Dev Blog
Game Design, Development, Stories, Tips, and Tricks
#3 - Melting The Snowball Scope
As with every person who is extremely passionate about doing a creative project, it is extremely easy to think big at the beginning. It’s fun to let your mind wander over exciting ideas and around intertwining possibilities. We are taught that brainstorming is the first step to solving open ended problems. And we reinforce the concept of brainstorming on nearly a daily basis. It’s easy to make decisions when they are black and white. It’s much harder to make decisions when every option is a shade of grey with sometimes nebulous pros and cons.#2 - Ludum Dare 44 - A First Timer’s Postmortem
It was a weekend of major milestone firsts. I made my first publicly released game - Plague Machine. It was the first time I participated in a game jam and a Ludum Dare. It was the first time I had really thrown myself out there to criticism from the general public. Luckily, the LD community is extremely supportive, I learned a ton, and it was a great experience. I wasn’t really sure what to expect going in, but here are a couple of tips and the associated war stories that I wish I had read somewhere before I started and that could be useful for future first timers.
#1 - Setting out to Complete that First Quest
I’m always a bit hesitant to tell people that my hobby is making video games. Not because I’m embarrassed that I’m a nerd – I embrace that. And not because I’m not confidant my knowledge. I can ramble on for hours about game design, what makes mechanics fun, what programs to use, you name it. No, I’m hesitant to talk about it because inevitably comes something along the lines of “Oh, that sounds cool. Can I play it somewhere?” And the answer has always been a sheepish “No – it’s not really in a playable point yet. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.” I've never had anything I was *really* proud of enough to show off. It never met the standards I set for myself.