Daydreaming about a franchize

Posted by Zuurix on April 9, 2021, 2:09 a.m.

A while ago I've been doing some thinking and decided to change the way I make games.

Currently, I just do whatever game feels interesting to me - there are no intentional similarities between my games. I also spent too much time making my last two games: Sector Six and Light of the Locked World.

These two are just too damn large - I need to switch to easier projects.

What this does, is that these big games are like debuts every time, and the releases are far in between - sucks for building a community and earning a living.

I need to make similar games and make them fast.

I came up with the idea to make one of the massive games I want to make but split them up into annual releases. Year 1 game: Establishes the game, only the basic features. Year 2 game: Engine improvements, new features. Year 3 game: Adds a really ambitious feature to shake things up. And so on.

Each of the releases would feel like individual games, but they would be just stepping stones for my big plan to create the best game ever =]

I think instead of starting from scratch each time, I'd just wipe all content and re-fill it - with engine improvements. No more "Oh I'm better now, so I start again since code is garbage" - inefficient at this point. I'll simply rewrite parts that suck the most with each installment.

I think for now would be best to think about it as a trilogy - so 3 years and 3 games.

Not an infinite thing like Final Fantasy, even though that would be the dream.

I think even better would be to do it how Supergiant Games do it - makes different, but very obviously Supergiant-y games roughly in the same genres, so I might pivot to that.

The first challenge will be Legion of Eternity - the last of my non-franchise games. I'd have to make it in like six months and nail down the process of making a polished game fast.

After that, I'll be refining the process with the first game in that trilogy thing.

Let's call it Sector Franchize, for now, it actually has a name already, but it's a secret.

So for Sector Franchize 1, I'll try to remake Sector Six in a year. I'll leave just the very core of the game - spaceship building, loot, and 10-hour campaign, with the infinitely playable endgame.

Since I work much faster now, it should be doable if I don't get distracted with features. If don't go "Yeah this is a five-year project now 'cause it's just too cool to not make it big" - which I did with LOTLW.

And yes, the things I'll be making beyond that point will all be stylish sci-fi things similar to Sector Six. Shiny colorful abstract graphics, bleak stories, fast-paced combat systems with lots of explosions, RPG features, spaceships.

I also feel like the games I'm making aren't creative enough. The need to create vast amounts of systems and features drains time from making weird shit.

I want to spend more time designing gameplay sequences about traveling to strange layers of reality, learning about wars of dead civilizations, talking with alien beings about reasons why everything is how it is, silent moments where nothing is happening, secret endings, etc, etc.

I want to be so strange, that it would raise eyebrows and become known among people who like these things. Not 50% weird like it is in Sector Six and other games, but 110% weird.

So yeah, this is what I spend a lot of time daydreaming about.

I think I'm ready to start something bigger. Years where I would be just amazed at a fact that I can make a game - any game - is over, it's time to become more focused and more creative.

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