Since my last post I've followed the following recipe.
Ingredients
- The bare minimum of what counts as a unique idea.
- The philosophy of rapid development and minimal viable product; break your product up into a series of stages. Only do the bare minimum to get to the first next stage and nothing else. Then, share the result to get feedback, and only then move on to the next stage. It is scary. Do it.
- Knowledge of games to steal from. If your core idea is unique, your building blocks don't have to be; the only way to realize a unique idea is to stack building blocks in a unique way. It does not matter if the building blocks are unique or not. The way you stack them is already value that you create (if you want to sell, be aware of copyright).
- A safe space to fail in. Like a group of friends who will enjoy a playtest night together even if the game bombs.
With the above ingredients in mind, the recipe is just the stages of your product, with something to show at each stage. I am using the following:
Recipe
- unique idea. I've pitched my idea to the community as soon as I had anything close to an idea. Product: idea pitch.
- Core moves. I then wrote down the core moves of the game (Powered by the Apocalypse style) and left details and even some key components blank, and turned on the bat-signal for a playtest. Product: Incomplete moves list.
- Play-test to fill the blanks. I then ran a playtest session with friends who will enjoy an evening together even if the game bombs, and who are cool with me filling those blanks in on the fly. There's just something about a live session that sets my brain into motion in a way my writing desk does not. In game development, playtesting is king. Do it ASAP. Do it often. Just one session was enough to fill the minimum amount of blanks I think I need to fill to write a minimal viable product of a public playtest kit on itch. My aim is to finish the playtest kit in the next few days, encourage people to hopefully give one round of feedback. Product: Playtest kit that addresses intended blanks (v0.1). Contains complete core moves (the game's ingredients) and procedure of play (the game's recipe).
- In the first playtest, there were known blanks. I play tested to spark inspiration to fill them. The playkit is a bare minimal core with no intended gaps. I hope that I can quickly find people to use the playtest kit with the purpose of finding unintended blanks, and use their feedback to create a new playtest kit that fills these unintended blanks. Product: playtest kit that addresses unintended blanks (v0.2).
This is the product I aim to deliver for the game jam.
Of course there are next steps:
Repeat the last step. Products are v0.3, v0.4 etc. Do this until a playtest round no longer yields significant blanks. Product: core game that has no longer been showing significant design gaps (v1.0).
- Then, if if I want, I can expand my core game by repeating the whole recipe all over again towards creating v2.0. The only difference then would be that a unique idea is no longer a requirement, as I would still be building on the idea of v1 0.
- Use that feedback for one update round, and then finish this game jam with a play tested player kit v0.2 that is playable, fun, and begging to be expanded.
I'm Just saying this because it has been my roadmap, so far it has been working for me, and hopefully it will inspire you towards something that works for you. By keeping it simple and minimal, it was possible to go from 0 words on paper to a play test within a week. Do the thing!