It's been an interesting night. Arrived late at the venue, and I missed all the talks from some of the master developers. I was so late, in fact, that a friend only texted me the theme (which I cannot reveal for time-zone reasons). When I arrived, they were just wrapping up on the "pitching" part, and there was already a pretty long list of ideas on the board. I pitched my idea too, but of course nobody bought it (and I call myself a designer, sheesh).

A friend at work pitched his idea personally, telling me how he needed help in this particular design. I reluctantly agreed -- reluctantly because I found the design too broad for such a limited time, and because I kept hoping that I can still push forward with my own (I can draw, but I need a coder to complete the "team.") Still, I said yes to his concept.

Around midnight, my friend suddenly proposed a new (but related) design. It was the first sign, and fortunately I convinced him to focus on his previous design because it would be such a waste of time (5 hours I think) if we have to start over.

By 3 AM, he told me that it wasn't working ... and we're not in the prototype stage yet! His arguments were valid, I gotta admit, and I kind of scolded him about it, that he should've seen this coming, that game designers should be "two steps ahead" of everyone, especially on what can and can't be done. Still, there was no other choice, and we were forced to scrap everything (although no significant code work was wasted, thank goodness).

After a while I came up with a seed of an idea, and a long discussion ensued for almost an hour. We talked about it during early lunch and we kept on paring down its excess fat. I googled the very concept, thinking that there must be something somewhere (like, you know, Kongregate) we can use as basis for the design, but luckily/unluckily there was none. We finally settled on its most basic form and now a new day awaits.

It's been an interesting night.


(to be concluded)