Do One Thing Well

It’s not exactly a new year’s resolution, but I do have a plan for 2022.
There’s this thing that I'm good at, and yet it’s not good for me, and that’s organising other people’s stuff. I have to admit that my comfortable place is creating projects that make the best out of something that already exists rather than creating something entirely new. I am, at heart, a tools person.

I overwork myself on pulling apart and cleaning up some interesting things. Most of the time, it’s absolutely not worth the amount of time I put into it due to how ineffective and directionless I can be. I hate to abandon projects that are based around stuff that’s close to my heart but at the same time all of these projects are, by their nature, almost infinitely open-ended.

Readers of this blog won’t know it yet, but I've been working for months on creating a game. I spent a long time on the design and making sure that it was something I really wanted to do. Now that I'm in a position where I'm confident the game will be interesting and compelling enough I took the decision to focus my life on this creative endevour rather than the many existing projects I had on the board that were all sapping my energy without really producing anything final.

Die, Bunny, Die!, is different.

You play as a young woman who, having gotten herself into a bit of a predicament, finds herself standing atop of a tall building in a city wearing a bunny-suit, blood on her hands, about to throw herself to her death when a dark god offers a Faustian bargain. She finds herself in a place outside of normal time and space, doomed to die to an infinite series of brutal death traps, one death after another, forever.

After years, possibly decades, in this prison of a dark god she’s lost her memory of who she was and how she got there. You, the player, must explore the meta-physical space of the prison and begin to piece together the story of who she is; how she got there; why is she wearing a bunny-suit, of all things; and perhaps find a way to escape.

The approach to this project is fundamentally different to what I've done in the past;

• This will be a commercial product;
  there will be an ending and I aim to get the game finished and published
• I'm using existing tools and not developing new ones
• I've hired a programmer(!) so I can focus on the writing

I've started a development blog on Itch.io, where the game will be initially sold when complete. There may be a Patreon but I'm uncertain if I can commit to something that requires me to produce content regularly yet. I want to give people access to the design and to some of the beautiful writing I've surprised myself with, but I have to balance this against the commerical nature of the project; I'm used to doing everything in the open but I have to keep at least some things close to my chest for now.

I would really like to hear your thoughts about this new direction. You can use the forum thread, the Camen Design Discord, talk to me on twitter or via e-mail at kroc@camendesign.com