Moving From Concept to Actual Game

Hi everybody! It’s well past time for another developer update. Work progresses on the game as always! There’s a lot I’d like to share real soon. However, I thought it might be a good idea to first write a post where I talk more broadly about what I’ve been up to, rather than focusing on any particular element.

For most of the past year or so I’ve been working on bringing Innkeep from a concept (albiet a quite polished concept!) to a fleshed out mechanical system, with all the major components in place. If you’ll forgive an analogy, one way of putting it is that I’ve needed to finish up with all the outlining (drawing the shape, the form), before starting on coloring in between those lines (adding all the content).

Imagine the state of the game as a drawing of a man (perhaps an Innkeeper!) A year ago we had some outlines which were quite solid, and even had had some color added in places. But in other places we didn’t even have any outline. For example, maybe where the hands should be, it just said “Hand”. You know a hand is going to go there. You know roughly what a hand looks like, but you still need to draw that hand! Figure out the posing, the size, etc. For example, I knew Innkeep needed a trading system. And I’ve seen quite a few different trading systems in different games over the years. But I hadn’t even given much thought to what our trading system would actually look like. (We now have a prototype in place that I’m quite happy with, and maybe I’ll take a closer look at that in my next post!) The point here is that these are the kinds of things that all need to be worked out, and actually implemented, so that the game’s systems as a whole can come into view and actually be tested. It’s true what they say: when you make a game, you actually have to make all of the game.

I suspect this is a pretty common issue for indie developers like myself who started out with relatively large projects, and just kept plugging away at them. You need to know a lot of different things in order to make a video game (depending on the size of your team). But learning new things can be a bit scary and/or tiring. So, when a novice developer works on a large project by themselves, there’s a general tendency to focus on the things you already feel pretty competent about doing (and that don’t tire you out too much, if you already have a day job!) This can lead to the polishing of elements of a prototype instead of actually finishing and testing that prototype. It’s the equivalent of really putting in those details on the boot of that innkeeper picture, but you don’t really yet know the overall posing. Of maybe it’s a little like that meme of the drawing of a horse that looks amazing at the back but looks like a child’s scribble at the front:

This is one of the reasons people recommend that beginner developers make very small projects when starting out. It allows you to move relatively quickly through all the different systems required for completing a functioning game (while practicing those different skill sets) . The Indie Game Clinic has recently put out a really good video on this issue that I definitely recommend if you are interested in making games. They talk about a kind of positive “spiral”, where the center of the spiral is the “perfect version” of the game we are trying to make, and the segments of the spiral are different skill sets, or domains of knowledge. You can’t get to the center of that spiral via a straight line from the outside: e.g. by just polishing the art, or just programming systems. You need to move through the different segments, completing a loop around, so that you can then playtest what you have made, adjust, refine, and do another loop. Your experience with the whole informs the parts, and your experience working on all those parts helps you orient yourself towards the whole. In short, it is only with each “circuit” of the spiral that you can get closer to that center. There are no short cuts.

Meanwhile, (and as you probably know already!) late last year I secured funding in order to shift to working on the game full time. This doesn’t simply mean that I get to do what I was doing before, but more often. It means I now have a schedule. And the game actually needs to get made. That means I can’t keep polishing a particular element of the game until I’m satisfied, and then move on to the next element, and so on. Instead, I’ve had to take a look at that big picture, figure out what was missing, and start working on those parts first and foremost.

Overall, what needed the most attention were the mechanics of the different key systems. Major examples include:

• Eavesdropping on guests.
• Charming guests.
• Stealing from guests.
• The cooking system.
• Trading.
• Party expeditions.

As you can see, what these all amount to is the mechanical core of the game, really. I’d spent many years focusing on the setting, the environment, simple interactions, cutscenes, characters, dialogue, lighting, and so on. All of which you see on display in our recent lovely trailer! However I was always working around the proper prototyping of core mechanics. This hasn’t been an entirely bad thing for me. Back when I was juggling full time study, and also worked part time, whatever game development I was motivated to do in my free time was what was going to actually get done. And comfortably polishing something was a lot more relaxing, so it got done, and the game moved forward in some fashion at least! I also think there is something to be said for having the time to let a game tell you what it wants to be. The further along the other elements came, the better an idea I had for at least approaching the core mechanics. A little like playing a game of minesweeper or sudoku, where you get closer to an answer by narrowing down the field of possibilities through progress in the surrounding areas. However, as of nearly a year ago it became essential to turn my focus on to those core mechanics, and to start resolving them into functioning prototypes.

So how do things stand today? Well, we now have in place, more-or-less, prototypes for all of the above mentioned systems! You can eavesdrop, charm, cook, steal, trade, and send your party to go fetch things! The next step is to test those prototypes, and to refine them as necessary. I’ve been a little hesitant to talk about them in too much detail before we have reached a point where we are happy with what is there. It would be a shame after all to introduce something that then ends up getting changed or cut entirely. But as things firm up more the coming months I should be able to start showing off these different systems some more! I can’t wait to show you what’s been cooking.

So long, and see you next time.