Find your inner games designer and panic!

I would love to say that a designer spends quiet contemplative moments during the process of making a game where they find a zen-like understanding of what will and won't work.

I would be delighted to let you know that most idea's hit you when you have meditated for a few hours and aligned all your chakras.

Sadly, it's not true. Most ideas hit you at the worst possible time. When you are a long way from a working pen, when you have twenty other things you are supposed to be doing or when the only paper to hand has another more hygiene related use.

Once you have that idea memorised long enough to write it down, and perfected. Then you have the task of seeing if it works, which it hardly ever does. So you tweak it, chop bits out, shorten some bits, expand others, go back to the start, add something from an old design, change the name, fix the problems and change it out of all recognition from the first idea. Oh and it's no longer a space war game, now it's a chicken racing game, wait.. no... it's definitely a space chicken battle game.....

Once you have done all that.. you are just about ready to start.

I am a long way down the road of making Daring Dustbunnies a reality and my 7th game (I think). I have the rules (almost) fixed, I know (mostly) how it will look and I am (90%) sure of the powers on the cards. All that remains is to, promote it, fund it and then make it, oh and ship it, and sell it... and... then get designing the next game... hmmm space battle chickens....

See you at the UK Games Expo at the NEC in June. I'll be on stand J25, come and see just how incredibly calm I am.. in spite of everything. You can also find out just what this characters' special power is in the game.

(Art by Lloyd Ash Pyne)