Dream games and looking for playtesters!

Hi pal!

Lately my brain has been sprouting way more than usual with ideas. I think working for so long on one big game project has given me desperate cravings to make tiny stuff that I can release into the world quickly.

The most exciting part of any project might be the beginning and the end. So my current theory is that I will be happier the shorter I can keep the in-between, the actual making.

One of my favorite game creators (Derek Yu) wrote a blog post that I keep thinking of whenever I’m in this mood of starting a billion new projects.

“If you treat finishing like a skill, rather than simply a step in the process, you can acknowledge not only that it’s something you can get better at, but also what habits and thought processes get in your way.”

What’s been getting in the way of us finishing BIG GAME (Surmount) is that the project got so damn big. The main reason for that is we’ve had to keep adding huge features and content to it, we’ve stopped that now and instead we’re only trying to do what we need to do to make it feel like a complete experience.

But it’s already this huge pile of systems and assets that interact with each other. So a day of work often feels like a game of whack-a-mole, to try to fix it up. It’s a hard project to finish, and I don’t have a whole lot of experience with finishing projects.

Derek said that if you do quit your current project, then for the next one you should at least…

“… go back down, down, down, down to a point where you may even find it somewhat beneath you.”

I feel this way even though I’m 110% sure that we will finish Surmount.

Making a bigger game does not make it more fun to work on. For me the pleasure is all about chiseling out the character of a world, figuring out the core of the experience and writing meaning into it. And right now I desperately want to know wether my idea of doing this is appealing, I’ve sunk over 4000 hours into this and I have no idea if my judgement is correct (thinking of a specific anecdote of when I was working at Toca Boca right now, but I’ll save that for later). If I had released more small projects first I might’ve had a better grasp of it. This huge time-investment is an expensive way to find out.

I’ve learned that making my dream game is not enough. I need to have fun making something that I care about, while living the way I want. I’m really happy to work on this and I’m eternally grateful, but since this is a team project we’ve agreed to work a certain way to keep things fair in terms of rev-share. This came at the cost of us not being able to live exactly as we would prefer otherwise.

Going forward (after Surmount) I’m gonna make these changes to the way I live/work:

1. Only work on projects I care deeply about (already do)

2. Don’t let work dominate how I’m able to spend my time

Looking for testers!

With that said, we’re seriously looking for Surmount playtesters right now! You need a PC or Mac and a gamepad to play, let me know if you’re interested and I’ll set you up!

Otherwise, if you know someone else who might be up for it, feel free to hook us up too. I’d really appreciate it and it would help us out a lot!

Mini Notes

🔴 Youtube video - Valve’s “Secret Weapon”

If you liked Portal, this one’s gonna be fun to watch, quite inspiring to hear how much that game changed because of testing.

“We see our game designs as hypotheses and our playtests as experiments to validate these hypotheses.”

It managed to give me a little boost of motivation to focus on getting more playtests done. The only issue I see with this approach is that we have quite a long and non-linear game so the exact same approach might not be as fitting. They mentioned something about “heat maps” but I’m not sure how we could make use of that even if we set it up.

📗 Book - Goodbye, again

For me, this felt like reading the diary of someone who’s a lot like myself, but a lot more appreciative of everything and does a great job at showing the beauty in Being A Fan Of Everyday Life.

There’s one part towards the end that really resonated with me. Most of the time when we move away from somewhere the places change and move on. But Jonny’s childhood room remains untouched and he no longer feels at home there, in that special case it’s him who’s changed. I find that quite relatable and absurd.

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We received funding for Surmount way back in April of 2020 (or 2021?). It’s been a long time since then (longer than expected) and we need to use the remainder of the game’s budget to pay other costs. Which means I’m living off my savings now and will try to make some cash through freelance work instead. (I’d appreciate any leads for drawing-jobs)

Thank you for reading! Have a creative week.