I’m still kinda sad that I wasn’t able to finish my entry on Gamejolt’s Axiom competition. But oh well, we gotta keep moving!

Right now I’m love with Inform7, “design system” for Interactive Fiction creation. Back in 2004 I started some IF sketching using TADS, but I found the programming language a bit difficult (or at least unintuitive), so it didn’t evolve into anything… But last monh I wrote a short story about a man trying to find a birthday present for his daughter, and I thought it would fit perfectly on an Interactive Fiction, so I started to look for the current languages and so I found Inform7…

The cool thing about it is that you write mostly in english! In order to program it, little to none experience in coding is required because things are very intuitive – yet the language is extremely flexible and powerful! For instance, if I write…

The bedroom is a room. “This is a regular bedroom!”.
The bathroom is a room. It is north of the bedoom. “The bathroom is very clean and tidy.”.
The shower is in the bathroom. It is fixed in place. “The shower doesn’t have hot water…”.
The sink is in the bathroom. It is fixed in place. “Sadly, the sink isn’t working.”.

…and run the application, the game will already be working, with two rooms and two items in the bathroom… Pretty simple example, I know, but I think you can understand how easy it can be to design an interactive story with this. Instead of wasting time trying to make even the simple things work, the author (game designer?) can focus on writing good stories instead of coding!

If you want information about Inform7, their website is very resourceful: www.inform7.com
The software documentation is great, and within minutes I was already designing my first tests. “The Fair”, my now-interactive-story is coming up great: So far I’m designing the whole world and actions, and only after this is over I start porting the story to an interactive narrative!

For all those years as a game designer wannabe, I managed to come up with some pretty ideas for games. But it’s very easy to get carried away by the excitement of a new idea, and it’s not hard to see a simple project become something I’ll never be able to finish by myself, or that will take so much time I’ll probably get bored after a while and give up on it.

I’m very disappointed with this. There were dozens of games I wanted to create, but they got so big I never thought I would be experienced enough to do it, so I just ended up dropping it.

For this new phase in my life, with the Gammabeam blog, The Bachelor Pad and everything, I decided to tidy up my creative process. Apart from creating a (kind of) Wiki for myself – which was one of the best things I could have done – and installing a repository, I came up with a cool method that has helped me organize my thoughts, while also keeping it simple and doable. I like to call it the “One-page game design”. ;)

It’s very simple! You take one white paper, and you try to explain all aspects of the game as detailed as you can, with the smallest amount of words possible! Believe, this simple feat might reveal you a lot of things about your project!

One of the biggest problem I’m always facing is the quantity of art / UIs the game will need so the player can be able to play it and, well, have fun with it! With the one-page game design, I’m able to quickly sketch a game workflow  – not considering main menus, options and stuff, but what the main interface needs.

Also, I tend to use a pen when making this page – no pencil, no eraser! So, to make a nice one-page design, you’ll probably have to rethink the whole structure of the game on your mind before putting it on paper, which once again lets you notice lots of faulty areas.

Will this really help me on my future games? I don’t know… I’m still trying to develop the ones I made before using this method, but I think now my ideas are very organized and on a simple/doable state. I hope I have some more game designs to show you soon!