The Game Plan

Writing this post has taken some time, I have procrastinated for weeks by making tweaks to the style and the SSG code I wrote to build the site. Very much shaving the Yak.

For a while now I’ve been in a bit of a rut, creatively. I’ve felt a lack of passion for my work. Working remotely may have contributed to that also since I can have whole days of coding where, for the most part, I don’t talk to anyone and can call it a successful day’s work.

For context I am a software developer. Most of my experience has been in Web Development, with a focus on UI. I write the code for websites and web applications.

This is work which can absolutely be creative, challenging and even fun. But when the majority of work consists of beavering away at the endless list of stream of tasks delivered down the enterprise-grade log chute, one can start to feel a little disenchanted. Somewhere along the way I’ve lost sight of that fun and excitement which I drove me as a junior developer.

I know I am incredibly fortunate to be in the position I am in - to have a job which is engaging, well paid and doesn’t even require me to leave the house. But I can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. As a creative person, enterprise level software can often feel totally un-creative - maintenance of old code, debugging and delivering features that someone else wants, does not scratch that creative itch. I want to make something that I want to make.

So I’ve set myself a challenge. Build a game.

Nothing fancy, nothing flashy. But something fun, charming, and something that I love.

I’ve also set myself a deadline - to release by the end of the year. In my experience, nothing ever gets done without a deadline.

The thing is I don’t want to just build a game, I want to build an RPG. This is a genre that I love, and the untold hours I have spent playing these games has probably had a huge impact on the person I am today.

You might be rolling your eyes at this point at my naïveté. After all, RPGs are arguably the most complex genre of game you can make. You are probably right, but I love a challenge, and I have… a plan.

For me a great RPG nails of the following aspects:

• Exploration - Exploring a world at your own pace to have the experience that you want.
• Progression - That feeling of ‘leveling up’, your character learning a new powerful spell or some epic new gear.
• Combat - A demonstrable way to see your progression, the baddie you had previously struggled to defeat is now a breeze.
• Story - A feeling of immersion in a world, that it is alive and that the characters in the world and choices that you make matter.

This is an awful lot of work. To make great RPGs can involve teams of hundreds of people working flat-out, crunching hard to deliver a product.

But I don’t think it necessarily needs to be so complex, some of the best games I have played have been simple. I think I could I distill the base RPG game elements to their most simplistic form whilst creating something which is still fun.

I am aiming to create a mobile game with simple, ‘map-view’ navigation, a turn-based ‘classic RPG’ combat system, and rely heavily on static images for game art to create a sense of immersion in the world.

For example

• Exploration like the “Exploration” phase in the early game of civilisation match.
• Progression which is simple but meaningful, like the fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system.
• Combat which is simple but scales as your character develops, much like early Fallout or Final Fantasy games.
• Story which is rich and immersive like The Witcher 3, Disco Elysium.

Now, I know, those are some huge names to drop, and I wouldn’t blame you if reading that list elicited a derisive chuckle. In reality I would be thrilled to come close to the quality and fun factor of any of those games in any single aspect of my game. But why not shoot for the moon.

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

― Norman Vincent Peale