I'm looking through my old game project files. Let's see what we find.
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A mobile medieval city builder (2013). For a prototype, this actually plays quite well, like a simplified Banished. Probably a bit too simple, though.
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I put a lot of effort into those building assets. It would be a shame to waste them. How about repurposing them into a TRPG (2014)? I created some nice systems and graphics for this, but got spooked when I realised how much work a full TRPG would take.
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A horror action-adventure (2014), something between Anodyne and the Binding of Isaac. I developed a fair amount of gameplay, including a randomised dungeon and a boss battle with a Lovecraftian deity, but the game didn't quite find its hook. Cute, but dull to play.
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A mobile puzzle RPG (2017). I made a few variations on this, using different graphics and systems. This particular version had a mechanic of combining elements to make different spells, but it was too complicated for its own good.
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A hexagon builder/puzzler (2020). Inspired by Tiny Islands, I threw this prototype together in a night. There was potential, but I didn't have the time to develop it further. Then I discovered Dorfromantik and thought, "thank god, now I can play this game without having to make it myself".
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A rat Zelda-like (2022). An experiment to test some procedurally generated dungeons. Again, had potential, but too much of a time sink to develop. It also suffered from some of the same gameplay problems as project 3 - kind of mushy to play.
...And many more.
It can be difficult to tell a good idea from a bad one when it only exists in your head, so developers often have to prototype a lot of projects before they find the one that's really clicking with them. The rest just get deleted or shoved into a forgotten corner of their dropbox folder, usually never to be seen again.
So it goes.