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Solve a puzzle with cats and laser pointers? We talk Brainstorming!!!


The game-making lessons we learned are:

  • Lack of exposition + personal artifacts = introspective environmental storytelling. Gamifying the mundane. Anywhere decisions can be made (ex: where to place physical items in a room) a game can be born. (Unpacking). Shout out to Ian Bogost’s “How to do Things with Video Games.”
  • All characterization is with dialog, conversations with demons. Fiction writing rule: Dialog, not exposition, makes for the best characters. Show don’t tell. This game is a reminder that mechanics alone don’t need to bear the weight of a game alone; the “what a crazy character that is” appeal can support and, maybe even, still the show. (Shin Megami Tensei 5)
  • Obligation is inherently less motivating than discovery. Obligation lacks personal investment. (Mass Effect 2)

In this magical episode of the Flyover Indies Podcast, we discuss brainstorming. Brainstorming is an incredibly valuable tool for generating ideas, bonding teams, and creating motivation. Specifically with game development, brainstorming is a wonderful way to generate lots of verbs and mechanics for a game…which we do LIVE at the end of this episode. So, stay tuned through to the end to learn lots of cool ways to solve puzzles with lasers and cats.

Rules for brainstorming: https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/7-simple-rules-of-brainstorming

Haakon Faste and Eric Paulos are the creators of the grid-style brainstorming technique that Caleb mentioned. Good luck finding examples online though. I (Caleb) couldn’t find any.

The games we mentioned are:

  • Unpacking
  • Shin Megami Tensi 5
  • Mass Effect 2

The mentioners of the aforementioned mentionables are:

  • Charlotte Trible (@ctrble)  – co-founder of Flyover Indies and game developer
  • Gage Bradley (@DrumGadget_433) – member of Flyover Indies, musician, and game developer
  • Caleb J Ross (@calebjross / https://calebjross.com) – member of Flyover Indies and game developer

If you have any comments to make on this or any Flyover Indies Podcast episode, feel free to Tweet us @Flyoverindies or email us at contact@flyoverindies.party. We might just read your tweets or emails in a future episode.

Play some of our games here: https://itch.io/games/tag-flyover-indies

Intro and outro music by Nash (https://www.nashhigh.com)

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