Hello, all five blog readers!  I’m way overdue on an update, so:

• I’m in the pre-production phase for Macguffin Games’ next project, which for now we’ll call Project Quigly.  It’s not quite a direct successor to All Heroes Die, but it incorporates a couple of the elements I really liked about it – namely heredity and the AI-picked game events.  As well as a couple other smaller things.
• The design is proceeding slowly right now, in large part because life is busy, in small part because XCOM: Enemy Unknown is an incredibly compelling game.
• I’m looking at creating the game in Unity, and it is definitely a top-down tile based map setup.  I recently found David Gervais’ collection of creative commons tile art for his Angband variant, and I’m likely going to use some of that for the prototype versions.  That art will be swapped out further down the road.

One lesson I learned from AHD’s development is to really nail my design vision, the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics of it, and to get lots of feedback on it.  I’ve gotten a first round of feedback from my good friend Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games, and have other folks lined up to poke holes in it once I’m set.

A big issue with doing this while employed full-time and being the father of two is – as you might guess – carving out time to work on it.  So far, I’ve tried working in the evenings on it.  While that can work, there are a lot of things that can get in the way there.  If my son doesn’t fall asleep for an extra forty minutes, it can cut my working time down a great deal.  Summoning the will and focus to work at eight, nine, or ten at night can also be daunting.

I’m going to try a new plan of attack, starting next week: get my ass up at the crack of dawn, and work then.  The chance of interruptions is a lot lower, once I’ve sucked down some coffee I’m likely to be as focused as I’ll get, and it’s nicely bounded by my needing to get to work.  We’ll see how it goes.

I hope you’re all doing well, and I’ll be posting more updates as I go.