How precious is your idea?
If you made it to this post, it probably means you’ve seen the front page of our website. Listed under “Current Projects” (Aug-27, 2021) is one of our properties “Slayed by the Bell”. Slayed by the Bell is a really strong theme we are hoping to build a 1-2 player game around. But sometimes the best laid plans don’t work and…sacrifices… have to be made.
There are “7 Easy Rules” to follow when deciding to move on from a game design…and some designer much more experienced and wise than us has figured those rules out. I wish we could impart some simple rubric to follow when making the decision to move on, but it’s really more a feeling than anything else.
As we continued to iterate on SbtB and drill down to the core game play loop, the less and less it felt like a ragtag band of teenagers trying to survive another day at their vampire infested high school. There was the mounting pressure in each round of play, but that pressure really didn’t have anything to do with the villains in the game. In fact the villains had been abstracted to the point they felt more like a set of directives to meet to move forward to the next round. And the weapons didn’t really feel like weapons anymore, they felt more like a pile of things you needed to line up to satisfy some order ticket. And the order tickets felt more like…hold on….that gives me an idea.
How about a game that’s all about fulfilling tickets? That sounds a whole lot like a game about working at a distribution center. And what if that distribution center was staffed by jungle animals? And what if actual-freakin-monkeys mess up your workflow? And what if random jungle scenarios make it harder to complete your tickets? And what if the management gives you way more tickets to complete than you can possibly handle? And why do these things keep happening, I’m just working jungle lemur trying to cram stuff into these shipping boxes so I can put mangoes on the table for my family!
Yeah that sounds like a game. Wonder what we should call it?
If you’re interested in trying ‘Cramazon’ look for us at GenCon. Send us a message through our Contact Page if you would like to meet up to try our prototypes.