Work Post

9:12am - So I was about to go to bed around twenty minutes ago and as soon as my CPAP machine was on and my head hit the pillow I couldn't rest for concerns about my Roguelike Project.

I've been working on it for at least six months now, maybe eight, I stopped counting properly a while ago...

I keep thinking it's time to start on something different, or something more solid. See, I'm not really sure what I've been building the last so-long. I call it my Roguelike Project and I've been trying to implement some roguelike systems in Unity but for what? I've got this game in mind, World of Thardomhainn: Quest of the Sleeping Sword, and it's just vague enough to be tempting, but I don't really know what it is.

I say I want to make something like the old Ultima games, but the truth is I can't even be arsed to play them for reference since their controls are so antiquated. They use like every key on the keyboard for controls, you know? There's hardly any menus or anything. I don't imagine they had the choice back then, but whatever...

What game do I want to make?

Laying here with my head on the pillow, I can't come up with an answer, and it's driving me nutty. I can't sleep like this.

There are so many ideas for games I have but none of them are very solid.

I want to make a space game.
I want to make an animal crossing game.
I want to make a colonization game.
I want to make a roguelike game.
I want to make a simulation game.

It goes on and on but I can't really narrow it down. I was trying to do some rapid, iterative development to build up to something, but I don't even know what that is.

There are so many easier ways to make a game than what I've been doing. There's no reason I should be rolling my own pathfinding at this point. I'm basically making my own engine somewhere underneath or over to the side of Unity and whta for? I don't know.

If the goal is to fail faster I think I need to admit I'm at a fail point, where I'm spinning my wheels more for the sake of spinning them than actually accomplishing anything.

I don't have a story to tell, I don't have a world to share. I know how to make games but I don't know what game to make right now.


Making video games is a hugely important part of who I am, so I'm feeling lost and scared right now.

I think I need to put this project down and try to make something else for a while, but I have no idea what. Most games I want to make are either beyond my capabilities as a solo developer, or are barely formed ideas.

I'm having a hard time even coming up with a 'hole' in the market and saying, "I'mma fill it!" these days. For that matter I'm not playing video games much anymore either. I don't know what I want to play.

I know what I want to 'want to' play, of course. There's a handful of games I've got relatively recently and I want to finish them all, but I've either gotten tired of them or I've got a stumbling block in front of me. The big one is Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past. It's a great game but it's long and I've run out of steam on it. I'm having a hard time even trying to play my other games in part because I feel responsible to finish this one. It's like, you finish a book before you read the next, unless you hate the book, and I don't hate this game. It's actually probably one of my favorites... *sigh*

Anyways the point of that ramble is that I don't even know what type of game I want to play, let alone make.

So I'm lost, and scared, and I don't know what to do with myself.

And now that I've shared that, I guess I'll try again to sleep. Maybe I'll come up with a game idea while I toss and turn.