Over the last several years, I’ve not only explored solitaire gaming and print and play gaming, something that I would have never thought of doing at one point in my life, I also started looking into the world of prototypes, mostly through design contests. While I don’t think I’m going to discover the next big thing before other folks, I do think it gives me a look into how weird and experimental games can be.
However, as work and other life stuff (but mostly work) got busier and busier, I was spending less time looking at design contests and other prototypes. Oh, I’d still make sure to download files but most of my gaming and crafting was spent on files that I bought from publishers, which isn’t a guarantee of quality but does increase the likelihood of play testing lol.
So I’ve decided I need to take a couple steps to make sure I don’t lose sight of all the weird and wonderful experiments out there.
Over the last couple years, I’ve really only been paying attention to Roll and Write design contests, they tend to be easier to construct and it feels like a surprising number of them are closer to being formally published than other design categories. Plus, they tend to be solitaire friendly. But I’ve designed to take a closer look at the 2024 9-Card, nano game design contest, That used to be my favorite design contest. While they are small, there’s still plenty of room for quirky ideas. I’ve started printing out some of them.
I am also joining Button Shy’s play testing discord group. Not quite the same thing, particularly since I’ll be playing testing games that I will go on to actual buy later on. I guess it’s a way of giving back to the community.
I don’t have the time or the focus to go as wild as I once did. But it’s good to see other people’s visions and ideas, some of which may be the shape of things to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment