TLDR: I just released A Witch’s Pilgrimage! A solo RPG about a witch finding ingredients for a ritual to bring their familiar back to life. Check it out on Itch.io here!
Welcome to another entry in my design diary series (and the first on the new Patreon blog)! In these posts, I talk about the production of my games and offer a bit of a post-mortem to the whole project. I missed a bunch of these for games I released while at uni. I wanted to do them for a while, but I realised that forcing myself to do them in order was bottlenecking my ability to actually get anything written.
To get over my writer’s block, I’m jumping straight into talking about my most recent game. I might go back and do some of the other ones, but I’m not gonna hold myself to it. If you want to know more about any of those games, ask me! Either here or through email (crackerjackalopegames {at} gmail {dot} com). Without further ado, lets talk about A Witch’s Pilgrimage!
The Game
Like I said at the top, A Witch’s Pilgrimage is my new fantasy solo RPG about a witch finding ingredients for a ritual to bring their familiar back to life. After answering some prompts to create your witch and their familiar, you roll a full set of polyhedral dice (from a d4 up to a d20) on a sheet of paper and join them up to create a pointcrawl map. Each point on the map represents a different site of spiritual significance. The size of each die and the result it rolls determine the name of each place, for example a d4 that rolls a 1 becomes ‘The Well of Luck’, while a d8 that rolls a 6 becomes ‘The Shrine of Protection’. The result of the die also becomes the target number you have to beat in order to find an ingredient there, so the Temple (the d20) is probably going to be harder to find something at than the Spring (the d6). At each location, you draw three playing cards to get additional one-word prompts that might inform the location, the people you meet there or the ingredient you are looking for. When you find an ingredient, you take one of these cards and discard the rest. At the end of the game, you take three of the cards you have collected and form a hand to determine the effectiveness of your ritual (and the ending you get).
Inspirations & Early Ideas
I started noodling the idea for this game at the beginning of the year when I played Hades 2. One of the new things I really like about that game is the resource collection. As you travel from room to room, there is a chance of finding metals, fish and plants that you use to cast your incantations. It really fed into the witch-y feel of the game, which is one of the big things that differentiates it from the first Hades. I was really drawn to the idea of a solo RPG about doing the same.
Then I was thinking about Stoneburner by FariRPGs, specifically its expedition generator. Before delving into one of the demon-infested asteroids of the Long Belt, you roll a set of polyhedrals on a sheet of paper and turn them into areas with events based on the size of the dice and their results. For example, if you travel to Kazab Baram, a d4 that rolls a 4 becomes a “crashed space ship” and a d12 that rolls a 7 becomes a “corrupted greathall”.
I tweaked this slightly so that each die is always the same type of location. The d12 is always “The Cave of” something, for example, unlike in Stoneburner where the prompts on the same die are more distinct.
I’ve found the fill-in-the-blank-style prompting to feel really novel and compelling. Multiple of my playtesters pointed out that it was a simple system that led to evocative names. This was exactly what I was hoping for!
At this point, I had a narrative genre and a core system, but I was stuck with an incomplete hook for the game. I knew you were collecting ingredients for a ritual, but what did the ritual do? I spent a while mulling on this idea while I was working on my university projects, until tragedy struck.
Tragedy.
In February 2026, my dog Timmy died at nearly 15 years of age. Up until this point, the game was just notes and ideas. But after this happened, I took some time away from uni to clear my head and focus on this game instead. The first full draft was written in a fit of grief during that first 24 hours after he died. It’s fitting, really, because that’s exactly when the game is set.
It’s interesting looking back at it a few months later, especially the endings (I’ll talk more about the mechanics of those in a bit). The ending that’s hardest to get sees your familiar coming back to life with a full extra lifespan ahead of them. He was nearly 15 when he died, I’m 22! He’d been in my life for basically as long as I remember, and it won’t be until 2034 that he’ll have been in less than half of my life. That’s staggering to think about. When I wrote the endings, I wanted nothing more than to have him back and redo everything, taking better advantage of the time we had together. But, as much as that seems like the “best” ending (in the sense that it’s the hardest to get and sees the spell you’re casting at it’s most powerful), it’s not the ending that I would want now. Instead, all I’d ask for is the middle ending, to have him back for a single day. And I’m sure, as time passes even more, I wouldn’t want to attempt this ritual at all.
Endings
Once I had worked out the player character’s motivation, I could see an ending and a final resolution mechanic. At the end of the game, you choose three of the cards you have collected to make a hand and the quality of the hand determines the ending you get. From best to worst, the hands are: three of a kind, straight flush, straight, flush, and then anything else. I spent a while looking at different card games and the hands they used. My first thought was poker, but poker has 10 different hands (and still 7 if you counted everything using 4 or less cards as one outcome), which felt like far too much nuance. Would there actually be a meaningful difference between a 4/7 ending and a 5/7 ending? I looked around for card games with other hands and stumbled across Brag. Brag is traditionally played with 3-card hands, which led to 6 possible hands. I then combined the two hands that don’t use all three cards into the “anything else” category, leaving me with 5 degrees of success. I’ve never played a game that features more than 5 degrees of success, but my gut told me that anything higher was going to be difficult to write.
Since the procedures that lead up to the ending feature a large amount of randomness and player choice, I have no idea what the odds are of getting each ending. If anyone is interested in running the numbers for this, let me know and I’ll add an addendum here! But currently I have no idea where to begin with that.
Optional Tables
After the first couple of early playtests, I started to think about any extra support I could provide for the players. Things like character names and additional prompts for the ingredients you are collecting. I already spoke about this in a recent post, Musings on Randomness, but spark tables are really inspiring me right now. I love how a few simple words can prompt so much creativity, and wanted to put some of that in the back of the game.
Each table is a d4/d6 table, which leads to 24 results in total. This was mainly for space reasons, it meant each table could fit exactly on 1 page. But it also feels big enough that you probably won’t get a duplicate if you roll on it 4 or 5 times in a game.
I’m really happy with the entries in each table too. Some personal favourite names include Hotaru (the Japanese word for firefly), Perecles (in honour of an NPC from my Godkiller game), and Starpot (this just came out of me, but I think it’s really cute).
Conclusion
This feels like the first game I’ve made that is really personal to me. Up until this point, my games have been about genres I like or mechanics I found novel, but it’s not really felt like you could look into my soul through my work. This is different. It’s still a genre I like, and it’s still mechanics I find novel! But I’m also in there in a way I’ve never been before. It’s a weird feeling, to bear my soul like this, but it’s exhilarating! This definitely feels like my new favourite project, the new thing I’m proudest of, the new thing that represents me best.
What’s Next?
Big news! I’ve been accepted into Gamefound’s RPG Party 2026! The Gamefound team will be mentoring a group of crowdfunders from teams of various sizes and various levels of experience. This is my first time running a crowdfunding campaign which is scary but also really exciting! There’s a hugely diverse set of projects coming out, from solo stuff to original trad systems to third party Daggerheart material! I’ve particularly got my eye on what Tori Truslow is working on, their previous game Tending looks absolutely gorgeous!
I’ll be making Dewin, a solo RPG inspired by Welsh ghostlore that uses the same system as A Witch’s Pilgrimage! I had the idea for this game back in 2024, when I read The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts by Delyth Badder and Mark Norman. I actually wrote a review of that book back on my old blog, where I first said I was making Dewin. I’ve been shopping it around different systems this whole time and it finally feels like this is the one.
Since I’m making a second game in this system, I’ll also be working on a Creator Kit for other designers interested in using the system! This will be my second creator kit, after the RPTree kit I made back when I released ABODE. You can check out the page for the Pilgrim’s Path Creator Kit on Itch now, although there’s only a logo there at the moment.
This is all really exciting, and I’m sure I’ll be telling you more about Dewin soon. Join the Patreon at the free tier to get my writing in your inbox, and consider subscribing for $3 per month for access to my Work-In-Progress games, there were three drafts of A Witch’s Pilgrimage published here before it released!
Thank you so much for reading, just a reminder that you can purchase A Witch’s Pilgrimage on Itch right here!
Speak soon!
CJ
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One idea I've been working on for most of the year plays with the idea of how we view abandoned houses. There's a certain discomfort, I feel, with the unknown. Watching urban exploration content (and particularly reading the comments), you always see people rush to wild and melodramatic explanations of why the house ended up the way it did.
This is especially true if it looked like the house belonged to someone wealthy. In reality, I suspect, what happened is honestly quite boring. Rich people have marriage breakups, die suddenly or otherwise have to leave their homes behind just as much as anyone else. With this game, I want to play with that discomfort with the unknown and the content creator's tendency towards the melodramatic.
At present, it looks like this game is going to consist of 3-4 stages in which you build a house, conceal it's secrets and then play the content creators going through the house speculating about what happened. To be honest, the content creators I watched for this did not exactly leave the best taste in my mouth so I'll probably have to do a couple of passes to smooth out the disdain in the text for them.
Artistically, I want to do a look inspired by a fancy notebook I got while in Melbourne, with pages wreathed in vines or decorated with family photos.
In terms of inspiration, I'm thinking of drawing from The Deep House and Deadstream although I don't think they really match what I'm going for tonally. The song Fruit Bat by Of Monsters and Men is much closer tonally but I don't know how well that suits the concept as whole.
Hopefully I'll be able to write more about this game soon. Otherwise it'll probably the babysitter union game I've been banging on about for years...
A little before and after of the first time I drew Indira a bit over a year ago, and redrawing her portrait today. (She was originally an NPC and now one of the playable characters in LEVIATHAN.) It's fun to see how much my style's changed and anatomy's improved since then!
Key Moments of Designer Diary #1The Sims Bustin' Out
Game Designer Mike Perry begins this series of designer diaries on the sequel to the console incarnation of the best-selling PC game of all time.
By Gamespot Staff on August 28, 2003 at 3:51PM PDT
Game Designer Mike Perry begins this series of designer diaries on the sequel to the console incarnation of the best-selling PC game of all
The decision to bring The Sims to consoles aimed to reach a broader audience, specifically console gamers who had not experienced the game previously.
The development team prioritized preserving the unique and humorous elements of The Sims while adapting its gameplay for a level-based console format.
Significant focus was placed on designing intuitive and precise controls for console gameplay, ensuring accessibility for players of all skill levels.
A full 3D prototype was created early in development to explore the capabilities of the console, incorporating advanced visual effects like real-time lighting.
Collaboration with Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, and input from the Maxis team helped shape the console adaptation, introducing exclusive objects and features.
The design process involved extensive brainstorming and visualization, including creating maps and sketches to develop the game’s neighborhood and characters.
Feedback from players after the first game was crucial in shaping the sequel, The Sims Bustin' Out, leading to enhancements in gameplay and graphics.
The sequel aims to expand the game world significantly, offering more locations, social interactions, and the ability to explore outside the home.
Two-player gameplay is a major focus, with developers wanting to enhance cooperative experiences throughout the entire game.
Future updates will reveal new gameplay mechanics, an improved game engine, and a variety of new characters and objects exclusive to The Sims Bustin' Out.
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As a person who consumes media and plays tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), one thing that makes my heart sing is when characters overcome the pining and end up in a loving, healthy relationships.
That is the good stuff 👌🏼
Game Summary
I had the idea for Not Yet earlier this year and wrote down some initial mechanics. The idea is to create a GM-less TTRPG "duet" (i.e. two player game) where each player takes on the role of a love interest. The story is told over several scenes, playing off of the "You Just Missed Them" trope, where fate (the dice) keep the characters apart until The Time is Right.
First Idea
In my first vision for the game, you begin at the end, roleplaying out a significant life event (like a wedding) or a meet cute, and then proceed to play the story in reverse, with the characters getting younger in each scene and becoming less and less likely to meet each other.
I think this might be needlessly complicated though, as you'd have to choreograph your character growth in reverse which is A Challenge. For now I've stuck a pin in it.
Mechanics
One thing I have my heart set on is using dice to determine how likely the characters are to meet. The idea is for both players to roll a die. If the number is the same, the characters meet but must find a reason not to start the relationship yet. If the number is within 1 of each other, they lock eyes acoess the room, and so on. The further away you are from the happy ending, the bigger the die you have to roll (decreasing the chances of meeting).
Just because your characters don't meet doesn't mean there's nothing to roleplay though! Whoever rolls lowest begins the scene, explaining what they do before a complication arises and causes them to leave. The second player then describes entering and how their character's current situation is impacted by what the first character did.
Draft 0
After writing my initial ideas down, I left this game in a folder for a few months as paid projects, my solo journaling game, and life events took priority. I recently came across the idea again and feverishly wrote the skeleton of mechanics and a couple of random scene tables on four sides of A5 paper while putting my daughter to bed the other night. I want to see if the rules work (even if it is vaguely) before I commit to a first draft for close-friend-playtesting.
Here's hoping it goes well and I can make a second design diary with next steps! The concept of this game has me VERY excited and I want to share this journey with anyone who will listen!
Acknowledgments
Shout out to my rival and good buddy Ethan Yen, who started a design diary on his website for Prequel, a TTRPG about heroic sacrifices. I 100% stole his idea in a less elegant and detailed fashion.
As a graphic designer, you are told oh so often how hard it will be to find a job. You have to be self motivated, which is true, but that you have to give it your all, always. Designers believe they are hard workers until they see that in relation to someone else. At art/design school, there is a stigma with how long something took. People brag about how they only got 1 or 2 hours of sleep the night before a project was due. They wear on their sleeve that they slaved night and day and, most of the time, great work needs a lot of time put into it, but it has gotten to the point where in comparison, you feel guilty for taking a night off, which is not a healthy way to work.
Ultimately my point is, we are designing how people interact with life... how in the hell are we supposed to do that from behind a screen?
You don’t have to be working constantly for you to succeed as a designer. Just because you want to take a night off does not mean you love design any less. The guilt of not working 24/7 needs to be done with. In some of the happiest countries in the world, they have a minimum of 6-8 weeks mandatory vacation every year. Instead of living to work (like the North American mentality), they work to live, and prove that time and time again.
Before graphic design, I was a photographer, which I am very thankful for because it taught me to observe. On the train to work this summer, I would watch how people hold their phone, how they interact with it. Watch why people get confused by signage. Stepping away from the computer like this also means communicating with people. You should go to some house parties you don’t want to, (as long as your safe or whatever). Surround yourself with people who you don’t normally hang out with. It’s uncomfortable at times, but you can expose yourself to things you would have never known otherwise. We live in a social media dominated society; we get so caught up in our own worlds that we forget certain kinds of people exist. It is especially way too easy for that to happen when you work 7 days a week behind a screen.
Don’t just research your target audience when it comes up for a project for you to churn over in a few months. Observe. Be present. Have conversations. Live your life, and then you can learn to interpret that into designing how others live theirs.
For all my introverted designers, here’s some help.
