Wrapping Up

I left the last post hoping I'd have time to implement some new visuals into the game before GDC, given that the end of Q1 had been my planned deadline for this series of rapid prototype projects.

Unfortunately I didn't make it quite that far, and after stepping away for a couple of weeks I decided there wasn't a strong enough case to extend the project right now.

Though I don’t have a playable demo from this piece of work, I learned a ton of useful stuff from it. Going through the process of building a simulation-type game forced me to think through a lot of the system details that are easy to skim over in paper prototyping, and I think have given me a good starting point for revisiting the genre in future. I have a much clearer list of design considerations and I think would be in a better position to prioritise which parts of the system to build first.

It was also very valuable as a technical exercise - I am starting to fill in a few of my knowledge gaps (or at least, know what I don’t know!), and in general have gained a lot of confidence knowing that I can build the functionality for this type of game, and that it doesn’t have to take months to put something basic together. The idea of figuring out how to structure a game like this feels much less overwhelming than it did! I'm starting to get a feel for when to build something generic and flexible for experimenting with, and when to focus on a specific idea and take shortcuts without cornering myself too much. In many ways I found the technical challenges of this project more exciting than the creative ones.

Above anything else, I got a lot of value from slowing down my pace a little, taking the time to rewrite code where needed, to explore something that might not work out, and to spend time looking for inspiration in between dev days. 

I may return to this genre, but for now that's a wrap on my simulation game experiments!