Game idea: Ploppy Weather
On investigating stuff you keep returning to.
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
Today I’ll talk about something I’ve thinking about for quite a while. Without knowing what to make of it.
I’ve been drawing this toyish looking hiker in my sketchbook.
And I’ve been drawing droplets regularly the last couple of years.
I think I discovered how fun droplets are when I made my first serious game, Dropert. Probably because they have a sick shape, fun lighting and they make a neat sound when they break.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I think when you have stuff like this that you’re a bit obsessed with, it’s a good idea to lean into it and see what’s there. Since I’m trying to come up with a game worth making - I decided to give that a try.
Game idea: Ploppy Weather
A bit of a recap incase anybody didn’t hear about my current strategy for my next game: Instead of doing a wholehearted commitment towards one idea, I’m trying out a bunch of different ideas and putting them in front of people to see which one stands out more.
With my last game Surmount, we only showed one gif to the public and then we intentionally developed it in secret for over a year, until we finally started talking about it. We were very attached to the idea and really believed in it, so it made sense. But I don’t wanna do that again. I found it’s way too hard to predict what people will like.
So that’s why I’m going with this new strategy.
Last week was the first time I came as far as actually sharing one of my new ideas online.
This is how I described the video…
☂️ Game idea: "Ploppy Weather."
💧 An ASMR walking simulator.
I put this prototype together in a day and a half. It kinda blows my own mind that I managed accomplish this so fast.
I repurposed a lot of code from my other prototypes. All that practice and experimentation literally saved me hours now.
This is one of those ideas that I felt unstoppably curious about. And at the same time I didn’t expect anybody to care about it. Because why would they? But I decided to give it a shot and prototype it anyway, for three reasons:
My judgement of what people will like is often wrong.
Even if people didn’t like it I would at least know that for sure, and then I could move on to something else.
My friend Matt sent me a message about a publisher who was looking for pitches by solo developers who only had paper pitches (without any actual game build, which is rare).
Funnily enough point #3 riled me up so much that I felt I needed to make this idea right away, lol.
To my surprise, when I shared the video it did really well on both Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. It didn’t go viral or anything, but it did way better than I’m used to with my game dev posts.
So I’m gonna keep going a bit further with this to see what happens.
In this first video there’s no clear sign of what the gameplay will actually be like, it’s just a cute lil’ fella and big droplets. Since it did so well without a clear hook, I wonder how it would go with one..?
I thought of something since I shared this video, I’m testing that in the game right now and will probably tell you more about that next week.
At this point anything could still happen with this project. Which is fine, if interest dies out I can give the idea a dramatic change, or move on, I have plenty of other ideas to try out. It’s fun to treat it as a soft and wet clay that I can do whatever I want with!
Mini Notes
✏️ Art - Portrait of the Artist Walking Home in The Rain
🖌️ Art - Animal Crossing (Forest) Japanese booklet artwork
I find the shapes and lighting to be so beautiful on the villager and Tom Nook in this illustration.
The low poly, jaggy shapes and the soft impressionistic lighting on them is so yummy. And on top of that there’s very tastefully painted Animal Crossing trees AND if that’s not enough the background is a photo. Masterful mixed media right there.
📝 Art - Recent stuff by artists I follow online
Panel of the week
(from Space Deer)
Thank you for reading Indie Notebook! Would love to hear your thoughts on this idea!
Take care and have a creative week.
I like the idea of an ASMR simulator -- I don't know if this is already a genre.
A game like Breath of the Wild had such a great sound design which this reminds me of. It was such a huge part of transporting the player into that world. Sound is such an important aspect of games and movies. I could imagine something like this potentially working.
To be a bit self-contradictory here though, I often find myself playing with no or reduced sound (so I can listen to podcasts or whatnot). So, personally, I'm not sure it would be a great fit for me -- it would depend on the "gameplay".
Good job on your quick work on it! That's awesome and must make it more tempting to go try these ideas out :)