I have various projects on the go, but only two are worth mentioning.

Workshop

Between 2018 and 2022, I spent at least eighteen months (could be more) developing Workshop. Workshop is a building game, made with Unity. Imagine Minecraft (creative mode) crossed with Populous (an 80’s game from Bullfrog and Peter Molyneux) and MacPaint. You build with cube-shaped blocks using various 3D drawing tools. You draw lines and shapes that become 3D pixellated structures.

I got bogged down designing the interaction model. Traditional 2D pixel drawing tools don’t translate well to 3D. I have an idea for a different approach, using what I call the Frame tool, a kind of virtual scaffolding. It’s meant to allow for a hybrid of destructive and non-destructive editing. Nothing too fancy, but it still requires a lot care and visual design work. I am not much of a designer.

Workshop has full undo support, but undo is a clunky means of exploring design. I want something that borrows from both non-destructive 3D modelling and classic design apps like Illustrator, where you can adjust shapes before committing them into the overall 3D pixel (that is, voxel) grid.

Workshop is too ambitious. In practical terms, I have too many ideas, and trouble prioritizing.

Worse, the pandemic and other things undermined my focus. Digital toys and computer games can seem very superfluous. And yet, it’s still probably the best use of my time and creative energy.

Workshop is a hybrid. Hybrids can succeed, if they are sufficiently different, and open up meaningful new paths for users, or new experiences for players. But every UX failure cuts the audience in half (or worse).

The Complex

For years, I have wanted to do an old-school game with a new-school sensibility. I even spent some time in 2017 and 2018 working on a straight-up rewrite of my favourite game from the 80’s: Dungeon Master. (PC players will be more familier with it’s more recognizable imitator, Eye of the Beholder, an actual AD&D title with similar—though inferior—style and mechanics.)

There is a website devoted to Dungeon Master, including a lot of deep documentation about its functionality and data formats. I managed to read some of the contents of its various data files. But eventually it seemed impractical to continue.

The game itself is still good, but it’s very simple. The movement is limited to a grid. It might translate well to mobile devices. There is already a working open source project that preserves the original experience (as found on the Atari ST, as opposed to my preference, the Amiga). And you can play it on web sites with no effort.

For me, it was more of a programming exercise to learn a very old-fashioned serialization system.

But that’s prologue.

The Complex is a new game inspired by classic games like Dungeon Master. But it will perhaps look and feel more like a late 90’s or early 2000’s game. It will be first-person perspective, full 3D, but will be set in fully interior spaces. Still, with modern tools, it’s possible to make large interiors, and populate them with as much content as the developer can manager to produce.

I plan to use a mixture of procedural and hand-made content, including the environment and mobs. However, I don’t know if it will be procedural at runtime, or only at design-time. I might have an alternate play mode that generates new interiors to explore.

The game will have a more complex (as the name suggests) world, populated by weird alien beings that are a kind of cyborg, but mostly artificial. It is inspired by an old AD&D campaign about a space ship that crashes in the mountains, in the Greyhawk setting. But also every other story about ancient half-functioning alien relics that I’ve encountered over the years.

The real ambition is for the environment to feel believable, if fantastical. There will be layers of systems, and the mobs will interact with one another and the systems. However, it will be extremely light on conflict, with virtually no violence. (Although, I could see having a combat-centric version of the rogue-like mode.)

The environment will be modelled using a grid, but I hope to have enough variation in the production design that it won’t be overpoweringly boxy. I just want to be able to build it out quickly using modular parts.

I’ve already started prototyping, but I have to spend more time on visuals and art direction, as well as designing the mechanics: the core loop, player activities, the main character’s motivation, and some kind of loose narrative. All of that is in in progress, if in the early stages. I have lots of notes.

Commitment

I have no real pressure to get anything done. Aside from the desire to finish something good, for my own satisfaction. I do think Workshop could be valuable, if I can find the right UX. The Complex is something that is just at the limit of what I can feasibly accomplish, as a proper game. It would, if completed, at least demonstrate my legitimacy as a game developer, and perhaps set a foundation for future work, ideally with an independent team.

I simply like computer games, as a player and a developer. So I am going to do that.