Although I’m knee-deep working on a new board game, I had a thought about another one and put some rough parts together. As usual, I’m drawing from my game development kit while also spending time reading articles about board game design, mechanics, and balance. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, and I just hope I can find combinations that make for engaging games.
This new venture doesn’t look like much…
… but I’m hoping the theme draws some attention. This is tentatively named Street Cred and in it, you’re a jewel thief who’s working toward certain goals which give you “cred” and hopefully a victory. I’m using wooden cubes from my GDK, but if this makes it to production, I’ll find some little translucent gemstones instead.
My problem, I think, is I keep coming up with ideas for games without finishing my last one. My current status:
Hexteria – finished, and ready for marketing and production
Hexteria: Renaissance – probably 90% finished, needing a few rule tweaks
Chronium – maybe 75% finished, definitely in need of some more playtesting
Hexteria: New World (formerly Terra Hexia) – fresh off the boat, in need of a ton of playtesting and tweaking
Street Cred – so new I don’t even know what to think of it yet
That’s five projects, only one of which is really finished. Leonardo da Vinci was famous for not finishing projects he’d started; he’s attributed as saying “Art is never finished, only abandoned”. While I’m no Leonardo, I do seem to have difficulty finishing hobby projects like this. As soon as one gets to a certain point, I’m already off thinking about another. That makes it tricky to actually get something “to market”, as they say, and I think it’s why Hexteria continues to languish. I just need to build a web site for it, put together some nice graphics and marketing stuff, and offer it for sale… but those aren’t things I’m good at, and I’d rather be designing my next project. Hmm.
Although it’s frustrating at times to recognize that I’m not good at finishing, I should probably consider that I am good at starting. As the ideas continue to come, and as I continue to learn about how to design games, it’s great fun to spend a couple hours building yet another game!
As William Wordsworth said, “To begin, begin”. I have a lot of beginnings, which is great. Now I need some endings.