That is the question I have been asking myself lately. After Essen where I dropped three of my prototypes off I was left with an empty playtest folder. Having five prototypes in the review process is great but should I come up with something new?

I picked up few of my older ideas as that seemed as a good starting point. Look what you have made and think why you haven’t made something out of them. I first moved two movie-based games to the playtest folder and even wrote something about one of them in a previous post. I made some real advancement on that game but all what I did was that I added something to the previous. Did the addition increase the fun of playing or was it just the same but another thing attached? When you have a mindset that you’re not going to like something there’s little reason to go forward with that idea. I need something new and refreshing not just additions.

The other movie-based game went back to the ideas folder as I mentioned it to my wife she just said “politely” that, that game was not your strongest effort. The reason in the first-placed moved to the playtest folder was that I wanted to make it more straightforward by adding a different way to show movement but as that was just cosmetic and nothing new I got bored with toying with that idea.

After those I dug a little deeper into my ideas and remembered few playtest comments about one of my games. Timo, your comments have been in my mind and, you are right (somewhat). One of my promising playtests went back to idea as it was too mechanical and needed some lightness/fluffy stuff into it. The game is called Airships Ahoy! and players are zeppelin captains searching for treasures and commerce in a modular map with vast sea and islands. I first made the game similar to Singapore, change this cube to that cube and use all those cubes. In the setting I made that didn’t work. This is something I have been thinking, reworking old into new.

One of my major problems is the lack of playtesters here in Oulu. Well, I have played over 60 new games looking back just one month, but I have only played 2-3 prototypes. Something I addressed last game night and I’m pretty sure that I’m able to convince other designers to start our own session outside the game nights just to play and develop prototypes.

The question still remains? What to do when your head is empty? Play games and enjoy playing games. I read a good blog post on League of Gamemaker about the enjoyment and can fully concur with the statements made. I’m not enjoying games purely as games anymore, I enjoy them as examples of game play and mechanisms.

I’m off to Lautapelaamaan this weekend and will have a small report about the con next week.