My favorite method for designing things (games, mostly) is to begin by making use-cases or mockups of what I’d like to ultimately create. For games, this has meant creating screenshots that depict examples of the things that would be present in the actual product, such as objects or interactions or interfaces. Neat things about this method:

– It’s fairly free form, and allows me to quickly re-work ideas while still getting a good feel for what the game would be like.

– I can cover all aspects of the game broadly but without significant depth, allowing for a good “big picture”.

– The finished mockups convey an idea better than just text.

– It’s a great way to mentally “try out” an idea so that, even if I don’t actually like it, I can move on knowing that I at least explored it.

– When I’m finished, I’ll have some prototype artwork and design items to use in the game, allowing me to get right to programming a prototype.

I’m trying to figure out what the next thing I make should be, so I’ve been doing this quite a bit lately. While I gather my thoughts, I intend to fill the posting void over the next few days (weeks?) with stories of projects that either never made the cut or haven’t been fully explored yet. Falling into the second category is today’s topic: Ruckingenur Online!

The idea is as follows: half Ruckingenur, half collaborative real-time exploration game. Played in small groups of one to twenty people on small virtual “servers”, players work together to unlock and solve Ruckingenur-style puzzles as they fight a losing battle against the Tangential Forces.

Unfortunately, the creation-time to play-time ratio for Ruckingenur is really small (which is bad), and I have doubts about how well the multiplayer aspect would work, so I feel like my time would be better spent creating a new game instead. If I can’t think of anything good, though, this is the first idea I’ll be turning back to – Ruckingenur Online just sounds so sexy!