Got a little work done today, and while planning ahead I had this weird notion. I was thinking about how i was going to add this enemy and this section of zone, because that's what I had all stored up in my mind, and then I thought to myself "Shame i'm giong to have to change all of this once I start playing the game and find out it's not fun."

And then it hit me, I'm so stuck in this mindset of creating random content, that i don't even consider how it should be organized to actually be a fun game. I'm finding myself turning into that dev that was on the other side, the one that doesn't play the game, the one that doesn't build the game to be fun, but rather to simply have all the elements that a game is SUPPOSED to have.

This is kind of terrifying. It's time for me to build a game that I would want to play. It's time for me to load up the game, play it, see what's not making it fun, and execute changes from the perspective of the player, not the designer. This is going to be a big turning point.

It's insanity. Starting soon, we build the actual damned game, no more going through the motions. We load the game, we play it, and we make it fun. If I get bored of things, I find ways to improve the experience. This is a game meant to be replayed over and over, it's time to put that to the test. We'll focus on just area one, i'll add interesting seacrits and shortcuts to make it interseting at all play levels.

Short term goal: Create debug tools that allow me to skip tutorial content to make the game easier to test rapidly.

Time to sink or swim.