Posted December 07, 2024 by Sean
Its been exactly two weeks since I posted this, and having time to think about it I realized that nothing that I'd written about the game had captured what my intended goals for this project were. So I'll remedy that now.
As with most of my projects, this game started with some lofty ambitions. I wanted to make the next great rouge-like deck builder. This was my first mistake. Bringing that much ego into the project, trying to 'make' a game be a thing, is I think, a flawed methodology.
I've recently started reading Christopher Alexander's 'The Timeless Way of Building' on the surface it's a book about architecture. In reality it's more appropriate to say it's a book about designing spaces to be used by people, towns, cities, buildings, pools. Good examples of these spaces, ones that are fulfilling to us as people, that fill us with life (and indeed are inhabited by that same quality) are not made. They develop, they are in some way born. Born of innumerably many events happening repeatedly in a space. As water flows over stone, day after day, year by year, that water forms a path. As animals return time and time again to a safe place to drink, they form a path. As people rest a cup on a windowsill as they watch the sunrise, day after day, generation after generation they form a path.
What I mean to say then is that my goal with this project is to embrace Alexander's timeless way.
This idea will continue to develop but I hope you'll come back for the next dev log.