I started thinking about my game,Endless Green, in earnest around 6 or 7 years ago. For a few years prior to that there was a setting in my head that wouldn’t go away; an endless, alien forest.
I doodled and scratched notes a few times on setting details, what kinds of characters there would be, and mused on my ideas about trumpet shaped rifles that shot liquefied sound. But, I never really got anywhere until 7 months ago.
I felt fully committed to the project and made progress, however slight, every single day. Some days it was a single sentence, or a single item on a random table. Other days it was hours and hours of rules-ass-rules.
Six months later, I had a draft. I felt wonderful, I was even surprised I was able to commit to calling something a “First Draft.” No more fixing typos, unnecessary rewordings of rules, just… finished.
Between sentences, I researched how to get my game out there to see what people thought. I had no art, and certainly no experience in the industry. After reading a bunch of people’s experiences, I created a smallitch.io page and put out a launch post on the r/rpgdesign subreddit to advertise the free, alpha version of my game.
The day of release I got 66 views and 26 downloads.
I was over the flipping moon.
Twenty-six people clicked through and downloaded something I had made. The feeling was indescribable. Twenty-six! I even got one review that just said “good.” In the next month those figures increased to 170 views and 63 downloads.
Which brings me to today.
I had thought that writing the game would be the biggest hurdle of all, but reality struck me in the face. It’s a first, not final, draft. And although I had playtested large sections of the rules by myself, it is no substitute for the real thing. I also have never been an artist, or a layout designer, or a marketer, or a content creator, et cetera, et cetera.
Which leaves me at a bit of a crossroads. I finally did the thing, and now it feels like all I have left to do is everything.
Priority number one is live playtesting. Where the ideal vision of my intent meets the practical realities of other people’s expectations. The insights I expect to gain from this are invaluable.
Priority number two is aesthetics. The game was written in word and it looks like it. It’s a bit of a dud visually, with charts and images pasted by screenshot from Google sheets.
Where this ends up, I’m not sure, but I’m still sticking to at least one sentence, one forward movement, one thing learned, every day.
Visceral Exploration in an Endless Forest
| Status | In development |
| Category | Physical game |
| Author | EndlessGreen |
| Tags | Action-Adventure,nature,No AI,Sci-fi,Tabletop role-playing game |
| Languages | English |