I know I said I was going on a holiday break, but I saw a shiny and couldn’t resist.
While I’m going to stick to my guns on not doing my normal posts, I thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with another style of design journal— the daily entry.
That’s right, I started on a new game, and I’m going to be writing about it every day. Well, not every day, just each day in which I make significant progress in my game. So that means (probably)no Sunday posts or holiday posts, and intermittent posts the rest of the time.
In case you’re wondering, the game is called Project Heracles, a superhero-themed Flip and Write/Wargame which I may or may not enter into TGC’s Roll & Write Contest. So, without further ado, the journal!
Day One(11/20/19):
This is the only retrospective entry in this journal, as I started writing on day two. It’s also arguable that the design actually started far earlier, perhaps a few days ago when I was thinking about a super-hero creating Roll & Write, a few weeks ago when the contest started, or about six months ago, when I created Forgotten Heroes, a RPG that inspired this game, but the first real work began on this day.
While I was taking a break, I was browsing TCG’s Facebook designer discussion and saw someone asking about top-down perspective art for his Wargame, which I seem to have recalled was being entered in the Roll & Write contest. I began pondering my own Wargame, Worldscapes, and how Wargames in general might fit into the contest.
Having the nutty, unfocused mind that I do, I of course was simultaneously thinking about drawing, ancient romans, and the aforementioned superhero-builder game that I had considered, but had not found fun enough to actually try making. All of a sudden, Project Heracles leapt out of my head and screamed for attention.
The idea was a two-phase Flip and Write/Wargame themed in a dystopian government facility(or, perhaps, entertainment company?) where the main project is to engineer superhuman warriors to use in wars/provide entertainment in gladiator style fights.
The first phase consists of drafting powers and weapons, which you reflect by drawing with a dry-erase marker on a custom acrylic piece.
The second phase is a Wargame-esque fighting game in a gridded futuristic Colosseum. At the time, I decided to use Woldscapes’s combat until I found something different. As that system no longer exists, in the context of Project Heracles, and because it was removed not because of error(it just was made for an entirely different game and thus did not fit perfectly), I won’t describe it here.
After the burst of ideas, I created a dummy copy on TGC to see what kind of board I’d need, as well as how much the game would cost. I landed on the accordion board at first, as it both fit in the medium stout box and was big enough for a 10x10 grid of .75 inch squares, which was the size I had tentatively chosen for the battle grid. Once I had done this, I drew up a quick sketch on Adobe Comp, then started to draw the board on cardstock, along with two poorly cut standees.
That was the last major work done on day one, but I had a solid concept, a theme, and a prototype. I still hadn’t actually played, but there would be time for that soon. I hope this was helpful to someone, and if it was, I’d love it if you’d comment! Have a good day, and, as always, keep on geeking on!
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