So, after a period of research, story writing and tech prototyping, I am pleased to announce that proper development on "Husky" will begin today. I still have a few ideas to polish from a story standpoint, but the basic structure of Act 1 is locked in, which means I have enough to get started.
"Husky" started as a game idea I had back in 2011, where the player experiences a certain game-changing epiphany during gameplay. In my mind I envisioned that an entire game could be built around hiding this until the point where I wanted the "wow!" moment occur. I had no idea how it would start, or where it would go after the epiphany (it was set to occur around the middle of the game). I was already working on something else at the time, so I wrote down the idea with the notion of revisiting it and fleshing it out sometime in the future.
The other game project I was working on eventually petered out and after a period of self-reflection I decided I needed to work on something simpler in scope. In January I brought up my list of ideas and decided to flesh out the "epiphany game". Over the past 6 months I’ve evolved the game world and story and didn't even notice when the "epiphany" concept was slowly slipping out of my overall vision for the game. I kind of knew it needed to be in there somewhere, not sure exactly where, but I was determined to shoehorn it in… because… reasons!
After reviewing my notes this week I had an epiphany of my own. The epiphany moment didn’t fit at all, and furthermore, it was actually pretty lame compared to the rest of the amazing story I’d crafted and honed over the last few months. The fleshed out story has many more interesting (and natural) “wow!” moments than the original concept, which was a silly gameplay gimmick at best.
Even a few weeks ago, if someone had suggested ditching the epiphany moment I would have strongly defended it as absolutely essential to the game. As of today I have officially killed it off and it feels weird. I probably wouldn’t have come up with what I have now if it wasn’t for that original idea, but it has no place in the final design. It was like scaffolding on which I could construct something more interesting, but the key is that scaffolding is ultimately dismantled.
During its development I’ll be attempting 2 week sprints in my free time. Progress will be slow as I still have a full time job. My plan is to show off *something* at the end of every sprint. Here we go...
"Husky" started as a game idea I had back in 2011, where the player experiences a certain game-changing epiphany during gameplay. In my mind I envisioned that an entire game could be built around hiding this until the point where I wanted the "wow!" moment occur. I had no idea how it would start, or where it would go after the epiphany (it was set to occur around the middle of the game). I was already working on something else at the time, so I wrote down the idea with the notion of revisiting it and fleshing it out sometime in the future.
The other game project I was working on eventually petered out and after a period of self-reflection I decided I needed to work on something simpler in scope. In January I brought up my list of ideas and decided to flesh out the "epiphany game". Over the past 6 months I’ve evolved the game world and story and didn't even notice when the "epiphany" concept was slowly slipping out of my overall vision for the game. I kind of knew it needed to be in there somewhere, not sure exactly where, but I was determined to shoehorn it in… because… reasons!
After reviewing my notes this week I had an epiphany of my own. The epiphany moment didn’t fit at all, and furthermore, it was actually pretty lame compared to the rest of the amazing story I’d crafted and honed over the last few months. The fleshed out story has many more interesting (and natural) “wow!” moments than the original concept, which was a silly gameplay gimmick at best.
Even a few weeks ago, if someone had suggested ditching the epiphany moment I would have strongly defended it as absolutely essential to the game. As of today I have officially killed it off and it feels weird. I probably wouldn’t have come up with what I have now if it wasn’t for that original idea, but it has no place in the final design. It was like scaffolding on which I could construct something more interesting, but the key is that scaffolding is ultimately dismantled.
During its development I’ll be attempting 2 week sprints in my free time. Progress will be slow as I still have a full time job. My plan is to show off *something* at the end of every sprint. Here we go...
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