A NEW SET OF VERBS, INSPIRED BY THE NATURE OF ORDER

[droqen]

                           [..] 1. LEVELS OF
SCALE,  2.  STRONG CENTERS,  3.  BOUNDARIES,
4.   ALTERNATING  REPETITION,   5.  POSITIVE
SPACE, 6.  GOOD SHAPE, 7. LOCAL  SYMMETRIES,
8.  DEEP INTERLOCK  AND  AMBIGUITY, 9.  CON-
TRAST,   10.   GRADIENTS,   11.   ROUGHNESS,
12. ECHOES, 13. THE VOID, 14. SIMPLICITY AND
INNER CALM, 15. NOT-SEPARATENESS.

~ fifteen properties

[droqen]

I have been making platformers for a damn long time and I have the feeling that I'm going to break out of that space but it's not easy to do so. Here are some games that I'm looking at for inspiration.

- Roadwarden
- Slay the Princess
- La-Mulana
- Uurnog Uurnlimited
- Starseed Pilgrim
- Databug (droqever.com)
- GEOMOTH: Boot Sequence (unreleased)
- Crossing Flowers (droqen.itch.io)
- tabletop roleplaying games, esp. Grandline (one-off year-long campaign, unreleased)
- The Quiet Sleep
- Kingdom of Loathing
- Etrian Odyssey (series)
- Fire Emblem (series)
- Disgaea (series)
- Secrets of Asherah (decades old. defunct.)

[droqen]

I am also, btw, using this technique... "get connect"... it is not too well described yet by this kinopio, but here I am in the get phase. Getting, gathering.

[droqen]

Some requirements or complaints. All of them, supposedly -- but realistically just the ones I can remember at the moment:

- more reading/writing, more human stories
- less complex coding, less reliance on gamefeel; more modularity in the design so that parallel authors can each be individually creative
- fewer twitchy singular/simple actions, more time spent thinking and arranging
- (im old, my hands get tired)
- expression, arrangement, composition
- expressive as designer, quick material to work with, haiku material
- comprehension problems, comprehension puzzles
- less focus on crunching in-game 'rules' and 'models' ; more focus on developing 'beliefs' ; more focus on emersion (understanding or learning things which are not modeled)

[droqen]

"<actions and decisions> like this [*static, predictable, uninteresting] may be found [in reality], but . . . <actions and decisions> each deserve rugged individuality"

[droqen]

- significant authorial intent in individual scenarios, taking advantage of the human drive to create, i want to use my brain to create things directly

[droqen]

Technologies and complaints

- i use a tablet instead of a mouse
- phone games are highly accessible
- web games are highly accessible
- we are all connected by the internet, it's a breeze
- i want to spend less time staring at my screen
- i want to spend more time with myself, with other real people
- people don't want to pay money for things???
- mutual aid
- social business
- keyboards are passable
- game controllers are much too bespoke and weird, there is no way they are going to be around like this forever, right???
- loved the DS, loved drawing maps
- low system requirements is relative to the day and age but is always always a benefit

> detangle input from game state. Starseed Pilgrim was a platformer but the core interesting puzzle game and revelations were more eternal than that, they did not rely on being a platformer

[droqen]

My own capabilities
- i can make a game in a day every day many days in a row
- i know multiple languages and am comfortable moving between them
- i like a blank slate, i like opt-in tools and modules
- i enjoy working in other mediums for effect. the impact of music, of art, of word, of... well what else? there are many effects.

[droqen]

Goal:

making wholeness heals the maker
first the maker, and then every one

[droqen]

My goal is recursive: a way of being in the world that allows creative collaboration between a player and some other object. The nature of the object is undefined: it may be a videogame, it may be another person, it may be a group of people accessed via some intermediary system, it may be some real world system interfaced via some intermediary system.

My act of game design is to create the context that provokes not a vague 'play' but a specific 'maker-healing creative action'.

Contrasted against "a series of interesting decisions" I would like to provoke "a series of healing decisions" (remember, given the above context) although I am looking as always for the union of two different things rather than the difference between two things that might have otherwise had something considerably important in common.

"the art form of thinking and doing"... But thinking what? Doing what? What are the epiphanies you will have? That is the question that I struggle with.

[droqen]

I got a bit emotional over the final poem. I'm almost certainly reading some of my own recent experiences into it. (But that's a good way to be.)

this is so eerie
feeling strong emotions but cant name them
staring at characters longer than necessary since they might say more..

https://droqen.itch.io/a-polaroid-of-space

A Polaroid of Space is, like Starseed Pilgrim, a videogame with a videogame input scheme that does not really 'matter,' but it is there. You use that interaction scheme and its gameplay in order to interact with something else, the real thing, whatever that is.

Layers of interface.

[droqen]

what is the process of creating life?

Structures within structures. There are good and bad structures. If interacting with a thing feels bad, go up a level, look at it from above, ask, what is it doing there?

The fifteen properties give us some hints. Levels of scale, strong centers, boundaries, alternating repetition... so many of these are good hints. There is no one supreme structure. I went into this looking for a supreme structure. One does not exist.

[droqen]

------------------------------
I started writing this because I had come from playing Animal Well and felt particularly discouraged from making a platformer because I began not liking the game. But whenever this happens I should figure out... you know, it's not like I disliked it right away. I fell out of love with Animal Well at some point, and the controls were not to blame... hmm.

I still learned some things.