Getting somewhere / Game jam
Jan. 4th, 2022 12:46 pmIf you'd like a small colourful PDF of my little road trip conversation game / story prompt Getting There, you can download it free here on Itch.io. I've already posted the full text in this journal here, and a delirious run-through with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sabotabby here, so the PDF is just for those who might want something more visually appealing to use on class slides or something like that.
I dunno. It's yellow. Might be cheerful. Just trying to get everything in one place.
Game Jam
I joined a game jam for the first time, but then I got buzzy and made a whole game before the jam even started, so now I need a new idea starting at 10 pm tonight.
The jam is to create a solo journalling game -- a game whose form is a series of journal entries you make in the voice of the character.
This format wasn't something I'd particularly thought about creating, but this jam was one of the few jams I identified that was a) for TTRPGs, not video games; b) starting soon; and c) asking for something I thought I could produce.
Now I can't stop making them.
My current idea (the one that's nearly finished, knock wood) is a journal that gets written out of order and then filled in via memory threads that link different entries, or "how I draft everything anyway." I like the way this brings about connections and narrative arcs that the player/writer might not otherwise have come up with. Since it's moving back and forth that is the core mechanic, the effect is going to be kind of ephemeral -- the finished result will be a linked piece of writing, but the most pleasurable part of the experience, I think, will be making the links.
I'm pleased because I had drafted a very complicated mechanic for moving from entry to entry, and then as I was walking to work today I saw how I could vastly simplify it. Now I think I can get the game onto four pages. I can see that economy is a value in game design, especially in these little TTRPGs.
I didn't actually need to go in to work, but I did need the walk, and it was good to be in the office and grab a few things and print a few things and feel At Work, even if what I actually mostly did was revise the new game. No one else was around until the cleaning staff came by -- I got there pretty late in the day, and folks are still minimizing their time in shared interior spaces.
{rf}
sabotabby here, so the PDF is just for those who might want something more visually appealing to use on class slides or something like that.I dunno. It's yellow. Might be cheerful. Just trying to get everything in one place.
Game Jam
I joined a game jam for the first time, but then I got buzzy and made a whole game before the jam even started, so now I need a new idea starting at 10 pm tonight.
The jam is to create a solo journalling game -- a game whose form is a series of journal entries you make in the voice of the character.
This format wasn't something I'd particularly thought about creating, but this jam was one of the few jams I identified that was a) for TTRPGs, not video games; b) starting soon; and c) asking for something I thought I could produce.
Now I can't stop making them.
My current idea (the one that's nearly finished, knock wood) is a journal that gets written out of order and then filled in via memory threads that link different entries, or "how I draft everything anyway." I like the way this brings about connections and narrative arcs that the player/writer might not otherwise have come up with. Since it's moving back and forth that is the core mechanic, the effect is going to be kind of ephemeral -- the finished result will be a linked piece of writing, but the most pleasurable part of the experience, I think, will be making the links.
I'm pleased because I had drafted a very complicated mechanic for moving from entry to entry, and then as I was walking to work today I saw how I could vastly simplify it. Now I think I can get the game onto four pages. I can see that economy is a value in game design, especially in these little TTRPGs.
I didn't actually need to go in to work, but I did need the walk, and it was good to be in the office and grab a few things and print a few things and feel At Work, even if what I actually mostly did was revise the new game. No one else was around until the cleaning staff came by -- I got there pretty late in the day, and folks are still minimizing their time in shared interior spaces.
{rf}
