Another Large RPG Update (Feb 27 2026)

I started working on the update to Randomly Generated RPG. I’m almost done with it, but need a bit more time for the last few Rules. As expected, I dropped all the extra effects from the emotions, the cheats and challenges, and changed lots of abilities. I didn’t expect to change any of the Wizard’s abilities since none of the gameplay changes affect them, but nope I still ended up changing many of them. Perhaps more surprising is that I dropped the Neutral emotion. At first I thought that keeping Neutral would be fine to keep since it’s very simple. But also it didn’t interact with anything else, and I barely had any abilities that used it, so I just got rid of it altogether.

EDIT: It's 1am on Feb 28, and that was enough time to finish everything I wanted. You can play the update now: https://dz-tt2195.itch.io/randomly-generated-rpg

After I’m done with these last few Rules, I think I want to write a design document for Randomly Generated RPG. I could go over the ability pie for the players, and explain how ideas changed / got dropped. Unlike the other 2 topics I want to one day write about (which are: simultaneous turn games vs consecutive turn games’ and fixed content games vs random content games), this one I already know everything I want to talk about. And it just sounds fun to do a deep dive on the game I’m most proud of.

But then after that, what’s next? I actually thought of 2 potential ideas for games. The first is a game where every few seconds, one of your controls will change to a different key on the keyboard. You may even have to press 2 buttons at once just to move around. The question then is, what happens in the rest of the game. Do you just move around and avoid things on the screen? I don’t want to do Relentless Waves again, and I already gave up on that dungeon game because it was just avoiding obstacles while moving around, so I feel like the game needs to involve something else as well.

The other idea I think has more promise. The game is, you play 4 small games, all at the same time. They all begin at once, and you must beat them all at once. If you lose in one of them, or run out of time, you lose. What happens in each of the 4 games can be anything. It could be a card game, a platformer, but what’s important is that they can be either won or lost, need quick thinking and movements, and can’t be ignored for too long. The games do need some moments where nothing is happening / you can wait, so you can temporarily ignore it and focus on other games. But for sure it can’t be, you play the games one after another with no pressure. The games also have to be simple, as 4 games can be very overwhelming. One potential idea is, it’s a platformer, you control all 4 players at the same time (in different levels), but you can press a button to temporarily disable the controls in one of the games. And if you don’t beat every level in a certain amount of time, you don’t win. 

Crafts Fair Out (Feb 20 2026)

This post is going up in the morning rather than night since I already finished writing. But it’s also because, after just 5 weeks of development, the game is now done. Also a reminder that, even though it’s an online game, I took steps to have the game work in solitaire too, you can play the game purely by yourself (as long as you read the rulebook).

One of the biggest tasks left was figuring out a logo and name for the game. Actually I figured out the logo first, I wanted something involving the level icon and the 4 tokens. Since there are 6 levels and 4 tokens, it would be cool if the name of the game was a 6-letter word plus a 4-letter word. And I realized that Crafts Fair is a perfect name that even matches the flavor, since they’re an actual thing, and it’s a place where you sell homemade items to customers. I got really lucky here, I don’t know what else I could have done for a name if that wasn’t an option.

One thing about the game is that the general gameplay encourages hoarding. In other words, keeping all your cards and tokens around for the entire game and saving all your scoring until the end. While I’m ok if that’s the best strategy some of the time, I think it’s more fun if you’re scoring cards and tokens multiple times during the game instead of just waiting for one big turn. The way to at least reduce this from happening was to have some Twists that rewarded you for having money (now you can’t just stay at $0 for the whole game) and penalizing having certain tokens (you can avoid the penalties by selling those tokens).

I think the game is great, but probably the main criticism one could make is that there’s no engine building. In many card games, your turns start out weak, and then accomplish more over time as you get more abilities. In this game though, your turns are always the same. The only way to make substantial progress is through the Twists, and they don’t really count as something you do each turn. In theory I could have the customers give you abilities when you satisfy them, but that would be more complicated, and I’d have to redo the flavor. But I think I can live without it, there’s still plenty of planning you have to do, and combos to work towards. 

Another thought is, does Crafts Fair want a story? Writing a story for my games sounds like a hopeless task, since they’re basically all mechanics-first and have zero story at all. I can’t imagine what I would even write for All Shapes and Sizes and Relentless Waves. However, Crafts Fair does have a small amount of story and flavor (of selling tokens to customers). I did also give Randomly Generated RPG a few paragraphs of story, and I think that story turned out great because it’s just jokes about why the game has no flavor. But I don’t think I can repeat those kinds of jokes for every game I make. Anyways, maybe there’s something funny I can come up with in the future, but that’s not gonna get in the way of me releasing the game. 

Finally, speaking of Randomly Generated RPG, I think I can make it even better and simpler. Each emotion in the game has 2 rules associated with it, and maybe I can get rid of that. They’re just super effective against each other and that’s it. Instead, there can be 2 Rules each game that change things up, for both players and enemies, and the current rules on the emotions are now moved there instead. I think the only downside is some enemies are built around emotions (like the Bat purposefully makes itself Sad) and if Sad does nothing special, then those enemies look weird / may need changing. It’s also possible I should just drop the cheats and challenges and have some of them be Rules instead. But I think it'll be worth the effort, and will hopefully be the last time I ever have to make major changes to this almost 2 year old game.

Names and Renames (Feb 13 2026)

The current game has progressed from 27 customers a week ago, to 31. And it has progressed from 12 countdown cards to 19 (although 3 of them still need names). The main thing slowing down the development right now is actually names and art. I spent basically every day this week trying to come up with names and then giving them art. But I also made the mistake of deciding to rename some things in the game, and that meant I had to go back and change a bunch of names and art too. 

The first thing is about the tokens. I decided that weapons/swords are too specific when it comes to creating names, and broadened it to just tools (and now it’s a hammer icon). But now tools and technology were way too similar to each other, and now I had to change one of them. I decided to switch technology to books, or just any form of written text. Funnily enough, books(/text) were one of the types in Antiquitus, which means this is the only type that survived. I also considered magic instead of books, but I didn’t have a good icon for it, and I like books better anyway. 

Then the card types. I changed buyer to customer to be more flavorful. The customers weren’t too difficult to name, although the hardest ones were the customers that technically don’t care what tokens you’re getting rid of. Why are they giving you money for doing something like that? Like for example, the card that wants you to have 0 tokens left after selling, what customer is that? For that one I went with, a crowd of people, with the idea that they’re swarming your store and buying everything. The harder card type though are the countdown cards. I considered a bunch of things for what they could possibly represent, since they happen based on what the players do. I considered Events (they happen periodically during the game and you plan for them), and Strategies (they dictate how you play) and Locales (their presence affects the game), but I kept struggling with actually naming the cards that fit with the types.

It was the first time I struggled with giving a card type a name. Then I looked at some other games (mostly by Donald X.). While some card types tend to be very specific (like the Dominion Landmarks are always locations / buildings), other card types can really be whatever is necessary. The action cards in Dominion cover everything from verbs, locations, people, objects, animals, abstract concepts, anything. And now that I’ve struggled with the card names, I totally see why certain card types are allowed to have whatever name necessary, even if it’s less flavorful, because it’s so much easier to work with. Besides, my game is a mechanics-first game, not a flavor-first game (even though it does try to have more flavor with the types of tokens), so I can give up on a flavorful name for the countdown cards. Even the hourglass zones in Temporum don’t have a super flavorful card type. Now the countdown cards in my game are called Twists, and the names are just as flexible as necessary. 

All of this is also another reminder why I should take a break from card games. Figuring out names and art is really annoying. Very basic art (like in Relentless Waves and All Shapes and Sizes) is way easier to work with.