Ten Questions With… Celso Riva (Winter Wolves)

Ten Questions With… Celso Riva (Winter Wolves)

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Winter Wolves is known for story-based Indie games and already boasts an impressive catalogue of visual novels, dating sims and roleplaying titles. Celso Riva took some time from his busy schedule to answer our questions about the studio and his most recent Steam release, Loren: Amazon Princess. 

Can you give our readers a quick introduction of yourself and the studio?

I’m small independent developer, I have several external collaborators (mostly writers, artists and musician) and while in the past I made a variety of games including sports sims, in recent year I’ve focused on story-based games with manga artwork.

What made you focus on the role-playing, visual novel style genre?

I like RPGs, but I don’t like the endless exploration of the maps. I know that for some players that is an important aspect and I respect that, but personally, I don’t have time to do that as a player. So I thought to see if there were more people who thought the same, that wanted more focus on the story and less on the endless walking around huge maps.

What are the games that influenced you and how?

A long list, but if I have to pick only a few: Dungeon Master, because it was one of the first real-time RPGs I’ve played, Darklands, because it was one of the first unusual RPG, with choices, and texts, similar to what I want to achieve now, and more recently XCOM because of the perfect rule system 

What features of the Winter Wolves catalogue are you the most proud of?

The diversity, both in romances available, and in play styles. I rarely reuse the same engine for two games, I always try to implement something new! 

What is the biggest challenge while creating your games?

Putting everything together and managing people. That takes a huge amount of time! 

What aspect of creating games do you find to be the most fun?

I like designing the game rules, doing the interface design, and also drafting the plot outlines.

Loren The Amazon Princess was the first Winter Wolves Steam release. How did you find the experience?

It was cool, even if I remember I was very nervous on the release day! I am usually pretty calm, and always sleep well, but the first two nights the game was out I had trouble sleeping.

What are the future plans for Winter Wolves?

I want to keep making more dating sims (just finished one called Roommates) and RPGs like Loren, but also try to do something different with the help of other coder friends, like tower defense games or dungeon crawlers. 

What is the most unusual thing on your desk right now?

I was tempted to say a cat, but that wouldn’t be unusual for me, since I have 10! 

Anything else you would like to add?

If you liked Loren, stay tuned, I’m working on the sequel but that’s a long way before is done, instead this year I will release another game set in the same world, with different characters, called Seasons Of The Wolf!

We would like to thank Celso for taking some time out from his busy schedule to answer our questions. Loren the Amazon Princess, along with the Castle of N’Mar DLC, is available from the Steam store and Winter Wolves website. You can check out our review HERE. If you want to see more Winter Wolves titles on Steam, including their most recent title Roommates, check out their Greenlight page and vote for your favorites

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