Celso Riva (born c. 1974) is an Italian

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...

of several critically acclaimed games, including ''The Goalkeeper'', ''Universal Boxing Manager'', ''

Magic Stones {{Notability, Products, date=March 2011 ''Magic Stones'' is a video game based on Celtic mythology and is a mix between a role-playing video game and a card game. It was developed by Winter Wolves and was released as shareware for the Macintos ...

'', the ''

Heileen ''Heileen'' is a visual novel video game series developed and published by the Italian studio Tycoon Games for the Android, Linux, MacOS, and Microsoft Windows platforms. The first game ''Heileen: Sail Away'' (also known as ''Heileen: Sail to the ...

'' and ''

Vera Blanc ''Vera Blanc'' is an Italian mystery visual novel video game series for the Android, iOS, Linux, Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows platforms, with art in the comic style. The games were developed and published by Winter Wolves. The first game ''Vera B ...

'' series, ''

Bionic Heart Celso Riva (born c. 1974) is an Italian independent video game designer of several critically acclaimed games, including ''The Goalkeeper'', ''Universal Boxing Manager'', '' Magic Stones'', the '' Heileen'' and '' Vera Blanc'' series, '' Bionic He ...

'', and the '' Loren the Amazon Princess''.

Life and game design career

At the age of twenty, Riva began his career, designing small-scale games for the Italian market. He took a seven-year sabbatical until 2003, when he discovered the

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

distribution model and created the

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video game ''Universal Soccer Manager'' using

BlitzBasic Blitz BASIC is the programming language dialect of the first Blitz compilers, devised by New Zealand-based developer Mark Sibly. Being derived from BASIC, Blitz syntax was designed to be easy to pick up for beginners first learning to program. T ...

. He moved to C/C++ language and published 10 more games under the Winter Wolves label, then opened a new company, Tycoon Games, on which he has published 6 games: the space war game ''Supernova 2: Spacewar'', the

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game ''Summer Session'', the

visual novels A , often abbreviated as VN, is a form of digital semi-interactive fiction. Visual novels are often associated with and used in the medium of video games, but are not always labeled as such themselves. They combine a textual narrative with sta ...

''Heileen'' and ''

'', ''College Romance: Rise Of The Little Brother'', and ''Spirited Heart''. For the games ''Summer Session'' and ''Heileen'', he moved away from C/C++ to embrace

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

programming language and in particular the tool

Ren'Py The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine is a free software game engine which facilitates the creation of visual novels. Ren'Py is a portmanteau of , the Japanese word for 'romantic love', a common element of games made using Ren'Py; and Python, the progra ...

. The stories of The Flower Shop: Summer In Fairbrook and The Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook were written by Ayu Sakata from

sakevisual Sakevisual (stylized as sakevisual) is a developer and publisher of interactive story games such as visual novels and otome games, well known for their otome game ''RE: Alistair++''. Their games are for Windows, macOS and Linux. ''Sakevisual'' ...

. Starting from 2020, some of his games were ported and published to consoles by Ratalaika Games.

Awards

In 2004, both his games ''The Goalkeeper'' and ''Universal Boxing Manager'' were nominated among the 5 top Sports Games of the Year 2004 Sports Games of the Year Awards
by the online magazine Gametunnel. In the 2011 Best Ofs from VNs Now!, ''Winter Wolves'' was named "Studio/EVN Circle of the Year".

Games

References

Interviews

In The Company of Wolves: Celso Riva Interview
from rockpapershotgun.com
Interview
from gamesetwatch.com
Interview
from pig-min
Interview
from Indie Superstar

External links

Winter Wolves computer games sitegames forumhis personal blogthe games videos on YouTube
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Riva, Celso Video game programmers Living people 1974 births