Now: October 2025

What I’m working on

Hello world,

In less than two weeks, I’m packing my bags and jumping on an airplane to begin my 3-week vacation traveling abroad. I’ll be traveling alone for the first time ever, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. I am REALLY looking forward to having full control over my itinerary for once – no guilt, no compromise, and no pressure.

Well, other than whatever pressure I put on myself. 😂

During the trip, I plan to do a lot of walking (and hiking!), and I’ve also baked in some rest time. There’s nothing like a little downtime to get the mind to wander into creative territory. I will have my laptop, just in case the inspiration strikes, but I’ll also have my phone handy for quick note-taking. It’s important to jot those ideas down while they’re fresh!

One of the things I’d like to get done on the flight out is re-organize some priorities for the multiplayer text-based game I’ve been working on. I haven’t told many people about the game, yet, since it’s just a solo hobby project I like to work on in my scant free time, but it’s something I’ve been chipping away at in the background.

The reason I need to do some reorganizing is that I keep coming back to some advice in Designing Games by Tynan Sylvester.

In Chapter 13, Dependencies, he talks about the importance of figuring out your core gameplay so that you can separate your “design backlog” from the foundational things your game actually needs to create meaningful, emotional experiences. You need your core gameplay in place so you can start iterating and playtesting sooner. Testing that foundation, as it were.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I need to prioritize certain things like atmospheric effects and world narrative much higher. The game has a fairly detailed weather system, sure, and a day-night system, but right now these are insufficient for what I want to achieve.

What I want, more than anything, is for players to feel the wonder and awe of exploring a truly alien world. And to do that, I’m going to need to go well beyond familiar weather and cycles.

Inspiring a sense of wonder is my priority and goal – and has been from the start, so it needs to come before the research, crafting, and other mechanics I have in my design backlog. All of those other mechanics are important for enabling players to do things, but they’re not going to help players feel things.

Niymiae’s the best, truly, but I want to prove him wrong: that you don’t need an ASCII map to create “atmosphere” in a text game. 😁

So, that’s where my head is at right now. Thinking about how to get to a sense of wonder with nothing more than words. We’ll see where I land by the end of the year.

– Andruid

What’s been done

Some things I managed to get out the door recently:

  • Published the interview with Morwen on Cryosphere
  • Actually remembered to publish the Updates page
  • November newsletter!
  • Fixed the comment spam/bots that were starting to cause problems

Older entries are listed on the Updates page.

What’s next

Roughly in order of priority… and subject to change:

  • Finish up a post with Niamh about whitelisting in RP MUDs
  • Put together a list of interviewees for 2026
  • Publish another post on Medium highlighting cool MU* games
  • Create a Someday page – add Designing Games book review to it
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