Postmortem Part 1 - Brainstorm and dramatic cutoff
Hi, this is a postmortem for ACCIDENTAL EXISTENTIAL This part doesn't contain any spoilers, so go ahead even if you haven't played it yet.
I started with two initial motives
- I don't want to do anything like I did before (mean conceptual).
- I want to create something really cool and weird with this Theme - genres should be incompeatible on the highest level possible, so even reading it out loud would be fun.
So I came up with idea to make not a single game but a set of mini-games each one mixes 2 truly incompatible genres. Fun. Fast. Grotesque. Ironic.
I made a list with ~10 nice ideas. Explored gameplay features. And even prepeared graphic assets!
Here are some of those concepts
Chess + Drag racing
Dress Up + Stealth
Bullet Hell + Text Adventure (tragicomedy where you got into actual hell as an actual bullet that killed someone)
Educational Game + Unreliable Narrator
Aaaand here comes the twist.
Nothing of this made it to the final game.
What?!
I prototyped gameflow and realized two things: 1. I can't make that many games in time so they will be polished enough. 2. Whole experience doesn't feel consistent because games don't work with each other. There were no synergy, no underlying idea that holds it together.
So I started reviewing everything once again and cutting off concepts one by one (believe me it was tough!!).
When there were only 3 concepts left I realized - I'm onto something deep...
End of day one.