Thinking about Something as Simple as a Game

This is obviously a scheduled post, since at this point in time I would've just arrived in Melbourne and should now be sleeping soundly on my bed. I'm obviously still very caught up in my idea to make a game. The last few posts I made talked about this Fantasy of War game, and I thought it's time to explain what I'm blabbering about. In truth, Fantasy of War is a codename for a storyline - obviously. Essentially, it's a really long storyline. I've probably explained this when I was talking about the story that I happened to also call Fantasy of War.

Being someone who wanted to make games, essentially, the Fantasy of War was my name for a series of games that went in a different direction from the Sword Fantasy games I have been planning and working on. To put it simply, I realised that I should have been pursuing the Fantasy of War codename games first, simply because they are simpler, easier to work with (to make an enjoyable game out of) and should have been my goal to begin with - and I wouldn't be stuck with this all talk, no action that developing an RPG like Sword Fantasy is making me do.

So how many types of game projects have I been fantasizing about? Plenty. All of them are in three main categories - named Sword Fantasy, Fantasy of War and (I shall decline to reveal the name for now). Fantasy of War is by far the largest category - and the category under which I have the most games under, and the most diverse set among the 3.

So which one is this supposed to be in this category? As of far, this is supposed to be chronologically the first in the story - while there are story parts in 'future' games that flashback to before this, in terms of present time, this is the first. It is greatly different from the rest. Fantasy of War is unique to me in the sense that I built the storyline first, then build the game idea around it.

Why haven't I built a puzzle game yet, considering my love for those kind of games? Because if I built a desktop one, I'd never play it. My experience with handhelds is very little, the DS has no support for homebrew, and the other two portable devices I own - the PSP and PocketPC, I have no idea how to program for yet. While I do love programming games (and although I've never released anything), I find little point in working on something I won't play myself (how else would I find bugs - not enough people visit my site or read my blog to realise that I'm actually doing anything anyway, especially since I haven't actually released anything to the public).

That's not saying what I'm going to build I'll play much, chances are I'll work it up to a fully playable version that's pretty rough around the edges - hopefully I'll get somewhere. As with all things, I can't work it up immediately to where I want it to go, still being inexperienced, but I'll start small and try to get the battle system working by the end of this year. :P