It's been over a month since I made my initial post about a million mom games, which feels like no time at all in my absolutely time warped reality. Every day moves very slowly right now, yet each week/month has never gone by quicker in my life. It's an odd juxtaposition, and so my update is mostly about false starts and process shifts that I've had to make in order to get even the slightest things done.

Do less. Sleep instead.

Health stuff just keeps happening; a lot of this month was spent on rest, and getting care that would help me manage my various sources of fatigue. Early parenthood has been an absolute marathon, and a lot of days even now are just about keeping everyone fed and rested. When I do get an afternoon to myself, I crave the freedom to simply rot or feel the lightness of being responsibility free.

That being said, the first version of this post was transcribed from a rambling conversation I had with my baby about how I've been feeling. The audio is interspersed with babbling replies, baby whoops and cheers, and me turning my attention to my baby's efforts during tummy time. This is all to say that what I have been getting done has been both incredibly small and incremental and incredibly integrated with the care work that makes up the bulk of my day to day.

I can't say I've gotten into a flow state with any of this project yet, I'm actually pretty curious about how others in similar situations cultivate an environment of focus. My office doesn't have doors on it, so for my next update I'm aiming to have tried working out of another space that's separate from the floor where my baby will be crying/laughing because it is entirely too distracting for me.

Thank and let go of what doesn't fit anymore.

When I started working on A Million Mom Games, my first prototype was made in Dragon Ruby (DR). Ruby was the programming language I used professionally, and DR is a really cozy engine as a Rubyist which I enjoyed making some games in. After that first protoype though, I realized DR requires entirely too much time managing low level functionality that I just...didn't enjoy. I barely enjoyed it before this project, but since working with such reduced capacity it became a burden. For now I'm putting down Dragon Ruby and picking up Godot as a tool. I'm finally in my learning Godot era.

Lots of ideas are getting thrown out.

A rough outline of my process so far:

  1. Ideas go into a note on my phone. Most of them only make it this far. (I have 20 in this list at time of writing.)
  2. I pick from the phone note and write a 1 page mind map that develops the idea in a physical notebook. I try to capture the vibe and the core game loop I'm thinking about here, as well as whatever specifics. This is often done while rambling to the kiddo, as is the next step. I have fewer than 7 pages of this at the time of writing.
  3. I write post it notes that are the actual tasks for a given idea, and stick them over my 1 page mind map.
  4. The post it notes are what I actually "work" on during my scheduled focus time.

I have a very low bar for what it means to put something aside right now as I try to figure out process and reacquaint myself with my brain. It's been challenging, my first prototype feels like SUCH a dud but in reality I think it's just too big of an idea in too low level of a tool (Dragon Ruby) for me right now. I'm working on a couple ideas in Godot that I'm more excited about, adding art that I'm going to share and be embarrassed by but hey, that sharing is a big part of the point of all this too.

Onward!

An unexpected joy of this project so far is being able to have conversations about existing games. A friend sent me a list based off of his library. I finally played through Venba during a single naptime. I'm actually doing some research into the academic discussion around representations of motherhood in media, and learning about the monstrous mother archetype that has fascinated me long before I ever considered becoming one myself.

The above and my two current projects are too early days to say much more other than "hi, this is happening!" but I wanted to write an update before my process changes all over again. I'm still exhausted. I'm so glad to be here, and grateful you are too.