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  • L. D. Neal

Phase 4: Re-iterating My Game Idea (02/12/19 - 17/01/20)

All physical work on this topic can be found on page 19 - 20 of the black sketchbook, and pages 9 - 10 of the black backlog.


Sketchbook (page 19)


Tuesday 03rd December 2019


Beginning of Phase 4


My Game Idea So Far


Now is the time to get your main idea and develop it into a working game proposal, or a completely honed piece.


It is now Phase 4 (November 9th 2019 - January 17th 2020)


You need to have for your game idea:

  • A fully honed, perfected game idea that works

  • Prototypes that can be play-tested

  • Colour palettes and visuals, aesthetic

  • Story

  • Platforms (N/A for me)

  • Concepts

  • Artefacts

  • Mechanics

What is the idea so far?

A card and board game where each player assumes the role of a character taken from a list of people typically found in the American frontier, and each character has a set of statistics to either combat or aid each other to achieve a common goal.

I created and developed the definitive list of characters, based on my years of ongoing research.

These characters are ‘morally grey’ in terms of alignment, and can all have a varied list of encounters to embark on.

Encounters help me to identify some core mechanics and gamify them.


Some characters cannot do actions that others can, for example cowboys cannot kill but outlaws can, which means that there will have to be a balancing system implemented to create fair gameplay.

I want to keep the classes system and allow characters to level up but want to avoid the similarities to Dungeons & Dragons.

Perhaps you could play as different characters in one life?

This idea is the one my class was the most familiar with, where players would assume the role of a character taken from a classes list of people who would be found in the American frontier. This is the idea I have been consistently developing since Phase 3. All development work can be seen in both my black sketchbook and my black backlog. It needed to be developed much further as the design was very lacklustre and lacked proper game design structure.


What is your game idea missing?

  • A solid Western game theme (robbery, cattle rustling, ranching, revenge)

  • A solid Western game subgenre (Classic Western, Space Western etc.)

  • An essential experience

  • A 'ranking' or 'levelling up' system

  • Aim for a mixture of romanticism and realism in your game

  • What is considered morally wrong and right in the game?

  • Flesh out your character designs to have more elaborate personalities

  • Where does your game fit into the market? What's the USP?

  • What type of board game is it? (failure, chance, memory etc.) Look into these themes again

  • Perhaps your game could be a choice-based one. Different cards could lead to different situations

  • Maybe one player knows something the other doesn't

(page 20)


Choice-based card game

  • Play as any number of characters from the list on page 6

  • You are given a card which gives you a number of choices, the choices you choose leads to more situations

  • 1 player of more?

  • This could mix in with the whole encounters idea

  • Could it be a collaborative thing?

Backlog (page 9)


I have decided to do some more bookwork to further develop my main game idea, since that is what I should really be doing right now...


I am just re-iterating what I have so far in my sketchbook, and I'll go from there.

It's difficult trying to remember my idea after doing so much work on my blog, and I'm finding it difficult to remember everything about it.


So what I'm doing is going back over my presentation and my book work to condense my idea into its purest form.


I am also using the checklist in the back of my sketchbook to find what I'm missing from my game idea and putting it all down on the same page to properly remind myself what my game idea is.


I'm going to explore the 'choice base' idea in my sketchbook to form more ideas. The notes and thought processes can be seen in said sketchbook.

I have always liked choice-based games, but I have never seen or heard of one that takes place in a card game.


(page 10)


I'd like to think that at times, I'm quite philosophical and enjoy posing hypotheticals to my friends and family, to see what they say. I enjoy asking questions and hearing the answers, as everybody in the world interprets the situation differently. It is this difference that really makes it enjoyable.


Having a challenge like finding a good game idea is like staring straight into a raging storm whilst trying to traverse a great obstacle, like a mountain or a long, long pathway. When you eventually find this idea, the storm clears and you're left with a beautiful and refreshing sense of CLARITY.




Week 10: 02/12/2019 - 08/12/2019

Week 11: 09/12/2019 - 15/12/2019

Week 12: 06/01/2020 - 12/01/2020

Week 13: 13/01/2020 - 17/01/2020

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