It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my current slate of side projects. That’s because it’s a mess!
I have three ongoing projects in various stages of completion, which is not great. Ever since I went full-time at Doborog, my current studio, I’ve been hoping to keep my slate to: (1) job and (1) side project, for a total of (2) things I’m currently working on. I consider Equip Story less of a project in-and-of-itself and more of an accountability tool for my projects, so I don’t count that towards the total. Though the newsletter has expanded into multi-part interviews and first draft chapters of my fantasy memoir, so maybe I shouldn’t discount the time and effort I’m putting in here?
I’m going to figure out why I have three open projects. Starting… now.
Brain, this is your time to shine. Remember Mode: Activate!
At the end of last year, I was working on a new card game. (I’m going to speak vaguely about these three projects, because I plan to write about them all in more detail soon.) In January, the public domain game jam started, so I shifted away from the card game temporarily to spend the month working on the Marx Brothers game with Gwen. The week after we finished Cocoanut Hotel, there was a game jam at work, but that was only a week long. I picked the card game back up in February, playtested it a bunch, and got deep into laying out the manual. Close to the finish line, I started freaking out about shifting back and forth between video game and tabletop game development. Worried I wasn’t focused enough, I put the card game aside. Temporarily, I told myself. (But I was so close to finishing the beta, lol.)
Soon after, I began working on a new puzzle game in Unity. Then came GDC, where something unexpected happened. On a lark and the encouragement of friends, I showed the head of a publisher I really like a super simple adventure game demo I had thrown together as a fun learning exercise… and the head of the studio dug it. I was gobsmacked. This was a Unity baby steps kind of thing. Actually, baby steps might be overselling it. It was a Unity learning-to-roll-over-from-back-to-stomach-without-crying kind of thing. But the studio head was intrigued by the core mechanic and my writing and asked me to develop it further with them in mind.
The high of that meeting prompted me to write these two page idea sheets for myself on how to evolve the adventure demo into a “real” game. I write them, think about them a lot, then shelve them for simpler versions of the idea. You see, my thinking on the project is that I’m going to make it, one way or the other. So the project needs to be scalable from solo dev to game-with-an-actual-budget. If the idea is intrinsically too big and unwieldy, then I won’t be able to complete it without the studio, which would be a shame. I want the execution to have satisfying Plan A and Plan B versions, which is a production challenge on top of just designing a good game.
And I’m doing this pre-development alongside coding the puzzle game.
To sum up, my slate has three items:
The Card Game – I need to finish the layout, then release it.
The Puzzle Game – I need to fix the current bugs, make a final decision on scope, then wrap it up and release It.
The Adventure Game – I need to decide on a direction, then finish the game design document.
In the middle of writing this very newsletter, I decided to re-assess the card game. I forgot how absurdly close I came to a finished layout. The cover looks surprisingly good for something I hacked together myself! The interior is all-text with no illustrations, but I think that’s fine for a beta version. I took an hour to fix some spelling mistakes, make a few tweaks, then exported them to an eBook file and a print version. I’m going to send it off to the printer this week, which is plenty of time to hand them out at Gen Con later this month. Soon I can fully scratch that off the list.
I decided to ask Gwen for help with my puzzle game’s bugs. It’s the programming equivalent to offering to help a friend move. I offered to buy her pizza, which made the move metaphor fully complete. She was delighted, to my surprise, because other developers helped fix bugs in her games, so she was happy to pay it forward. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach the point of programming mastery where I will be able to pay it forward. My apologies to Haley Joel Osment. My plan is to wrap up this game jammy project in a month or so. The target audience is a few people I know personally. Once I show them the game, and release it via Equip Story, that will complete the project in my mind. After that, I’ll decide if it’s worth pursuing further.
Then I want to focus on the adventure game. This is a type of game I’ve always wanted to make, in one form or another. With the encouragement of a publisher I respect, I’m excited to pursue it. This is going to be a big project for me, even at its smallest scale, so I plan to give it the time and attention it needs.
Unless I decide to do the annual gamebook game jam! I have an idea for it!!!
🎲 Your Turn: Are you working on any creative projects right now? What are they? Are you able to pursue your projects one at a time or do you have a slate of multiple things in progress? I want to hear from you! Reply to this email or tell the whole world about your projects by hitting the orange button to leave a comment.
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