Are listicles still classified as clickbait? They are? Damn it.

All right, listicle or not, this is the easiest way for me to concisely tell people about all the stuff I learned while putting together my first game, a visual novel called “Black Heaven: a Necromantic Dating Sim.”

If you’re not a fan of visual novels (or don’t think they’re real games), I totally understand. The thing is, it doesn’t matter—the stuff I’m saying applies to a whole bunch of genres and games.

First, a bit of background on me: I’m a professional Dungeon Master, an editor/marketing guy at an indie RPG publisher called Loresmyth, and a contract writer for Tales, a mobile interactive fiction platform. I’ve hosted panels at NYCC and a couple other cons, and I’m a big fan of Playcrafting here in NYC.

 I didn’t get a degree in game design, or a certificate, or anything. I’ve worked on a couple indie games before this one as a writer/worldbuilder/game designer, but never helmed my own project.

Here’s what I learned.

(Cue the music).

The Project Is Going to Mutate During Development

When you sit down to create something, there’s usually some nebulous idea or feeling that’s inspired you. That’s what Alice LaPlante calls “the triggering idea.”

Very important. Write that down—"triggering idea.”

As you start to flesh that idea out, it starts to morph and change as you deal with unexpected complications and get new ideas. Sometimes, you reach a point where your project has changed so much that you realize you’ve arrived at something new and different.

At that point, a lot of people get discouraged and decide to scrap the project. That’s a mistake.

Example: My project Black Heaven started out as a pitch for a Dark Souls-esque subterranean dungeon crawler for mobile phones. It was actually part of a sample pitch I did for a Narrative Designer job at Gameloft (didn’t get that job). However, at the interview, I ended up getting into a gushing conversation with the narrative team about Doki Doki Literature Club, a horror dating sim.

After I didn’t get that job, Black Heaven just languished in my idea bin until I got really into Katawa Shoujo, another dating sim. I loathe throwing away ideas, so I was like “What if I repurpose Black Heaven?”

Now I have a necromantic dating sim about romancing ghosts in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world.

It’s easy for a project to drift far from its initial origins, especially if there’s multiple people working on it. That doesn’t mean it’s time to start over—instead, take a look at your new, weird project on its own merits, and see if there’s something promising there.

Write a Detailed GDD, for the Love of God

The way I see it, a game design document (GDD) is an evolving blueprint for your game, not a polished showcase of your game for other people.

It doesn’t have to be etched in stone before you start your project, but the more time you spend fleshing out and honing your GDD, the easier time you’re going to have, because it delineates three big things:

1. Value Proposition: the game’s main selling point
2. Scope: how complex and large the project is going to be
3. Design Pillars: the key ideas that will guide the gameplay and player experience

I think a lot of people hand-wave the specifics of their game, choosing instead to keep these main points vague. Don’t do that—I’ve worked on a few projects that didn’t have a GDD, and it ended up being a clusterf*ck.

I think the first, big thing that your GDD should accomplish is to create a “unifying idea,” a short, concise description of your game’s plot, key themes, and features. Here are some examples:

Bloodborne: A dark fantasy action RPG that draws on Gothic aesthetics and Lovecraftian horror to explore the apocalyptic fall of Yharnam, where Hunters battle against a tide of beast-like monsters in a hack-and-slash nightmare.

Again, I think this “unifying idea” is mostly for internal use—it’s a way to articulate to yourself and your team what your game is. Like the point about “triggering ideas,” it’s okay for the unifying idea (and GDD) to undergo big mutations and shifts as you continue to flesh out what the game is going to be.

Here’s a link to my initial “proposal for Black Heaven,” which helped me get a bare-bones picture of what a demo would need, and here’s my current GDD for Black Heaven, for reference.*

*Note that my current GDD is crafted to be read by other people. 

Only Start Sharing Your Project Once You Have Something Solid

I know that there are a lot of advocates and marketing/PR blog posts out there telling creators to be really open and free with your works-in-progress, but I disagree.

Here’s the thing: you want your updates and behind-the-scenes peeks to seem natural, spontaneous, and interesting to your potential fans, but that takes work. You can’t just post some screenshots of a wireframe and expect likes—you need to craft a story.

It takes a decent chunk of time and effort to post nice updates across all your channels, and if you don’t have a dedicated PR person (or set up a workflow for yourself), it can end up becoming chaotic and stressful to post consistently.

If you’re the lead creator for your first game, I think it’s a better idea to carve out the big details of a game by yourself, or with one or two other people who are just as serious about this project as you are.

Here are some of the major steps I took before sharing anything about my project:

• put together a GDD
• collected concept or reference art
• did research on other games
• researched the community
• created a prototype
• built a rough budget
• figured out a feature list
• planned out a potential team roster
• talked to other people with experience
• conducted a SWOT analysis (just kidding, I'm not that cool)

I think all this stuff should be done before you announce work on your game to the public. Yes, that means a lot of toiling in obscurity without much praise or encouragement, but when you emerge, you’ll hopefully have thought through the project enough for 1) you to be confident that it’s worth people’s time and 2) other people to really get excited and invested in it.

Once you are ready to share details of your game, it should be the very best of what you’ve got so far, and only the parts that are ready for consumption.

I’ll be honest, I still struggle with this. Packaging and sharing content around a project takes a different mindset than development, and that’s why people do it for a living. 

The Wrap-Up

That’s it for now. This is only a couple things I’ve learned while putting together Black Heaven, and I’m probably going to be posting more articles like this in the future.

I guess I’ll leave you with these words of wisdom from Scott Rogers: 

“Gamers can feel when developers are passionate about their games. They can smell it like a dog smells fear. Don't be afraid to hold onto your unique vision: just be aware that it may not turn out exactly how you envisioned.”

Follow the development of Black Heaven: a Necromantic Dating on itch.io, and on Twitter @TriangleLab!