Updates and Artifacts

Just a quick update... 

I've been slowly chugging along over the last month, keeping things moving along with The Artifact, and also reestablishing a monthly meetup with another semi-local designer who I used to see a lot of before Covid. A big part of things is building up a routine again. 

Interestingly, the semi-local meetups have already resulted in a new design, a light, cooperative puzzle game which we think is close to pitchable already. Obviously we'll be continuing to work on it, but it's looking pretty good so far. 

I've also had a tinker with something very new that didn't work, but I want to play with a little more. I'll probably write up something about that soon.

The end of a recent 2-player test of The Artifact. 

The Artifact has stayed in roughly the same state for a couple of months now, with Alex and I both having tests independently, trying out different variations of the game in relatively minor details and comparing notes. This seems to be working well and making progress a lot better than we have managed for a good long time. It helps that we have found a core of the game that we are both pretty comfortable with and can iterate on at a relatively fine level.

I'm also at an interesting point with my approach to the game where I am actually starting to think about balance between elements of the game. This is something I tend to resist for a long time when working on games for a lot of reasons, so the fact I am allowing myself to even start thinking about it makes me think that things are really moving.