Making my game for Iron ChIF was a unique and unexpected process in many ways. I have reflections aplenty.
Pre-show thinking and vague planning
In my game planning, I tend to be ‘theme before gameplay’ or at least ‘mechanic before gameplay’. Some cool idea about theming or a mechanic will come to me and I’ll plan a game around it (in a slightly chaotic manner) and see what transpires.
For Iron ChIF, I couldn’t even really plan in this vague sense, because I had no idea what the potential ingredients were going to be for the challenge!
The one thing I did know was that it would be late August when I made the game. Autumn is my favourite season and I love the onset of it at this time of year, so I vaguely thought I might set the game at harvest time if the ingredient allowed. Further vague theming ideas came to me due to unexpected events that I will discuss below.
The ingredient and my thought process in deciding to eliminate
Behind the scenes at the start of the show, @lpsmith presented the possibility of combining two of the ingredients before we (the chefs) made our decisions. The ‘upwardly failing deity’ ingredient didn’t resonate with me at all, but I knew I would be able to work with either of the other two (or a combination of both), so I didn’t mind what @FLACRabbit decided about the eventual final ingredient.
The week and how it went
I had no idea what it would be like to try and make a game in five days. My only experience of speed IF is making Petite Morts for EctoComp. I have made a lot of Petite Morts (one every year since 2021, I believe), largely because I always intend to submit a Grand Guignol and never manage to finish it on time. This should give you some indication of my nonexistent time management skills.
As such, as I mentioned in the post-match interview, I was genuinely surprised that I was able to get the first rough version of the game finished and sent to testers in two and a half days. I had planned that this would be the case, but I’ve made enough games now that I know such plans have a habit of not working out! I always underestimate how long things are going to take, even after all this time.
While the dice were sometimes a bit tricky to code, they didn’t cause me any problems. I wanted their randomness to provide a bit of colour rather than hinder the player, and I think (hope?) that by and large I succeeded.
I made a rough plan in advance of what my daily WIP bits were going to be for the show, because I didn’t want to expend creative energy trying to decide that while I was in the thick of things. The only problem with that was that sometimes I was a little behind schedule, so I didn’t quite have the code or screengrab available for the aspect I’d planned to share!
I’m not sure I quite got the balance right in sharing – I am traditionally extremely secretive about my works in progress and don’t like to share anything until they are ‘done’, so it was quite hard for me to ‘draw back the curtain’, as it were. I also found I definitely did not have time to do anything more than the minimum one post per day as I needed all my time for making the game itself. I was very impressed that @FLACRabbit managed to post so many WIP bits!
Testing early and often was also a new experience for me. I have occasionally done multiple rounds of testing in the past, but that was for much bigger games, so it was months apart, different sets of testers and vastly different game versions. Last week, I sent an embarrassingly rough version to testers early in the process and then those same testers worked to refine the game over several builds. Through this, they got to know the game really well. It’s something I’ll consider in the future.
Huge thanks are due to my patient testers, including my husband (who also did all the cooking last week while I was busily coding away – what a superstar!), @LozzyM from the Adventuron Discord, and the ever-brilliant and ever-reliable @Warrigal and @aschultz, both of whom I consider to be the best and most thorough testers in the community. I could not have done it without them.
A long tangent about Ed and grief and the last month
Just over four weeks before the start of the Iron ChIF episode, one of my best friends died very unexpectedly.
Ed was the leader of my running club and a mentor to me for many years. Our club is very close-knit, like a family, and it has been an incredibly hard loss for us.
At first I wasn’t sure if I would be able to go ahead with Iron ChIF. But I decided that it would give me something positive to look forward to, and that I would be able to pay tribute to Ed as part of the game, whatever the ingredient. I am hugely grateful to @otistdog and the rest of the cast in the episode ready room thread for their understanding and patience while I took a few weeks away from the preparations to process and grieve.
Ed had inspired a character in one of my games before. In The Last Mountain, a game I made in 2023 about running a mountain ultra race, I described the PC’s old running mentor:
'It's not the result, but rather the adventure along the way.'
That was what Eric always used to say. He was your old running mentor, the one who introduced you to Susan in the first place. He said you'd both enjoy these long mountain races more if you ran them together. Eric was right, like always.
Eric has long since gone to the great mountain in the sky. You still hear his voice when you're on the trail, urging you to take it easy and enjoy the experience.
I envisaged Susan and the PC as older runners (i.e. quite a bit older than me, then in my late 30s) remembering their mentor Eric, who was inspired by my friendship with Ed. This was me trying to imagine a time far in the future after he had gone – ‘far in the future’ being the operative phrase. I did not expect to lose him so soon, and it has upset my world’s axis in unforeseen ways. Like the harvester character in my Iron ChIF game, I find myself needing to do things without his guidance, and feeling adrift and unsure as a result.
Now, in A Bonded Harvester, Ed has become Edward. He is the hint system because, in life, he was always who we went to for advice. It was a huge comfort to me to write this character because it sort of felt like Ed was still with me in a way. His inclusion also inspired a couple of things about the setting, which is a very vague/anachronistic fantasy version of early medieval Northumbria (modern North East England, where I live and of which Ed was a native). Very vague/anachronistic indeed, as I absolutely did not have time to do proper historical research! (Unless having recently watched the Doctor Who serial ‘The Time Meddler’ counts as historical research, and while my history degree was a while ago now, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.)
Tributes to Ed in the game that nobody would have got but they were important to me:
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‘Howay, then’ when you leave the sacred place – this is a Geordie (local) phrase that Ed used all the time.
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Painting the bench orange – Edward comments about this being his favourite colour, and you can also see in the graphic that his crest necklace is orange. The bench is our running club symbol (because we meet at a bench) and orange is our club colour.
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The coins in the sea – if you examine them you see that there are 44 of them and Edward comments that he had a set like that. This is a reference to the 44 medals that Ed collected by running every single Great North Run since it started in 1981. He was due to run his 45th this month.
‘He would have liked that,’ said my running clubmates this last weekend when I told them about Ed becoming a hint system in my game. I think they’re right. It’s one of those ways in which he lives on.
Yes, I’m doing another Petite Mort this year
Usually I never know what my EctoComp Petite Mort is going to be until the last minute (generally due to the aforementioned ‘planning to finish a Grand Guignol until I run out of time’). This year, I know. In the opening sections of A Bonded Harvester, it is mentioned that villagers can communicate with spirits at the time of hallows but this will be too late for the harvester, who needs to speak with Edward tonight. I have decided to make a ‘time of hallows’ coda as my Petite Mort for 2026.
Dev period stats
Miles I planned to run during last week’s development period: 29
Miles I actually ran: 18 (not bad in the circumstances)
Nightly sleep hours at the start of the week: 8
Nightly sleep hours by the end: 4
Madness quotient: high (a good thing in the House of Adventuron)