I do this exercise a few times once the final round of theme voting is available. I go through each of them and write down the first thoughts that come to mind so that i've got a headstart when the theme is chosen and I need to decide on my game idea. I thought i'd share these with you and would love to hear your first thoughts too.

| Theme | First thoughts | | ------| -------------- | | Layers | Layers could be physical layers, story/character layers. | | Control the world, not the player | Kind of implies there is a "player character" doing something whilst the player is affecting the world around them. | | Nomad | Definition: a member of a people that travels from place to place to find fresh pasture for its animals and has no permanent home. | | Connections | Could be abstract connections - ie between people or things. Could be physical connections too. | | Stuck in a loop | Gameplay takes place in a short(ish) loop which you can get out of by making small changes each time. | | Feeding the monster | Get food to an animal "monster". Or, is the monster something abstract - pollution, covid, etc | | Delay the inevitable | Gameplay takes place with a known ending and your job is to take your time getting to that ending. | | Contain it | I guess there would be a lot of Covid simulations for this one. As with others this could be physical restraints or more abstract. | | Day and night | There is some major gameplay difference between "daytime" and "nighttime". | | Shipwrecked | On an island, on another world, metaphorically? Boat (ship) / Spaceship / Timeship / etc | | Clockwork | Physical gears come to mind but "like clockwork" is a phrase in english which means a system is working well and on time. | | You can't save them all | Presumably you want to save some of them! Or do you, if "the bad guy" said this then it would be more of a threat you could try and overcome. | | Death is not the end | For me this means gameplay where you try and do something whilst "alive" and that helps/hinders the gameplay once you've "died". | | Summoning | Magical, mystical summoning of monsters or spells. To summon also means to call someone to you (command them). | | The world changes when you are not looking | The gameplay loop in this one is similar to day and night for me. Where you do something then it changes whilst you are "not looking". Sleeping / eyes closed / looking the other direction? |

Please let me know your first thoughts too!