Hello 2013! I’m not much for resolutions, but I kindasorta decided to join this One Game a Month thing. It’s basically what it says on the tin: A bunch of developers are pledging to make one game, every month.

This may end up being a very bad idea, or it may be just what I need.

The rules are pretty loose, so I’m reading ‘make’ as ‘finish’, not ‘start and finish’ a game every month. With that in mind, I’ll be including my existing projects in this endeavor, and using this as motivation to get those finished and out there.

I’ve got four game projects currently in development:

• Tinselfly, a character-driven action/adventure hybrid;
• Operetta, a 4x / shooter hybrid;
• Blind Tigers, a co-op board game; and
• an untitled cyberpunk-themed board game.

In addition, I could tack on some things I started years ago but never completed:

• Gemslinger, an arcadey Facebook game; and
• Mika’s Tavern, a turn-based strategy game with no actual violence.

And that’s six projects right there.

* * *

What I’d like to do for the rest is just relax and make things I’d want to play, since I have so much trouble finding things I want to play. Nothing terribly innovative or demanding. Lunchbreak-sized games.

What games I do start for this will be small, 48-hour game jam sized things so they don’t take up too much of my time.

I’d like to make an attractive dungeon crawl. A simple RTS that’s so small in scope it doesn’t even require scrolling or a minimap. A completely derivative platformer with cutesy characters.

The only way I’m every going to work on stuff like this is within the context of a larger endeavor filled with projects I see as more worthwhile, and I think it might be good for me, to force myself to work on things that are known quantities.

* * *

Scheduling will be tricky here. I want to keep Tinselfly moving, so I’m probably going to be working on two things simultaneously all the time — Tinselfly plus another project. The existing board games and Operetta are bigger than your typical 48-hour gam jam stuff, so I want to get those out of the way first.

* * *

To kick this off, I’m starting with something to gamify the process of learning volume control and multiple-hand playing on a keyboard. I could really use something like this; my skills in these areas are terrible.

If I still had a pen tablet, I might have started with something to gamify the process of learning pressure and angle control, things I never really learned. Oh well.