I’m in the middle of designing a game. Although it’s hard to be objective about a work in progress, it’s possibly the best design I’ve worked on. (Best being completely relative of course.) The design is much more non-linear than anything else I’ve worked on, which naturally throws up a lot of detail and complexity, which I’m having a ball with. However, one thing I’ve noticed is an unusual pattern to my working day.
Because of the complexity, I find that my mornings are very slow. I must spend most of the first hour just getting all the details into my head and working out where I am with the design. By lunch time I’m back in the swing of things and after a bit to eat I go for a walk while I run a few things over in my head. Then int he afternoon things really take off and my pace picks up to a point where the ideas are coming so thick and fast I have to keep flying back and forth in the main document to keep plonking them in where they need to appear. Which in turn leads to more details as I work through any knock-on effects of the new ideas. By the end of the afternoon I’m going so well that I fear my head will explode if I were to continue.
Creativity is always such a buzz and creating games is far more fun than playing them. 🙂