I’ve been looking forward to writing this post all week, and even spent some of the time while I was brainstorming composing the summaries that I would include here. (None of which were written down, and all of which have completely fled my brain, so maybe when that happens in the future I’ll actually take some notes.) But I guess my point was that posting these publicly is definitely having an influence on my continuing the project. A project that has, thus far, been 100% successful! 22 days into the project, I’ve got a few more than 22 entries.

Here are this week’s summaries:

1/15 – A top-down roguelike, but crossed with the various Dig Dug inspired games where you have to dig your way through the level. With crafting. So a bit like a 2D minecraft (á la Terraria or The Blockheads), but top-down instead of from the side. And you can dig/climb up or down at any time. (Unless, maybe, you’re being attacked.) I actually have some ideas about the theme/story for this too, inspired, mainly, by Ursula Vernon’s awesome book Digger.

1/16 – A new game for my dice-based game system SIX D SIX. This game is a two-player abstract with no luck or hidden information. You take turns adding dice to a gameboard. The dice you add must show a 1. You then also increment another die already placed. There are a couple of possible win conditions. I think it could also work with a score pad and counting points. (Will need to playtest to work out a bunch of the details.)

1/17 – Continuing some of my thoughts from the day before, I started designing two game ideas that essentially “hide” the components necessary to play SIX D SIX games (72 die, 6 of 6 different colors, and 32 black) in a euro-style big box game. The first idea involved moving die around a map, and the second (more promising) involves using the dice as sort of workers on an individual player board that represents a tech tree. You take actions with meeples, but of course all the actions are influenced by your player board. I really like this idea, and it’s been percolating.

1/18 – Idea for an unfolding game where you start out combining nuts and bolts and eventually realize you are working in a bomb/munitions factory. Inspired by the short film Uncanny Valley, which is well worth your 8 minutes. This could be combined with my idea from 1/9.

1/19 – Earlier in the week, I spent some time hanging out with Sean Berry, the creator of Algebra Touch. I showed that app to my 5 year old daughter, and my brainstorm time for the day was spent outlining modifications to that app that would alter it to be focused on basic math rather than algebra, and target a much younger audience.

1/20 – Thought about bringing some block-breaking games to VR. Three pretty good ideas here, I think. First was a collapse variant where you are trapped inside a house made of blocks, and break them (collapse style) to get out. Another idea involved a table where bricks appear, and you have to move them to a play area and match-3 with them. And finally, a crazy room full of piles of old looking junk, where there are three of a kind of every item. You can only move the top item on each pile, and once you get three of them touching, those items disappear. You are cleaning a hoarder’s house in VR, essentially.

1/21 – A board game (although I could also imagine it as an app) where you are plotting the shortest route to pick up kids via school bus. I actually think this has a lot of promise, and already did some sketching in a notebook for how the board should be laid out. Play is like Set or Ricochet Robots, where there are no turns, and every player stares at the board until they think they’ve found the best solution.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this week’s entries. Only 1/18 felt underwhelming when I re-read it, and I think it’s the first entry to really feel a bit like a cop-out on re-reading.

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!)

So I joked about my New Year’s resolution being a new game idea (or entry in my game ideas journal) every day. I was, for the record, TOTALLY joking at the time. But now I’m serious. DEADLY serious.

And I’ve got an entry for the first 7 days of the year. Eight entries, actually. I’m going to try and summarize them here like someone posting their weight every morning on twitter.

1/1 – I had an idea for turning Action Go into a board game. Basically a go variant at this point. I actually wrote up some rules and stuff (even though that’s not necessarily part of my resolution).

1/2 – I expanded on the previous idea, bringing some of the mechanics out of the realm of Go, and using them in more of a euro game with resources and player boards. (Still themeless, though I have some ideas. I stopped just short of prototyping this.)

1/3 – Came up with a pen and paper game idea I’m calling Order and Chaos. I’d love to get feedback about it, (like does it even work?) so maybe I’ll write a separate blog post at some point with the full rules.

1/4 – Came up with a new idea for an LED-based gameboard and pieces. Essentially each game piece is an LED with battery, and the board tells it what color to make. I had a couple of game ideas for that set of components. I’d love to build a prototype, but pricing out the component it seemed like it was going to get too expensive.

1/5 – I spent some time thinking about logic puzzles in the vein of Nurikabe or Sudoku, and came up with one that I’ve never seen before. I’m going to do some research, and if this is original, I might actually turn it into a real project.

1/6 – Came up with a simple 2-player abstract strategy game played on a circle. (Yes, another one.) I’ll probably write this up sometime too, since the rules are complete and I playtested it by myself a few times.

1/7 – Another general game system idea (this one with some interesting hexagon components). I actually came up with a list of possible (sort of generic) objectives, but no solid game ideas.

1/7 – Later in the day I got thinking about local multiplayer games and gave some thought to a team game about hatching ostrich eggs inspired by Killer Queen.

I haven’t written anything concrete yet today, but I spent a good hour or two this morning coming up with puzzles for my idea from 1/5, and thinking about how to make it into an mobile app. I’d like to do some more brainstorming yet today, but I should also get some actual work done on one of the various games I’m ostensibly supposed to be working on.

As for the rest of the year, we’ll see how long I can keep this up. It’s starting to feel like a real project, like a game a week (which I’ve never tried) or #1GameAMonth (which I have). I’d really like these to only take me 10 or 15 minutes, and some of them did, initially, but the problem with brainstorming is that it’s sorta self perpetuating. Once you come up with a good idea, you want to iterate on it, or if you really think it’s good, you start to imagine implementation details.

Ideally, I’d like my journal entries to be short and concise, like the best from @PeterMolydeux. That’s a sub-goal, I guess. For now, I’m really happy with my ideas from this week. Hope that doesn’t sound too much like I’m tooting my own horn. You always love your last idea the best, so I guess the true test will be to see how I feel about these in a month or two.