#2 Writer’s Block

I got flu on my fourth week with Unity. I do not know if it was the reason for the game dev’s block, or that I was constantly trying to overstretch myself developing new levels for Polarkreis. The plane wouldn’t fly and setting up its physics turned out to be a nightmare; the iceberg wouldn’t drift in the desired location and bump material isn’t bouncing enough; light wouldn’t bake and everything looks ugly.

I decided to step back and re-evaluate the process. The lack of skills and knowledge was hitting really hard on me. I decided to take a pen and paper and layout the game experiences I wanted to research and bring to the game.

After grouping everything I decided that I do not want to spend time on 2D platformer now and it looks like a separate huge project. And the carts/racing game was also something that I wasn’t excited about. Phew, two fewer projects in a scope.

Then, I looked at the gameplay types and levels and started to lay out how they apply level by level when decided that survival, crafting and foraging systems wouldn’t contribute much to the gamer’s experience. In the end, Polarkreis is not about that. It is all about moving forward without stopping.

At the same time, I haven’t decided if I wanted to implement hunting and fishing mini-games and cooking system in the game. Most likely, I will remove them out of scope, too. And will research them separately. The game looked already like a potpourri and I really wanted to present a fun, seamless experience to the users.

So, it was decided — Polarkreis should be postponed for a while and I would need to learn how to make the following types of gameplay first, before coming back to my Polar sandbox:

• Endless runner with collectibles, bosses, and defined goals
• Escape room
• RPG / Exploration game
• Flight simulator

Just four side-projects before coming to Polarkreis. Not bad at all.

P.S. Thanks to these guys for beautiful mind map ideas.