Heya friendos! Last week I was a bit down, so I had a break and played a lot of games with friends. Naturally, that made me want to create a ripoff, so let’s talk about that feeling as well as what makes art good (for me).

How Am I Doing?

I’m a lot less lethargic than last week, that’s for sure! I stated then that I just needed rest, so I canceled pretty much all plans I had for the week. I also got snowed in on my regular sports day, so that was a good excuse to stay home too. I feel a lot better just by having all that time to myself.

I also remembered something that was looming in the background for a while that I completely forgot about. As soon as I tackled that, I freed up some space in my brain to digest, rest and reflect.

What Am I Doing?

I mostly played Armello with friends. It’s a pretty decent 4-player digital board game, where you power up your hero and screw over other players in order to dethrone a powerful, corrupted king at the center of the board. It’s very easy to learn and relies heavily on player dynamics for replayability.

Naturally, as my creative juice started flowing again after my depleted battery debacle, I had the urge to make a clone. Once I have an idea like that, I cannot stop thinking about it until I do something with it. It gets to a point where it’s on my mind when I try to go to sleep, when I wake up, when I’m working on other stuff, there’s always a little niggling in the back of my brain about such a game idea.

Kaiju, Go Home!

Knowing this now, I allowed myself to prototype at least a basic version. So I got my prototyping toolkit out and spent 2 days playing prototypes against myself until I was satisfied with the outcome. Then when it was still on my mind, I allowed myself another day of drafting up a nice design document. After that, I’ll lock it away and get back to my main project.

The basic premise is this: you each play a superhero that has to protect the city against a giant Kaiju that’s trampling everything. The Kaiju is way too strong at first, so you have to power up your hero by helping out people in need throughout the map. You protect them from buildings on fire, falling cranes, earthquakes, bank robberies, that kind of thing.

Once you’re powerful enough, you can try to defeat the Kaiju. The first player that defeats it, wins the game! But here’s the catch, you won’t be able to defeat the Kaiju in a single fight. It needs to be gradually whittled down, but you won’t get out of a fight unscathed. So in the end, the players are racing against each other to get the last hit in, but sometimes have to sabotage their rivals or tactically retreat to come back at the right time.

Even playing against myself, without any special content, it was already kind of fun, so there’s definitely potential there. I also heard that League of Geeks, Armello‘s studio, is probably going to go bankrupt in the near future, so if the servers go down, maybe there’s a market for an Armello-shaped hole in people’s hearts.

Why Am I Doing? (this)

I fully believe that I can realize that concept in an accessible and enjoyable game. Despite that, however, I’ve decided to not follow this creative impulse further. I tend to go for the shiny new thing. The initial rush of inspiration and fervor is intoxicating and I constantly crave more of it.

But, by now I have documented my creative process for more than a year. Because of a healthy work/life balance, I can maintain the mental space to observe and untangle my behavioral patterns. I’ve seen the creative high come and go many times. It’s not a good instinct to base big projects on.

Instead, I spend more time to find the “why” of things. Why prioritize this over another thing? Why should this game exist at all? I don’t always land on a satisfying answer but one guiding star I’ve found is that I want to make something that challenges the audience.

Good Art is Challenging

This week, I saw an interview between my two favorite 3 name-havers, Brian David Gilbert and Brennan Lee Mulligan. It’s not publicly available yet, but I’ll link it as soon as it is. They talked about creativity in general, but a particular off-hand comment about some tough-to-chew gummies and a pressed eggo sandwich caught my attention.

Brian said something about how it tastes like an arthouse movie. When you watch it, you sometimes think you’d rather be watching something else. The next day, however, you’re still thinking about it. It sticks around in your mind. On the other side of the spectrum, you have fast-food media. You enjoy it while consuming it, but immediately forget about it afterwards.

Friction in art makes consumption less enjoyable but allows you more time to take in whatever the piece is trying to tell you. Some things are good because you need to chew on them. Some things are good despite there being little pieces of bone in them you need to spit out. You need time to digest something. After you do, you walk away with something you’ve learned or a new perspective on life. Art needs to be challenging.

That’s the kind of art I want to make. I have made fast-food games before, but they’re not challenging. They’re not challenging for you as an audience, and not challenging for me as a creator. Chasing the high of creative impulses is fast-food. It’s enjoyable but ultimately forgettable. Asking why an art piece needs to exist is challenging. And I’m chewing on that now…

Thanks for stopping by y’all, see you next week!