An Autumnal Update
School summer holidays is always an unproductive hobby time for me as other activities get focus. Now the children are back at school and the evenings are getting cooler, thoughts inevitably turn to goblins…
I was watching a Rule of Carnage video recently, I think it was “Unblocking your creative flow” that touched on a few points that resonated with me:
- “Turn up to the paper”, i.e. keep the game design in mind. Although you don’t need to be sitting in front of the laptop to think about themes or art style.
- Use art books as inspiration - surrounding yourself with inspiration can come in many forms. In my case I can also visit the real-life location in which the game is set.
- Try multiple projects. Even something small like a PC name generator on a bookmark or an RPG oracle can give the endorphin hit of completing a published artefact.
- Move away from Google docs as the final form of the game. Google docs is available everywhere, and until recently contained my fully formatted game. The limitation is that every time I look at Docs I enter “edit mode”. I’m being strict with myself now and only using Docs for note taking, and Affinity for the game itself. This separation helps my creative processes, and it becoming increasingly clear that Docs is not up to the task when it comes to pixel-perfect card layout anyway.
There were some other suggestions too which I am yet to take up, such as having a low-pressure place to publish smaller projects, such as Itch, Drive-Thru, or even Instagram. Another idea was to tap into peer group positivity from game jams - the idea here is to focus on creative ideas, not the final form of a magnum opus.