Game Design To-Do List

[CallMeKerrigan]

I've been working on my game for over a year, and I will admit that most of it that time spent has been struggling to cope with severe writer's block. I just recently took about a week off to give myself time to process, returned to the computer and still found that I was stuck. So I thought, and I thought, watched let''s plays of similar indie games, and still nothing. 


So I took a different approach, this time I asked myself what I planned on implementing into my game that had not yet been done. That list is as follows: 


1.) Quest Log


2.) Menu


3.) Maps


4.) Biographies


5.) NPC Dialogue


6.) Items


7.) Many skills


8.) NPC Sprites


9.) Story


The list is not complete, but that is what I could compile off of the back of my head. I contemplated which of these tasks needed to be completed most urgently, in the order of importance, thus focusing on one item on the list. 


I chose Story, as all of my mechanics would tie into that. Thus, I created 2 new lists called Story. 


One is completed aspects, the second is incomplete. 


Completed: 


1.) main character


2.) antagonist


3.) secondary antagonist 


4.) Ally


5.) Secondary Ally


6.) Surprising Ally


7.) Setting


8.) The path that paves the character to develop  (main character starts off naive, blindly trusting, insecure, and ends the game trusting her instincts and is able to stand up for herself). 


Uncompleted: 


1.) Relatable dynamic between the two main characters, why does their friendship work


2.) What leads the player to make the story go forward. The motivation to uncover more of the story


3.) Rewarding the player for progressing through the game


4.) At what point does life as she knows it for the character begin to unravel. 


In conclusion, I think lists brainstorming the aspects you are missing in your game is very helpful. I couldn't identify what I was missing or where to begin, but once I began to brainstorm I saw the bigger picture much clearer and from a perspective that almost wasn't my own. 


Have you tried list making? what are your lists and how do they work for you?

 

[Seerfree]

That's a helpful list you have, I should probably take some inspiration from that since I'm terribly disorganized myself! Since the game I'm working on is puzzle, art and story-based with simple gameplay, the only guide I have going really is that I've been planning out the areas for the section of the game I'm working on and making a list of puzzles, important characters and items etc. I find it difficult to know what exactly to work on though, so I should probably get a bit of a more solid to-do list made so progress will speed up a bit and I know exactly what needs to be done. 

 

[CallMeKerrigan]

I was going crazy with my game mechanics. I have an entire relationship, attribution system, mini games, but I have nothing story wise. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting anywhere, and I think when you take steps to identify what you're missing, it's really helpful.

 

[Verdelite]

This is actually a really good tip. Creating a To-Do-List is what solved my recent struggles as well.


My problem was less one of not knowing where to go next, but more of feeling very overwhelmed with my project. I felt like there were sooo many things I still needed to do (which was and is still true nevertheless): bugfixing, tweaking maps, skill-animations, and a lot of missing content.


So what I did in my case was to sort all these things into two categories, depending on how 'concrete' the problem/fix was. So for example "I need to make this NPC not bug out when I do this instead of that" as a concrete task and "add some flavour dialogue on this map" not so much. And by doing so everything felt way more clear, instead of "oh god so many bugs, and I haven't even finished this dungeon yet, it's never going to work out aaaah".


Once the concrete task are done, you can start chipping the less concrete ones into smaller tasks until you can put them to the concrete ones as well, like "Add flavour dialogue to NPC-A" and "Add flavour dialogue to NPC-B".


I also keep a changelog of when I do which fix/implementation, which makes it easier to spot new bugs that might arise from a 'fix'. And it's also motivating to see the To-Do-List become smaller and the list of 'accomplishments' become larger.

 

[CallMeKerrigan]

That's really good advice. I need to do that.

 

[Oddball]

personally im doing fine with story and mapping, but am struggling with skills...


After reading this thread, i think im going to write down a list of roles iwant each charecter to do. from there, ill write down different ways of doing those things in rpg maker. then from there, I can figure out ways each of those roles can be done

 

[LaFlibuste]

In my experience, when I face writer's block, usually it's because I've written myself in a corner, because I've set myself up in such a way that I have no options.Just working on other parts of the scenario, moving things around a bit, maybe incorporating some new ideas, uusually does it and reopens the gates of inspiration. Sometimes it's just because I had decided, more or less arbitrarily, that X faction was in Y district and mostly wanted Z. But then I incorporate a new character or something, it makes more sense to change their goal slightly and boom! Everything makes sense again and I can continue.

My other advice would be subdivising your game and identifying all the elements, especially if you are stuck somewhere. Divid it in arc/chapters, then in quests, and decide what each quest needs. What is the initial situation, what triggers the action/is the problem, how can it be solved, what dungeon(s) (if any) is required, where does it take place, who is implicated, what's the outcome, etc. etc. Sometimes you can realize you're stuck just because a character is missing to justify something, or that you had planned your frost dungeon to be near town 2 but in reality it makes more sense to be elsewhere and it unblocks you further down the road, etc. Also it's easier to come up with new idea if you know exactly what tiny part is missing rather then just thinking up "What's wrong with whatever happens at this point in the game and how could I keep going?".