Lonely Night Project

[lonelynightproject]

From abstraction to reality

If you have landed here without context (as usually there isn’t any), this post is a reflection, reminder, and note to self about failure, moving ahead, and not getting trapped in a repetitive pattern of thinking while trying to make a game. 

Failure and learnings from proto 0.1 

The multiplication/growth mechanic with which I had started doesn’t seem to work out and move any further, I’m not able to think of any good progression to it which would create a meaningful context for the players. I tried a few ideas but it felt forced, choices are not interesting and it is difficult to make a mental model of the game for the players to be able to move intuitively. I think I mixed up a few things and also did not take any thematic elements into consideration, due to which the game could not be made playable and it just ended up with a single mechanic with no context/motivation to play. I think I got into the classic trap of low skill, high expectation, where I’ve been thinking of traveling to a place without even considering where I am standing right now. I completely ignored the fact that one can only start from where they are, no matter where they want to go. 

I also confused the mechanic, theme, and experience which I want the players to have, they all seem to counter one another and a seamless play was not possible. I should have stuck to one element and made it a center around which other things can be built. I made the same mistake in my last project and wasted a lot of time doing it over and over again, analyzing, reading theory, and then just being paralyzed with no results which lead to a feeling of frustration and you think I can never ever make a game. Maybe I should have some intelligence and learn from my mistakes and not repeat it every time and waste time reflecting and learning them again. Last year I had made a note that every time I face this problem I will remind myself of this Doha by Rahim - एकै साधे सब सधै, सब साधे सब जाय। रहिमन मूलहिं सींचिबो, फूलै फलै अघाय।। but again, I felt into the same trap and made the same mistake, humans never learn! An idea should be nurtured carefully, not be burdened with all sorts of philosophies, theories, and expectations. 

So, basically what happened, the objective, mechanic, and the feedback loop was not working properly in sync, many of the things were just not possible with the mechanic and I just could not leave certain ideas or think of new ideas which would work with each other. It was an idea that had some metaphoric values, but it just could not work in the game form or I could not make it work. It could have been made as a simulation or an art installation, but the whole point of making a game was so that players, as an active agent, can make the choices, take actions and realize the consequence of their desire-driven actions, what they are doing to other players and to the game environment. 

Moving ahead

After two or three tests and discussing it with Jeff, I realized that this idea was not going to work, so I started thinking of some other ideas around growth. This time I was not thinking of going abstract but something that has a real-world connection and a pattern of growth which can be observed, so that there is a context to work with. It also helps in building connections between different elements of the game thematically or gameplay-wise.

After a few days, one night when I was taking a walk, I saw a few flower plants and started thinking about flowers, and I observed that flowers also have a pattern of growth, how a small seed, a non-living thing when put under a certain condition and nurtured carefully grows into beautiful flowers, full of life, this is just pure amazement. This evoked me to think of the same process in a game form, and I started to think of the journey of a plant from seed to flowers and all the other things associated with it. 

I’ve always lived with this thought that “beauty can only be appreciated, you can not do anything else with it”, so every time I feel beautiful or amazed I just stand still and be there with no actions. On the other hand, I also think why not create something beautiful yourself when you feel beautiful or amazed? And then a conflict arises and the beauty seems to fade away, so I’ve been choosing to not think and just be. But this time I decided to express and contribute to the beauty and amazement by making something myself, at least try to make something, and something was obviously going to be a game. 

Just when I thought of this, my next thought was, why do you want to make a game, is a game a good medium to express this phenomenon or the feeling? Why do you want to imitate nature, what will you get by expressing? Why are you trying to relive moments, trying to unnecessarily stretch something,  nature can not be abstracted, or made any more beautiful, don’t think of yourself as a creator, you can not create any beauty. My mind got filled with all these jumbled thoughts and suddenly I washed them away in a flash and told myself, not this time, not again. You have got to try, you have got to explore, test and see, these thoughts are always going to be there, and you will never get over it, you have got a life, you are alive, and you are allowed to express, create and the only way to do this is to go through it and test it yourself which side is actually true by experiencing how it feels to express, to create and to connect with the creation, and even after making it, if you still have these thoughts, let it be, at least you lived with it and tried to make something yourself.  Next prototype

So, now I’m exploring this idea of growth in the context of flowers, plants, and taking care of a small garden. I don’t know how or if this is going to get into a game, but I feel it can take a form, and soon it will be something playable. I will go with the fail early, prototype fast process, and get the ideas realized in material form as quickly as possible even if that means going with bad concepts, broken game, or no meaning. I will try to make it better once I have something tangible, and not plan or reject the ideas before really testing them. As they say, good designers make bad games and they improve on it until it becomes good. so.. yeah, quotes sometimes help. Also, I’m ok with bad, there is no problem in creating something which doesn’t meet your expectations, as I’ve started to realize that the perfect day is never going to come, no one ever will really understand you. So stop thinking about what could go wrong, and just start from where you stand, anyway there is no other option you can start from anywhere else, the mind can roam around, but that doesn’t really change where you are. and in reality, you only can take one step at a time no matter how far you want to go. 

[lonelynightproject]

prototype 0.1

I started with a simple idea of multiplying your stones, as you place one stone on the board the other empty spaces in that surrounding also gets filled with your own stones. You repeat this until the board is filled and there is no space left to place any more stones. A two player simple abstract strategy game based on checkers square grid. The idea behind this was to reach a point where players are forced to reflect on your own actions, and realise what consequences it leads to if not done consciously. The loop is simple, you place your stones, other surrounding blocks get filled, and the opponent does the same. The conflict  would be of the area and resources i.e. if any of your pieces are surrounded from all directions that piece dies out of overcrowding or is it is surrounded by more number of pieces by your opponent than your own pieces than also it dies and that's how you remove the pieces from the board. So there is one way to place the pieces on the board and two ways it gets removed from the board. The game ends when there are no empty blocks to place any player pieces, and the player with more number of pieces on the board wins the game. There are three phases to the game, placement, capture/remove, and movement. Sometimes the pieces are removed at the same time they are placed if it is captured, otherwise, players move their pieces to capture an opponent piece and at the same time defend and keep their own pieces safe on the board without overcrowding. It is not yet a game but a start in the process of becoming one.

Although I intend to create a feeling of complicity in some form, where the game is neither competitive nor corporative but makes the player think and reflect on what they have done together, throughout the game they have been thinking for themselves, performed certain actions, and but in the end, no one really won, what they did was eventually destruction and wastage of resources which was for nothing but just a play, and for their own enjoyment, they destroyed the land they were playing on. 

All the thoughts at this stage are quite primitive and I was just thinking of random things that the non-existing game(yet) could mean, or the other direction to think is to develop a system of play out of a set of material in an abstract form which might not have any representational meaning but is playful in some sort where a circle would just mean a circle, a black is black and covering is covering no other meanings attached to any of the elements, but a meaning emerges when they are put together as a system through mechanics. For now, these are the two directions I’m looking to explore further, maybe in the next version something new could come and it will take a completely new shape and meanings. I’m not sure if this will be an abstract game or some sort of theme would emerge, or be forced onto it at some stage. I would definitely like to keep it abstract though there could be some symbolic meanings in the form of mechanics but not the semantic ones. Jeff’s suggestion is to think of themes that would make it easier to think about the elements and how they connect. I also feel some sort of real-world connect would help in thinking about the game much easier than a complete abstract one. I will explore a little more in this direction and see if any interesting ideas or concepts could be created.

I’m writing my floating ideas and thoughts here so they don’t remain on my head unnecessarily and cause anxiety all the time, also I can come back and look at it if needed while I can work on other ideas and can make some progress in the game. More thoughts I have less I work and it feels a blockage, hence talking to someone or writing it down becomes immensely important to move on and look for something fresh. As I live alone and talks to no one, the only option I have is self talk, and reflect through reading and writing. It don't know if this mean anything to anyone, but it helps me to navigate smoothly. bbye

@banbutterjam

[lonelynightproject]

Taking part in the Tabletop Mentorship Program!

A few days ago, I was just playing with some fruit seeds lying down on my table, and a new game mechanic came into being. I made a quick paper prototype of it and played with my mom, which obviously failed right after a few moves. It was just a mechnica no goal, defined rules or any interaction pattern. It was just a seed for a potential game, at least I thought so :P. But game design is hard and everytime I sit with a prototype, my mind goes blind, and I struggle to find a way to make it work. It is one of those blank canvas feeling, where you are just staring at it for hours with no idea of what movement, and you wonder what you are doing with your life and why the canvas is not talking to you. To avoid this feeling,  I left the idea and put it in my to do list along with all other babies waiting to see a light of the day. I have not been working fulltime on any other thing, so I though of utilizing the time to learn new things and slowly make progress on at least one game so that I could have something playable by the end of this year which would mean now or later I will have to go through that feeling. I had a few ideas for a twine game, and a couple of ideas for video and board game out of which I wanted to focus on one or two to work on. Later a few months later, I saw a tweet about Tabletop Mentorship Program, which is a three month long one-on-one engagement platform where the experts in the industry share their knowledge, resources, experience, and guidance with another member of the community. I thought this could be a good push for me to be desciplined and work on one game at a time progressively and also probably will make it little easy to handle the blank canvas feeling if I’m working with someone more expereinced in this field, otherwise it gets really dificult to move things all by yourself, especially game design. So, I applied as a mentee, and was selected by Jeffrey Allers who is my now mentor for the course of this program.  In our first meeting, I’d suggested four ideas out of which we had to take one or two to develop further. Jeff provided me his feedback on all the four ideas, and he chose the same idea which I’d kept aside after a failed test with my mom. It was also because this idea was comparitively clear and easy to prototype in this short time, other ideas were theme based and would require a subject research, and were also very vague at this point. The program started in mid September and in last three weeks I’ve been working on and off on my game. We meet twice a month for a discussion and I regularly update Jeff over mail on the game progress. Jeff is a wonderful person with many years of expereince designing board and card games, he is helping me in the design and playtest my games. I hope to get a playable game by the end of these three months and perhaps some confidance to be able to make and publish my own games. In the next few posts, I will be writing about the game design process and my struggles along the way. @banbutterjam

[lonelynightproject]

introduction 1.0

Hi, so this is my new blog called lonely night project, this was my brother’s idea, back when we used to tinker and make things at home during our college days. We had plans of making a blog where we would post our creations, he would be a cheif tinkerer and I had as always not decided my role even for this. Soon after everything changed and now we make different things at different places. Although, I had saved this name on tumblr, and haven’t published anything on it, so now when I’m back home, and creating things I thought let’s start this blog again. Here I will be sharing my personal projects related to games and things I’m working on, tinkering with or struggling to learn. I hope to keep a record of the process of design, technical details and thoughts which goes into making a game or other things. @banbutterjam