Last week I said I wanted to spend less time on these, and I mostly achieved that goal. I think most of the entries for this week were under 15 minute affairs, and several were probably more like 5 minutes. Here are some summaries:

1/8 – Another game imagined for the LED system I’d thought a lot about on 1/4. This is a two-player abstract, inspired by speed chess.

Brief aside: At some point last week, I was with my daughter at another kid’s place, and one of the children present was playing Cow Evolution, which I had never heard of before that moment. I think maybe I’ve played games with similar mechanics, but the developer has a bunch of these games in the store, and I spent a few hours researching them this last week. It was particularly fun to compare them to one another in terms of features and presentation. (They are mechanics-wise very similar, if not identical.)

While playing (at least in part because there is not much thought necessary), I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the game design behind these “evolution” games (they are more accurately about combining things), and where they fit into the game design family tree. They are certainly related to idle games, and unfolding games of course, but it’s also interesting to compare them to Threes!, 1024, and 2048. This line of thinking clearly influenced the next couple of journal entries.

1/9 – A Threes! inspired game played on conveyor belts. (As of right now, I think this was my most promising design idea for the week, and I’d love to spend some time prototyping it.)

1/10 – An idea for a game based loosely on these evolution games, but in reverse, where you begin with a human egg and divide cells until you have an embryo, or maybe even a complete human.

1/11 – Quick plot sketch for an open-world game set in the pre-historic era where you get to ride wooly mammoths and fight aliens.

1/12 – Thought up a 52-card deck solitaire variant that is surely not original, but might be fun. I haven’t tried it out yet.

1/13 – I read through a C++ tutorial on creating a grid like the one behind geometry wars. Then came up with this idea for a game set on such a grid, where you have to deform the grid using first your fingers, then (on subsequently more difficult levels) by placing objects on the grid that influence it in various ways.

1/14 – A roguelike idea where every space in the dungeon has potential to branch out into a new level.

Anyway, there were some gems in there. (And writing this inspired a new entry for today!)