I’ve been writing for IndieGames for over 3 months now and I’m enjoying it immensely. The quality of the games I’ve played has been, on the whole, amazing and the developers I’ve talked to have been nothing short of fascinating.
Terry Cavanagh in particular, creator of such games as Pathways and Don’t Look Back, got me thinking about the good old days when I used to make crappy game after crappy game as a teenager. This sparked off something that made me want to try it all over again. So here I go – here’s some concepts I’ve got on the go.
Silent Disco
Screenshot above is from Silent Disco, a game about visiting… a silent disco. It’s a game about feeling like you are in a world of trouble, yet no-one around seems to even notice.
Employment
I decided I wanted to have a crack at creating my own Match-3 game… but then I remembered that there are already a trillion Match-3 clones out there. With Employment, my goal is to create a Match-3 style game which is at least a bit innovative.
The game is set in a job centre and applicants enter through the doors looking for a job. Each type of person can only apply for a single type of job – e.g. the firemen-wannabes to be firemen etc. All these little people scurry around the job centre looking for work, and it is your job to find them a job by selecting one from the bottom of the screen, holding your circle over the number of applicants required (e.g. 3 firemen) and clicking to employ.
Abilities will make grabbing one type of worker more easy. For example, the player can use some experience points to start a fire in the job centre, which nearby firemen will rush to put out. Fires will, however, burn to death any other worker, so a balance must be found. Overflowing the job centre with applicants will give a game over.
Power of Love
I loved the idea of making a game which was more of an interactive story (both Terry and developer increpare worked together on a title called Judith which fits this bill), so I wondered what it would be like to create a interactive story based on song lyrics. Power of Love is based on a song of the same name by the band White Lies and is my take on what the lyrics would be like in game form. The majority of the game is text-based, but there are little interesting things to do now and again and a puzzling story to work your way through.
So I’m working on all three of these games at the moment. I enjoy working on more than one title at a time, as when I begin to get a little bored of one, I can move onto the next and go back to it a bit later on.
I’m not sure when I will have any of them finished, but I hope to have something to show sometime soon 
I will of course post updates as they progress.
