Three Dollar Quill

This week is going to be in diary format because I don't want to do project format.

Ugh. Steam is a nightmare, GoG has its own problems, I have trouble remembering Itch and Humble. I want to try and make a game happen, as some kind of catharsis; it might end up on Itch.

I'm going to try and do some pre-planning, make sure I understand what I'm trying to do up-front. My inclination is to try to do something text-based, without a lot of reading required at any one time. I want to make as much of it as I can using Ink. If I end up severely exceeding Ink + Cog, I'll try to prototype something in Python, then attempt to move to Rust.

Instead of the kind of big loops I have in mind for MonFree, I want to try to work out a nice little gameplay loop, then elaborate on it. Something with dungeon-diving. Exactly how much Oregon Trail can you put in a vaguely Diablo-inspired game before it gets obnxious? Or vice-versa?

What I'm basically thinking is, I want to start from a vague aspiration, and a tiny subset that I think I can implement, then iterate on it. So, the vision is "somewhere between Oregon Trail with magic, and Diablo-likes with hunger". I don't want to do combat to start with, because I think too hard about that, so I think my starting point should be "trip planning simulator".

Basically, the first iteration is:

• The player is given a task to transport goods between two cities.
• They have a wagon.
• They have to stock up on supplies.
• Supplies include rations, weapons, and replacement parts.
• They have several "turns", which are a day each, and currently don't have much happening.

I have some ideas for what to add:

• Hunting
• Random events
• Magic
• More locations
• Loans
• Having to buy your wagon to start with
• Dungeons
• Arbitrage
• Curses

One thing I need to work out is, when the scale is bigger than a single journey, what's the organizational conceit? I guess I hope that journeys can be a decent way of organizing things, even if there are many.