I'm continuing to have an incredibly good time in Seattle, my first time in the city and a place I quickly grew to love, the same way it didn't take me long at all to love my own city of Bristol. And while it's felt full, and fulfilling, I've managed to keep a good amount of time to parallel with my partner and I've had lots of headspace to think about my life and about game design.
I've had various ideas swirling around in my head, for months, for long enough in fact that I probably could've even made a game or a couple smaller ones in that time, but it's just not how I operate. I think my motivated and active times seem to be on a seasonal schedule and I need a long time to recover from large, significant projects or life events. Plus, I just feel... so much more alive during the warmer months.
One idea has taken form though. One that started as a possible remake, or sequel, to my original game but that is enough of a lowkey, cute lil project I did that it's not something I need to really stay attached to. Aside from a couple posts, I was happy to hit the publish button and send the game to the winds. The ideas that informed it, however - an adventure game based around freeform exploration and discovery - has stuck, and a combination of lots of thinking, writing, doodling and a particularly beautiful mushroom trip has left me with a concrete idea in my head.
Originally I was going to do a bunch of prototyping and see what shakes out, and I don't want to put the cart too much before the horse, but right now I feel a burning desire to create a more fully fleshed out design document. A place I can lay out the game flow and individual puzzles and try to get something that feels like a cohesive whole to work with, and no doubt alter and improve and iterate on later. The full pull-back-and-reveal of discovery, and the world, and the (silent-ish) protagonist's development. Something that feels big and significant, but still a cute and pocket-sized adventure. Something that, if I can do it right, will bury in the heads of those who allow themselves to get stuck in.
I don't wanna talk a big game because I'm still an inexperienced game designer, but I guess I just want to express that right now I feel awake - I feel this burning desire to commit to game design fully over programming or art and I'm incredibly excited by the potential of the game space I am carving both in my head and in a document, and no doubt will be on a bunch of scrawls on paper too.
In my head, everything is cohesive, everything makes sense, everything flows, everything is pieced together elegantly. But this is an abstracted feeling - I just have to work on it, and capture it, and build it.
