As development of JRPG Idle progresses, the time approaches to start thinking more about the content of our game world. As a solo dev, this is where things start to get complicated for me: I’m a designer, not a writer! So let’s take a look at how to break down this problem, and start building a compelling world for our game to take place in.

One of the development patterns that consistently proves itself over and over again, is the power of separating data from code. Whether it’s a big AAA production with hundreds of developers or an indie production with a small team, it just makes sense to treat code and data separately. So let’s step through setting it up for JRPG Idle!

Thus far in our journey, we’ve mostly focused on the basic structure of JRPG Idle - where things are located, and how the player moves around the game. We’ve got a nice little loop set up, and our game is starting to feel like an actual world rather than just a series of menus. 

We’ve got a handful of activities strewn about the game world for the player to engage with, but this brings us to the question of why? What is motivating the player to do any of this?

With the basics of our game loop established, now it's time to start looking at beefing up the mechanics of our prototype!

Exploration is perhaps our most under-served design pillar up until now, so let's take some time to talk about our goals for the Exploration mechanic, and discuss the plan of attack.

Up until now we’ve done a lot of planning about our approach to getting this project off the ground - but now it’s finally time to dive in, and start building that first prototype!

This brings us to everyone’s favourite question - What engine should I use?

Now that we've settled on out game's Identity and Design Pillars, it's time to start getting our hands dirty and make that first prototype.

We start from scratch, figuring out a basic gameplay loop that satisfies our gameplay goals and sets us up in a good position to add complexity later.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve started and stopped at least half a dozen projects over the years. You have lots of ideas, but they never really come together, or the enthusiasm just kind of fizzles out. For me, the problem is pretty much always the same:

Where do I even start?