I’m starting a game design journal. I doubt that this journal will interest many people. So I’m doing it for myself.

I’m doing it to vocalise my process of designing games that I’m doing right now as a hobby. To help me reflect, learn and improve as I go forward.

Right now I have two games in progress. One is a board game. One is kind of mobile in directive fiction concept.

Maybe I should kind of introduce the game game concepts in a bit more detail. So that I don’t have to do it again, in another post.

Lords of the what dungeon now?

So the board game I’m designing, at moment, I call it Lords of the Undermountain. It’s a problematic name, I know, I’m gonna have to change it later but that’s fine.

I started it as a strict design exercise: I randomly picked a couple of mechanics and constraints for the game:

• limited action selection
• network building as path to victory
• checkers type “eating” of game pieces mechanic

The game concept I came up with is about battling for conquest of a dungeon. It has the kind of different kind of factions which have their own own identity and differences. Which makes it an asymmetrical game.

I’ve been working on it on and off from the beginning of 2021. It’s currently in the stage where I see that at its core, it is working.

And in general, the play experience is getting towards the goals I have for the design.

But the devil is in the details so many things are still to be polished and to be designed such as the game play and the game experience in various parts of the game.

I’m in the process of trying to streamline the game. And reinforce the positive feedback loops in the game, so that on the first play one of the players would win quite easily quite quickly. And then other players would be able to reflect after the game what they could have done differently to make it a more even game.

Get back to you later?

The second game I’ve just started designing. To hvae two projects to switch to another when one is giving me hard time.

It’s an interactive fiction game called get back to you later. It’s inspired in a large way by the mobile game Lifeline that I have not played but I’ve heard of. The idea of using off time as a big part of the of the gameplay experience.

The theme of the game will be a kind of corporate thriller. It will look like mobile chat application but you’re mainly only chatting with one person, which is the main character in the game, and helping them, guiding them and giving them advice and then then being unsure if that advice will help them. And basically being anxious about it and having to wait hours to know what happens next. Wait to get push motivate notification after some hours when something has happened. Waiting for the main character having done something with that client based on the advice the player has given them and getting back to them later.

So that’s it, basically. And I’m just in early design phase with this one. I’m working on two fronts at the same time:

• I’m developing the fiction, the narrative of the game
• I’m looking at practical technical feasibility: what tools or platforms to use to build this game

That’s quite exciting and a little bit different than the board game.

That’s it for now, stay tuned

Um, so, in this blog, I will babble on and reflect on, on the ongoing design, as I do it.

That’s the kind of exercise to vocalize these things to help me reflect on them. Maybe somebody will read this and comment and cheer me on. Maybe even ask me good questions, or give some advice.

All of that would be more than I would expect from from keeping this journal.