nowadays.
Was it all worth it? Of course!
I know we’ve been quiet lately, but I don’t want you to think that it’ll stay this way.
We have spent 2017 working on a number of different things - maybe too many. Ideally, I would’ve liked to announce something before today, but this only means that 2018 will be a very interesting year for fans of AwSW.
In the spirit of transparency, let me tell you about some of the things we’ve worked on and where they stand now:
- Mobile ports: We’ve talked about wanting to make mobile ports a few times before. After some delays on the necessary changes to make the game work better on phones, we decided to focus on other, more exciting things. We’re still planning to do this when there is a good opportunity for it.
- Merchandise: Initially, we thought we would only be able to create basic merchandise like t-shirts and posters, but after we got the opportunity to, we are now pursuing something that I think a lot of people will really like. However, manufacturing custom things of any kind is a long and complicated process - and we definitely want to do this right! We’re hoping we can show you something no later than a few more months from now.
- Translations: A lot of people have responded to our call for translators to help enable players to play the game who don’t speak English. Although we’re not sure when and which translations will be finished, there is one in particular that I think will help the game to be discovered by a different audience.
- Our next AwSW related project is an undertaking I’ve been working for a few months now. It’s not quite on the same scale as AwSW and much more linear (it’s not even a game), but it will tell some very necessary stories about its characters. The writing for this project is about 90% done and it’s what occupies most of my time right now.
- Our next visual novel. This is what I was working on for the majority of 2017. When I made AwSW, we produced the game on a chapter to chapter basis. This meant that although many things were already planned out when we initially released its demo, we didn’t have a detailed “script” for all the character sections, dialogue, choices and endings. For this project, I wanted to have everything planned out in more detail before I brought other people on board who would create character designs, sprites, cgs and so on.
The advantage of this is that we’d have a much better idea of what we need and the associated costs - and a more coherent, better overall game. However, this also means a very long waiting time until we’d finally be ready to show something. After working on something with this size and complexity again for a while, I had the idea of doing something a little different to fill the gap. I ended up starting the above project, because a lot of things and ideas aligned in such a way that I realized it was the perfect vehicle to tell certain stories I wanted to tell before truly moving onto the next big project. It will be resumed once my part for the above project is finished, and I currently have about >120.000 words in notes about characters, storyline, etc.
With all these coming up, I think you’ll have a lot to look forward to!
sincerely,
M. B. Saunders
The official Angels with Scaly Wings wiki is here!
For people who like to delve into the lore, as an archive of information and for gameplay guides, we intend this to be a focal point for all kinds of Angels with Scaly Wings information.
It is still a little bare right now, but we hope you will join us to make this a good compendium for older and newer players alike!
Who knows, maybe some prior unrevealed nuggets of information may even be added by yours truly.
If you already have experience editing a wiki, that's even better! If you'd like to get started, we posted a to-do list on the talk page of the main site.
Be advised that for now we've disallowed anonymous edits for the most part, so you'll need to make a twitch or Gamepedia account (if you don't already have one).
I hope to see you there!
IndieCade 2017 - Official Selection
We are honored to have been part of IndieCade 2017 as part of their Official Selection.
It’s the first official recognition we have received from the gaming industry at large.
With more and more games coming out every year, being noticed is one of the biggest challenges indie creators face nowadays - so being deemed “worthy” in this way is a moment we’ll remember.
Hopefully it won’t be the last!
Patch 1.06 is now online!
Here's what we did:
- Sebastian will now respond appropriately for extraordinary results when playing Bastion Breach.
- Fixed an error that caused the player to never be able to talk about Remy's pictures when looking at them during his second scene.
- Numerous minor text fixes.
Steam Workshop + Summer Sale is live!
There already exist a handful of mods, and a fan-created framework to facilitate the usage of mods in our game. I certainly want to support these fan efforts, and for that reason we have now launched the Steam Workshop for Angels with Scaly Wings.
It not only offers the necessary infrastructure for the storage and download of mods, but more importantly, it provides a centralized and "official" gathering place for all things related to modding Angels with Scaly Wings.
It can be accessed from the game's community hub on Steam. It also has a discussion board for asking questions, suggestions, or potentially finding a team to create your own mod!
For more information about mods and the Steam Workshop, you can look at the topic we have created here:
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/18446744073709551615/1368380934242630855/?appid=571880
Summer Sale
We are celebrating the occasion by including Angels with Scaly Wings in Steam's Summer Sale, which will run until July 5, 2017 at 10:05am Pacific time.