I’ve been working on a side game along with my main game.
I wanted to try to make it a bit systems heavy, so added some crafting and survival. I don’t really like crafting and survival a ton, but I like the idea of it ever since I read about Survival Kids and Robinson’s Requiem. I messed around with Minecraft like a lot of folks, but never went too far, but I like the idea of the systems being part of the adventure, like an RPG has combat and hit points. But now as I get it to a place where I cn see the systems, and I think they work ok for what it is, I realize once again, I like the idea of it more than the thing itself. Maybe the map being a 12x12 grid I sort of dashed together and filled out as I went with the systems being first might be part of it. It’s still authored by authored second if that makes sense.
Also i added farming lol and I quit stardew valley like 3 hours in.
It’s extremely normal to try something and find that it hasn’t really worked out as you hoped. In such cases, it’s up to you to make the judgement call about whether it’s salvageable, or whether you should just take the L, learn from it, and move on.
Everything I’ve released has had at least one total teardown.
I hated Marbles, D, and the Sinister Spotlight for a while. I loved the idea, but there was too much to write. It felt mechanically fiddly. On top of that, I was feeling depressed. I gave up.
I came back to it maybe a year later. I started a new project and just rebuilt everything. In the end, I was happy, but I definitely wasn’t for quite a while.
However, I start lots of things, work on them for a month or so, and then drop them. I learn a lot from these experiments, so maybe it’s ok that nothing comes of them. I can always use the code for something else.
I try to only work on things I enjoy working on, but I suppose it’s a fine line sometimes.
Yeah, most of the games I’ve written are pretty clunky and unfun to actually play… Granted, my user interface skills in my preferred language(C++) are limited to using cout to print messages to the screen and cin to accept input from the keyboard and I’m nowhere near skilled/patient enough to build a parser sophisticated enough to make that not frustrating for anything more complicated than a small handful of single character commands.
It never hurts to pick things you don’t like about something and make them the way you’d like them Like you said twice, you like the idea. Maybe you’re trying to get in touch with the aspects you do like, and there’s nothing wrong with throwing the ideas into experiments to see what’ll happen.
To answer the question, I just made a branching narrative. I’m usually afraid of playing those because my most frequent buttons are quicksave and quickload. I’d spend all day playing the introduction just to see all the outcomes. I hardly ever finish any for that reason. It might explain why I kept the built-in undo button and why I made many conversations repeatable, aside from a lot of experimentation with outcomes.
Edit: Though it does fail to address the question because I do like it X)
Once you care less about authorial monogamy, writer’s block is less of a problem. Ideas in different projects can inform each other. If something calls you, work on that instead of stressing that main game won’t be there when you’re ready for it again.
A game with one good idea that you don’t want to finish is a prototype!
I grew to dislike my most popular (according to itch dot io) works, which are i won’t finish this game and let the lights bleed. This probably comes as a surprise to some people but I just can’t stand looking at them these days. Their creation was more or less like performing a surgery in order to excise tumors (which I also, ironically, wrote about) that have been growing on my psyche. Every new release I beg gods to make it a hit much bigger than the other two, not because I particularly enjoy popularity (it’s kinda scary actually) but because I want to see people playing something else daily.
I recognize the role that both i won’t finish this game and let the lights bleed played for some people and for me (without them, I’d probably not return to IF…). I’m happy and honored that I made so many people feel understood. Some days I really just want to delete both of them from existence but I never do because they’re still valuable perspectives in the world reaching out to people who need to read them. But I can’t stand them anymore. I can’t keep reliving the pain that lead to them being made. And that’s all.
I’m an inveterate tinkerer, and I often return to old games to improve them if I there are parts I don’t like. I’ve remade several of my early games from scratch, in different authoring systems.
One game I can’t alter, but wish I could, is my first release, Goldilocks is a FOX! I’d change the title, for one thing (maybe Goldilocks Rocks!). I wrote it when I was barely out of my twenties and it contains some of the best puzzles I’ve ever devised, but there are bits that are frankly embarrassing, including some quite unnecessary swear words. I can’t change it because I don’t have the source code; it was ported (rather brilliantly) by Mark Tilford (aka @ralphmerridew). Mark, if you still have the source code, I’d love to have it!
I dislike a lot of the games I make after I release them, but I have to have enthusiasm for them when I’m making them or it’s just a slog, so I wouldn’t personally recommend continuing to try to finish something you’re not feeling. But I think it’s also important to remember that you can set something aside for a bit and it’s not committing to never finishing it. Sometimes after backburnering something that’s not working, you eventually figure out what would make it work or make you enthusiastic about it again!
Three Days of Night was far short of what I’d envisioned, and was rushed so I messed up on a prime number puzzle which subsequently drove everybody crazy who played it.
I might take a stab at the premise again someday, but even the worst of my projects have turned out as learning experiences.
The above mention of lost source code makes me wonder if the original dev of a game has ever turned to the hacker tools of disassembly and decompilation because they want to revisit an old project that has compiled binaries out in the wild, but the original source is lost.
Like you said twice, you like the idea. Maybe you’re trying to get in touch with the aspects you do like, and there’s nothing wrong with throwing the ideas into experiments to see what’ll happen.