No Pressure

We want to make another game, as a studio. And it's not the same as when we started working on Wildermyth, because with Wildermyth, there was that convenient shared spark. Fantasy X-Com, hell yeah, I'm in. We wouldn't have done it otherwise. But this time, there's already a studio here with half a dozen team members. There's an audience, there's a reputation.

And for some reason, that is totally paralyzing/wrecking me. So I'm trying to find a place to explore—figure out what I'm excited about making. Maybe some other people can explore that sort of thing too, if it sounds fun to them.

This is the No Pressure Zone.

I don't want to start off on the wrong foot by listing things I'm scared of, or things I'm not excited about. I'm not going to forget those things; they're stomping around in my head all the damn time. But I do want to draw places that I would want to spend time in, or weird creatures I would want to tame, or a house I would want to build. 

That'll come later, because I don't have a drawing tablet on me right now. But let's think about some moments or scenes:

• Seasons that pass gradually, like real seasons. The trees slowly bloom, change colors in a staggered way, and as you walk around, you notice that more and more have dropped their leaves until that first snow finally falls and you think, "Whoa, when did another year go by?"
• A treehouse complex that sprawls across trunks in a pine forest. Bridges connect plank-floored plazas to little living nooks.
• Two friends come in from a morning of fishing on the ocean. As the sun gets high, they retreat to a shady hut halfway up the beach cliffs. One friend added the driftwood door frame; the seashell wind chimes were a gift from the other.
• The miners begin unearthing the bones of a colossal beast. Maybe you put them together, build around them, turn them into a skeletal cathedral. If you build it a certain way, maybe the beast even awakens. Then you've got a giant guardian construct. That sounds cool.