Welcome to another development log series! This time it’s for the solo game I’m tinkering with that unfortunately does not have a name yet. Oh well, in the meantime I can still write about the process. This first dev log is going to mostly go over getting started in the process of coming up with this game.
Okay, so I’ve been wanting to make a solo game for a bit now for two reasons. 1. People keep asking me if I’ve made any when I’m vending at conventions. That tells me there’s demand and I should probably meet it. 2. I haven’t made a solo game yet and I like trying different things.
Phase 1
Research
So when I sat down thinking about what I wanted to do, I took a look at solo games I had. I have a lot of them from supporting other tabletop game creators, but honestly they’re not my go to for playing games. I generally prefer traditional tabletop role playing experiences. However, there’s some really neat ones out there and the ones I really dug into while exploring were Tangled Blessings by Cassi Mothwin, Exclusion Zone Botanist from Exeunt Press, and Whispers in the Walls by Pandion Games. Why these ones? Well they were the very appealing to me aesthetically. I also really like the creators. And they all featured different gameplay aspects that seemed interesting. They were all successful, especially Whispers in the Walls, so that made them worth looking at. (I’ve dug into other solo rpgs too, but these were my main focuses in the original research phase).
Each of these games are great and a lot going for them that worked really well. The well written prompts and the way they built tension is fantastic. And one thing I really dug from Exclusion Zone was the map. That’ll become important later when I get into a future development update.
Idea Generation
So I had looked at what was out there for solog games, but I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do when it came to making my own. I’m not a cozy game maker or good at coming up with cutesy ideas like, “you’re a pencil that wants to be used by a writer”* or something like that.
Then at some point, I’m not sure when or how, I started thinking about Atari 2600 games. When I was a kid, they were already on their way out, but before the NES arrived. I played on my sister’s machine and we got a lot of games in rummage sales. This is important, because I never had a box nor an instruction manual. The only things I had were the art on the game and the game itself. You can see some examples at the start of this blog post.
The cover art really fired up my imagination. I would wonder who the space dude was on the cover of Breakout. I wanted to know the story behind Yar’s Revenge. Why was he a bug and why did he want revenge so badly? What drove the Night Driver’s need for night racing?
Because of the lack of context my imagination filled in a lot of gaps. And the stories in that art felt a little lonely and sad to me. Now thinking back on it, I was often lonely and sad… so that makes more sense. But anyway, this isn’t about that exactly. What I had was the core idea for a game. What if I made a game that was too inspiration from both Atari cover art and the feelings I had while playing those games and looking at that art.
*if you have made that game I just imagined, I’m not knocking it, it’s just not my thing.
Phase 2
Notes and Testing
I usually start with a notebook where I just start vomiting ideas on a page. This time. I went right to a google doc, because often I lose those notebooks… this was a much better way of doing it.
Anyway, I wrote down a lot of ideas for what I wanted the game to be like. I’m not going to get too much into the mechanics in this post, but I eventually settled on a d6 game with resource management being a big factor. And I wanted to use a deck of cards and a map.
I tried out an early iteration and it kinda sucked. But that was okay. I was getting a lot of the worst ideas out of the way first. I went back to the doc and wrote more notes.
While vending at NEW Gameapalooza I had a lot of down time. I made the best of that time by busting out my notes, dice, and a couple sheets of paper and getting to work.
I learned a ton during those hours of testing it. I was able to focus on things that were working, come up with new ideas, and ditch (more) things that sucked.
I’m now at a point that I feel like the core game is mostly there. It’s now time to go forward with the next steps.
Update: I wrote this before I had some new ideas and I basically rewrote the core game loop. I guess that means more testing for me!
Next Steps
The next big steps for this game are:
1. Come up with a name.
I really need a name for this game. It’s kind of hard to start the buzz for a game without one. First I have to come up with a list of names I like, and then start seeing if they’ve been used before. After that, I pick a favorite. I’ve begun this process, but haven’t landed on anything that has really called to me yet.
2. Get cover art and art of the starfighter
I’ve already talked to an artist whose style I think would be a good match for the game. I’m now in the process of writing an art brief so they know exactly what I’m looking for.
This one is a little complicated though, because I’m having another artist design the starship. So I need to get him a brief too and he has to be done with his design before the cover artist can do their thing. Hopefully in the next few months we’ll have some art to show off!
3. More Writing and Testing
Testing the game was fine when it was just me, but I barely had and prompts for the journaling portion of the game. I need to flesh that out a lot and get the whole thing in a more “final” form. Once that happens I’m going to open it up to a small circle of other folks to give it a go to see if they like it.
A Side Note
At first this solo game was kind of this vague idea I had. “I should make a solo game.” But with it being a genre I wasn’t super familar with and also prefering more traditional games, it wasn’t really lighting a spark in me for actually wanting to do it.
After thinking about about it for a long while and getting to the idea generation phase, that’s when it really started getting me excited. Then after testing, boom it hit even harder. I’m now firing on all cylinders on this game.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this other to say that the solo game thing initially was this thought that I should make one because people like them and buy them, but that wasn’t enough for me to move forward with a project. I have to be really into an idea otherwise it won’t sustain my interests through the entire production cycle. I recently was diagnosed with ADHD and a lot of things became more clear to me. In order to finish a project I have to be really into it. Once the ideas fell into place and things started working together and the “story” of the game was there, that’s when I really knew I had to move forward with it.
In Conclusion
I think the above next steps are enough for now. I’m going to do what I can to try to keep to the deadline in my head and I’ll update with another developer log when I can!