Hi ! I'm not sure who other than myself would be reading this- but if that is the case then hello ! I'm Louie . I enjoy making games and sometimes I finish them , the same can largely be said for my art , and my music also . As it is a fate that a lot of my projects enjoy , there's an incredibly likely chance this post , and by extension this game won't get finished . But I find writing to be cathartic , and it's a good thing to do while the kettle boils . So I suppose with my morose optimism aside , consider this a "pre-mortem" for a project that may never exist .

~background

Sometimes an idea just falls into your head , fully formed ; sometimes it hits a couple rocks on the way down and you have to do a little patching up on it yourself ; sometimes it hits every branch of the tree as it falls; and sometimes it sits on the other side of a deep cliff , perfectly in sight- watching you struggle towards it over the next [amount of time] . Needles to hay , I've been struggling with the fourth for some time now . The elusive project- and while it may seem I’m waxing self-congratulatory poetic , anyone who has had a project like this knows exactly how it feels . Whether through design , or implementation- there’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to paint the picture perfectly formed in your head . Perhaps that is what this premortem is for , as anyone who has done any kind of art to any kind of degree knows- nobody can rely on the game that codes itself , the song that writes itself , or the picture that paints itself ( I’ll leave the last one for AI ) .

It’s a strange art- solo development . You quickly learn the limits of your ability based on what winds up actually existing , and to what quality they exist . You’re immediately and constantly confronted with the things you’re not good at or don’t enjoy because you can’t split the roles up like you can on a team , and it’s incredibly easy and incredibly tempting to drop a project when you’ve finished all the bits you like making . Which might begin to explain the project graveyard I have in my pico8 folder , or why my [old_retired] folder is about 3 times as dense as my finished projects folder.. But perhaps that's what I find so rewarding about it also , like eating cold wagyu I love the rawness of it . Being confronted with your weaknesses allows you to acknowledge what they are and work on them in a comfortable environment- at the risk of spending a lifetime hammering steel only to forget to make a sword . Analogy aside , my whole skillset has been derived from working on projects on my own- so naturally I'm biased towards it ; and as a jack of some trades , master of even less , I enjoy the variety it provides .

While I’ll be writing project-specific to these posts I’ll try to keep it broad and applicable to all areas of game development , only calling upon it for examples- because then this’ll exist as a much more useful piece of media for whoever finds it in the future .

~design

Good game design is invisible game design

Design is tricky , it feels like there’s no “secret”- and the idea of invisible game design has haunted me . I mean , how do you design something that is invisible ? For the projects that arrive fully formed it can be obvious . At The Hop! came and went and I barely remember a thing , the process largely feeling like writing a cover of a song that already existed in my head . This card game project could not have felt more dissimilar . Everything that seemed so obvious on the other side of the figurative design cliff has turned into a elaborate dance of compromise and an ever escalating complexity . Which for a hypothetical dream project can be fun , but not for the will of a weekend warrior- a project to suffer the same fate as an unpainted deck , wearing a coat made of plywood . So what do you do when this is the case ? When the invisible design is well , invisible . Well,  I suppose if I knew I wouldn’t be writing this , and I don’t really have a satisfying answer to share . Perhaps in a subsequent premortem I’ll share the secret in big bold text ( once i figure it out ) , but I’ve only got these techniques for now.

Write everything down

Like any skill , you can practise design . So get in the habit of doing it . Have a document , or a book and write everything you think of in it . Go as deep as you want on as many as you feel , but just put everything down . I have a word doc on my computer that’s about 7 pages long now , filled mostly to the brim with absolute garbage . But one man's trash is the same man's treasure a bit later sometimes- you’d be surprised how many times I’ve pulled myself out of a design Klein bottle ( a desein bottle ? ) with something I jotted down when I was drunk 4 months ago , or something I siri'd into my phone while driving .

Start again

It sucks , I know . But honestly I find starting again to be incredibly rewarding . Maybe it’s because I get to make all the systems and tools again , but also maybe it’s a chance to make everything that annoyed the hell out of me no longer annoy the hell out of me . Like a superpower that only activates with grief , it’s like going back in time with the memories you have now .

Fail fast , fail often

Do other shit

Honestly it’s exactly the flavour you remember , you’ve been told this before and will be told again , but it’s important ! Inspiration comes from the strangest things , and you might have exhausted all the inspiration you can pull from the objects around you . Put a plant in your room and look at it often . Go for a run when it rains . Eat breakfast twice in a row . You might have the correct Dewey decimal number but the book you’re after sometimes is just in a different library .

~application

So where does that leave me ? Well , this is the third time I’ve started my project from the start . I now know to set up game states earlier than well .. never , and to start fleshing out particles before I fill up all the tabs , and how scary the token limit is once you’re working on something a little bigger . It’s also the chance to eek a little further ahead before I eventually start again , it’s like moving a blade onto a harder , smoother whetstone and knowing eventually it’s going to be either a piece of white A4 or my pointing finger that gets cut cleanly in half before I decide to put the stones back in their box for another day . It’s a weird discipline too , there’s no consequence for quitting ? Nobody is telling me to keep going , and to be honest- nobody would even really care if I didn’t anyway . But for some reason it would feel like a waste on this project moreso than others , not because it’s especially clever- I suppose I just like it . But when you’re competing against only yourself you don’t really need a reason stronger than that .

I’m going to keep writing in this blog , and maybe if I finish this project my morose optimism will look quaint and slightly humourous- but I write this today from within that state of morose optimism . Perhaps I’m committed to this project and subsequently this blog because I can’t be the only person who gets lost in a maze that they not only designed , but also coded how the walls they’re stuck between work . I want to prove largely to myself that reflection , and working on a puzzle slowly is a valid approach , and that design limbo is a temporary space that you can leave with enough conscious effort .

Thanks for reading ,