I started writing games recently! Here's what I've learned so far!
Hi! I'm a physical game writer! In December, I started writing my first game, Along the Open Road, a Road Trip Storytelling TTRPG for 3-5 people. After I started my fishing minigame Bluesky account, I got to follow a bunch of cool indie devs, and one of them just so happened to be hosting the Road Trip Game Jam, which allowed physical entries, so I made a start on making my first game!
Since then, I've written two more games: two solo journaling RPGs involving cards and dice.
The first is called Aqueous Planet Biological Discovery, a solo journaling game about being an astronomical marine biologist discovering new species on an aqueous planet and letting an earth company know if the planet is safe to live on.
The second is called The Empire Needs Men! and it's a solo journaling RPG about playing a boy (because I refuse to call a 16-19 year old a man) who has enlisted as a soldier in World War 1. You journal about the memories you make and the people you meet, good and bad. And I wanted the story to essentially be that the bad is big and in your face and the good is subtle things people won't remember when you're dead.
When I started, I was expecting it to be kinda easy? Like, I've been running D&D games for 10+ years now, it can't be that different, right? And, boy, was I wrong.
Thing number 1 I learned: Don't underestimate the challenge that you've given yourself!
When I started writing Along the Open Road, I challenged myself to get it done in a month. I wanted to make a whole new system (which I dubbed the Open Roads system), create a whole new concept for a game, try to get better at art so I could add my own art to the game, spend ages coming up with a unique skill system-
It was a lot. I wanted to make a game that was open and rules-light, but I'd set myself so many responsibilities and it really took a toll on me with how much time I was working on the game. I would spend my entire lunch in work just working on writing the rulebook and making character sheets and making sure everything was perfect.
I didn't allow myself to take time and learn. And, sure, I love what I made, but I went far too hard on myself for a game that's completely free and was never really going to kick off with how niche of an idea it is.
That's why, with my next few niche games, I focused more on simple ideas that I cared a lot about. An adoration of Fishing Minigames is my core personality trait and so making a fishing game was a no brainer. And then making a war game with a story I'd wanted to tell for so long made sense too.
Which brings me onto - thing number two I learned: success isn't guaranteed!
The fishing minigame account has over 800 followers, which I've amassed over the course of five months. This is huge to me. I've never had that many people really care about something I've done before? And there was a part of me that thought, if I share this game to my 800 followers, they'll share it with their friends and the cycle will continue and ATOR will be a huge thing in the tabletop community!
45 downloads. The game, since almost 2 months ago, has gotten 45 downloads, with most of those coming in the first three days.
Which is a huge amount of people for a first game! I was so excited by how many people cared! And then people stopped caring and I got bummed out because the fall from a huge number of downloads to radio silence was so sudden.
I released APBD about a week ago. 28 downloads. But because the first game got 45, it hit me hard, thinking it wasn't good enough. TENM released yesterday and has half of that with 14 downloads. But this time, I didn't feel as bad. Just today, three people have contacted me to show me their journals for both games. And that's when I realised...
Thing number three I learned: It doesn't matter how many people have downloaded your game. Appreciate the people who have and the memories they're making with it.
At the end of ATOR, I wrote a thank you to a bunch of people and said to tag me on Bluesky with the memories you've made. And I heard nothing. For the past two months, nothing. And it made me wonder if any of the people who had downloaded the game had played it, without me realising that, with the way I'd laid the game out, it's 5-8 sessions, and that's not guaranteed to be weekly like I'd usually run.
I did the same for APBD and, again, nothing, other than one post on Bluesky saying they'd tried it and had fun. That one post made me smile, sure, but I still wasn't appreciating the time people were putting into the game, just the number of people who had downloaded it.
TENM had the same. I wrote a little thing at the end being like "let me know your favourite memories you've made or story moments" or something like that but it wasn't quite pandering the way I had before. I sent it to a group of friends before I published it. And then one of them went out of their way to tea stain an entire journal and, today, sent me a picture of their first entry in their journal that they had made for my game.
Not long later, I was tagged in a Bluesky post of someone who had fun playing APBD, and wanted to share their discovery.
I stopped caring about numbers then, I think. I sent a screenshot to my fiancΓ©, showing him the one person who had shown me their journal page with their little diagram of the creature they'd found and I was saying about how excited I was that someone was sharing that enjoyment of fishing and I stopped caring about numbers.
I'd like to consider my three games so far a success. I took time making them, finished making them, and published them to the world. And people have played them and made memories.
So here's to more games to come. Here's to more passion projects. And here's to more memories to be made.
Go make a game. Even if you don't think you can, make a game. And send it to me, please. Let's make memories together.
