I can fantasize forever about game mechanics and work on them with some success, but when the time comes to clothe them with content, I mostly stare at the screen blankly. Is it just me or is coming up with content really hard in general? And if I just suck, what to do about it? Making brainstorming appointments with myself really doesn’t do much good.
I think I know what the problem might be.
You probably don’t use the concept of themes yet.
If the core element of your game is the gameplay and mechanics (instead of story or art), then you can pick any random theme, and go with it. For levels (lets take super mario games as an example here) you could have a normal grass landscape, a desert, a jungle, water-level, …
If your game is based on a story instead (meaning that mechanics are secondary), then you have to think more about it (but I think that much is obvious). What locations are there in your story? What characters are there and what do they do at the locations you listed? Why are those locations important? What is being done there? Can the environment be used to reflect the mood of the story a little bit as well? (Maybe when someone important dies it could be raining as well)
Same thing for characters basically. Just keep asking yourself “what is this guys story? why is he part of the game? can his visual design reflect that a bit somehow?”
Don’t underestimate the power of even a very simple supporting story.
This should be the first step in every game.
A supporting story doesn’t even have to be a “real” story with characters, etc.
Just one or two sentences that serve as a seed.
And then from there on you can think about characters, locations, mechanics; and once you have a few of each you can use that again to in turn drive the story forward a little more (maybe you got some more ideas while thinking of places or characters you’d like…)
Is that the type of content you meant?
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I’m actually working on a sort of… word puzzle game, for want of a better description. I mean, puzzle-making is a special art-form, but… well, people (like, say Jonathan Blow) just kind of do it. It must be relatively easy for them, considering the number of puzzles in the Witness (even if you account for their similarity).
And I do want a story, or an environmental progression, but different words require different environments… Maybe theme is indeed the key? If I take a (themed) environment with hundreds of objects, a few of them are bound to arrange themselves into puzzles, right?
A puzzle game can still have a theme, and they generally benefit from it.
Take for instance the classic puzzle game Dr Mario.
It really is nothing more than a new twist on classic Tetris, but they went with this doctor/medical theme that has nothing to do with the actual gameplay, but it still works. In fact if they had just kept a Tetris theme, and called the game something like Mariotris, I expect it wouldn’t have done very well.
Once they decided on this doctor theme though, the content just seems rather obvious. Blocks that you need to destroy now are animated viruses, your block area is no longer just a big rectangle and instead a rectangle shaped bottle, blocks you drop are now pill shaped, etc. It all really works and makes the game a bit more fun to watch, but has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game.
So as already suggested, come up with a theme, think about how you can incorporate your theme into your game, and the ideas on specific content are likely to start flowing. As seen from Dr Mario, you don’t necessarily need to choose a theme by building it out from your game mechanics, but instead it can be just a coat of paint you slap on them to add a bit more fun.
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Because you’re not creating for an audience. Creativity necessitates an audience and thrives on positive feedback, and dies without them.
If you were making anything worthwhile you’d be showing it off, getting positive feedback and that would encourage you to keep going.
Stop fantasizing and starting tackling the real source of your problems: not getting any good feedback for your work.
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Also, if creating content feels “hard”, maybe the expectations for the initial stages of development are too high and the goals that have been set for the short and middle term plan are not achievable.
Video games development is highly iterative. What can you do in a week ? Start there. Put some gameplay together, use placeholder assets where relevant. Only then, revisit features, improve content quality, add functionalities, etc. It’s easier if you break it down into manageable chunks.
Also, compare to existing games and understand what is realistic and what isn’t. A single character in a modern AAA game takes months of months, from idea to integration (concept, high-poly modelling, low-poly modelling, rigging, animating, etc.). So clearly that kind of content quality for a solo developer is a “no go”. So… what can you do ? Be clever about saving time, and cut corners wherever possible.
I’ve realized that the reason this happens for me is that I consider the minimum effort that is necessary to be able to add and test a new feature (or something) and try to optimize it in my head before I actually make it, because I don’t want the effort to be a waste of time. That is to say, I sit there optimizing… nothing. I’m not actually making anything. This behavior was sort of automatic, so I didn’t realize I was doing it at first, but I essentially let a type of fear stop me in my tracks.
I don’t know if this is how it feels for you, but if you relate to it, the best way I’ve found to avoid this is to determine specifically what I want to achieve before I settle in to work on a project. Go over it out loud to anyone that will listen, get a white board and write on it, or just type some stuff in notepad to stir up some thoughts, and then execute your plan the best you can.
If you have a prototype or something but you think it needs something more, make sure people are testing it (post your project!). They will have ideas for you.
If there aren’t any social resources available at a given time and you can’t get yourself to make anything, make a copy of a test scene for your project in Unity, and start changing things for fun. Change colors, change speeds. Make a gun shoot cows. Make a giant version of an enemy. Turn things upside-down. Zoom the camera out. Replace the background music with a song that shouldn’t fit at all. Make two puzzles and solve them simultaneously. Something will click and you will have lots of seeds of new ideas, which you could record and review as your game evolves. I often end up so inspired by something I was just screwing around with that I start adding an idea right away, because I already know it’s fun, which is the whole point.
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I can’t stress this part enough. Collect feedback! It doesn’t take much outside inspiration to get you going. Testers can add context and purposes in ways you had not considered. Even feedback you don’t agree with can get you thinking about possible solutions and implementations.
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