Bumps in the Road - Devlog #6

Current game word count: 22,900 (+ 1258 since last devlog)

As a grade school teacher trying to put as much free time as possible into this passion project of mine, some weeks end up being harder than others. This week in particular has featured PTA meetings, lots of grading and other stuff since a mid-semester break is right around the corner. Time off for the kids, more work for us teachers. That's just how life is sometimes.

With that in mind, I'm still very proud that I managed to hit 1k words since my last log, and I've also had some other breakthroughs. The biggest of these was putting pen to paper and mapping out this flowchart of interpersonal relationships between the characters that feature in Meanwhile in Riva.

Warning: This chart contains SPOILERS so if you intend to play the game (which I hope you will) then please don't look too closely at it... especially if you happen to know Swedish. :)

But... why?

As the title of today's log alludes to, I hit a bump recently. I've come to a point in my story where I feel like I'm sort of making stuff up as I go occasionally. And while I think it's a good thing to leave some room for that, have plot points and characters develop organically and whatnot, it also makes things feel disjointed and, for me at least, I get insecure about the quality of the story.

Don't get me wrong though, I know where my story is going. I've always known the big story beats. But it turns out that the story in between these beats needs to be engaging too! So I took some huge-ass papers and started drawing. Characters, story elements, and more. Some people on Discord have asked me why I didn't do it digitally, with Twine for example. Maybe I'm just old-school but I feel like there's something special about drawing, writing etc freely like this. Doesn't rule out me using that in the future though...

The result? Man, I feel so much better about everything now. The minor writer's block this caused has gone away, and I feel like my proverbial story ship is now sailing in the right direction once more. 

Although the chart does kind of make me feel a bit like this, too:

God I love that show, it's just so good.

View to inspiration

This is my battlestation right now, story and character charts right above me, Jaime Lannister (I still love him despite how GoT ended) keeping faithful watch, and also... yeah, I'm old. That's Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - can't just work on my game all the time, right? :)

I think it's really important how your workspace looks and feels. This has a good mix between work and play to it, I think.

So, let me know! How do you do deal with bumps in the road when you work on stuff? 

Would love to hear from my fellow video game developers, and others too of course. :)

As always, thank you for reading, and have a Riva-tastic day! <3

/Tymedust